Fiction
Grief fills the room up
Maggie O’Farrell is much possessed by death. Her first novel, After You’d Gone (2000), chronicled the inner life of a…
An unexamined life
Micah Mortimer, the strikingly unproactive protagonist of Anne Tyler’s 23rd novel, is a man of such unswerving routine that his…
Flying too close to the sun
The beautiful Greek island of Hydra became home to a bohemian community of expats in the 1960s, including the Canadian…
Creepy men everywhere
‘It’s a woman’s thing, creation,’ says Sarah,a girl accused of witchcraft in 18th-century Scotland, in one of the three storylines…
Descent into lawlessness
It was perhaps a mistake to re-read Sebastian Barry’s award-winning Days Without End before its sequel, A Thousand Moons, since…
A woman of no importance
‘Buy pink baby clothes,’Kim Jiyoung, the protagonist of this bestselling South Korean novel is told at the obstetrician’s surgery. Jiyoung’s…
Grandfather’s story
Louise Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, was tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa when the US Congress imposed…
Tales out of school
‘James Scudamore is now a force in the English novel,’ says Hilary Mantel on the cover of English Monsters, which,…
The road to Tower Hill
In 1540, he, himself, Lord Cromwell fell victim to the king’s caprice. His execution brings to a close one of English literature’s great trilogies, says Mark Lawson
Completely unhinged
Faced with Marina Lewycka’s new novel, it’s tempting to say that The Good, the Bad and the Little Bit Stupid…
Period piece
There’s something — isn’t there? — of the literary also-ran about Graham Swift. He was on Granta’s first, influential Best…
A matter of detail
This is a very nuanced and subtle novel by Philip Hensher, which manages the highwire act of treating its characters…
Acting the part
Actress is the novel Anne Enright has been rehearsing since her first collection of stories, The Portable Virgin (1991). It…
The wanderings of Ullis
Jeet Thayil’s previous novel, The Book of Chocolate Saints, an account of a fictional Indian artist and poet told in…
A burning passion
Poor Cassy. The Miss Austen of this novel’s title is Cassandra, Jane’s elder sister. She was to have married Thomas…
Making mischief
Late in this final volume of a tantalising trilogy, we hear that its enigmatic boy hero ‘would never tell you…
How far can you go?
Alert to the combination of a controversial issue and a brilliant writer, Serpent’s Tail have bought This is a Pleasure,…
Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales are among the most harrowing in all literature
‘I consist of the shards into which the Republic of Kolyma shattered me,’ Varlam Shalamov once told a fellow gulag…
Is it a Rake’s or a Pilgrim’s Progress for Rob Doyle?
‘To live and die without knowing the psychedelic experience,’ says the narrator of Threshold, ‘is comparable to never having encountered…
Zimbabwe’s chaotic history has at least produced some outstanding fiction
Tsitsi Dangarembga’s arresting Nervous Conditions appeared in 1988 and was the first novel published in English by a black Zimbabwean…
Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming is a long, hard slog
The Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who sounds like a sneeze and reads like a fever, is on a mission to…
Bernadine Evaristo shoulders weighty themes lightly: Girl, Woman, Other reviewed
It’s a slippery word, ‘other’. Taken in one light, it throws up barriers and insists on divisions. It is fearful…
Dave Eggers’s satire on Trump is somewhat heavy-handed: The Captain and the Glory reviewed
A feckless moron is appointed to the captaincy of a ship, despite having no nautical experience. The Captain has a…
Tame family dramas: Christmas in Austin, by Benjamin Markovits, reviewed
My partner’s brother once found himself accidentally locked into his flat on Christmas Day, which meant having to spend it…
The good sex award goes to Sarah Hall: Sudden Traveller reviewed
Sarah Hall should probably stop publishing short stories for a while to give other writers a chance. If she’s not…
