Fiction
Together and apart
Twins are literary dynamite. For writers, they’re perfect for thrashing out notions of free will, the pinballing of cause and…
A radical mismatch
Question: which American president and first lady would you care to imagine having intercourse? If that provokes a shudder, be…
The Stacey Abrams presidency
‘You don’t run for second place.’ That’s how Stacey Abrams responded when asked if she would consider being presidential hopeful…
Opposites attract
On the way back from my daily dawn march in the park, I often pass my neighbour, a distinguished gentleman…
Drawing a blank
It needs authorial guts to write a novel in which details are shrouded, meaning is concealed and little is certain.…
Least said, soonest mended
Early on in Tim Finch’s hypnotic novel Peace Talks, the narrator — the diplomat Edvard Behrends, who facilitates international peace…
Sadness and scandal
In 1886 the British mathematician and schoolmaster Charles Howard Hinton presented himself to the police at Bow Street, London to…
The perfect stranger
This novella is suited to our fevered times. Scheduled to coincide with the Swindon spring festival of literature, now cancelled,…
Deepest, darkest desires
In Henry and June, Anaïs Nin asks her cousin Eduardo if one can be freed of a desire by experiencing…
Village of the damned peculiar
I doubt whether any book would entice me more than a horrible hybrid of crimefiction, speculative fantasy, weird religion and…
The great philanderer
Michael Arditti has never held back from difficult or unfashionable subjects. His dozen novels, including the prize-winning Easter, as well…
Sinister toy story
We often hear that science fiction — or ‘speculative’ fiction, as the buffs prefer — can draw premonitory outlines of…
Catch me if you can
NVK, which is the IATA (International Air Transport Association) code for Narvik’s old airport, is in this instance Naemi Vieno…
The ‘other’ other half
Conservative estimates place the number of those in America with more than one spouse as up to 100,000, but the…
All about Eve
On a winter’s night an artist of moderately exalted reputation and in lateish middle age journeys across London, away from…
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…
