Fiction
Reworking Dickens: Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, reviewed
Putting new wine into old wineskins is an increasingly popular fictional mode. Retellings of 19th-century novels abound. Jane Austen inevitably…
Isolating with the ex: Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout, reviewed
Elizabeth Strout’s fourth book about Lucy Barton comes on the heels of Oh William!, shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize.…
The deathly malaise that’s crippling Russia
Now is a difficult time to empathise with Russians – which is why we need Maxim Osipov. We need him…
Explorer, author, soldier, lover: The Romantic, by William Boyd, reviewed
William Boyd taps into the classical novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man’s century-spanning life, even to the…
A complicated bond: The Best of Friends, by Kamila Shamsie, reviewed
When I think of Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, I picture a pot boiling on a hob, the water level rising…
An empire crumbles: Nights of Plague, by Orhan Pamuk, reviewed
Welcome to Mingheria, ‘pearl of the Levant’. On a spring day, as the 20th century dawns, you disembark at this…
The great deception: The Book of Goose, by Yiyun Li, reviewed
As introductions go, ‘My name is Agnès, but that is not important’ does not have quite the same confidence as…
An outcast in Xinjiang: The Backstreets, by Perhat Tursun, reviewed
Like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, Perhat Tursun’s unnamed protagonist is an outcast. A young Uighur in an increasingly Han city (Urumchi,…
Back on the road: Less is Lost, by Andrew Sean Greer, reviewed
Get ready for more of Less: Andrew Sean Greer’s hapless novelist is back on the road. First things first: you…
Mad men plotting: The Unfolding, by A.M. Homes, reviewed
Fifteen years ago, A.M. Homes published The Mistress’s Daughter, an explosive, painful account of how she met her birth mother,…
A ghoulish afterlife: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka, reviewed
Ten years ago Shehan Karunatilaka’s first novel, Chinaman, was published and I raved about it, as did many others. Set…
Ian McEwan’s capacity for reinvention is astonishing
Ian McEwan’s latest novel is unusually long and autobiographical. It’s surprising in other ways, too, says Claire Lowdon
The curse of Medusa: Stone Blind, by Natalie Haynes, reviewed
Natalie Haynes has been compared with Mary Renault, the historical novelist who scandalised readers in the 1950s with her unflinching…
Bittersweet memories: Ti Amo, by Hanne Ørstavik, reviewed
This is a deceptively slim novel. Its 96 pages contain multitudes: two lives, past and present, seamlessly interwoven. The narrator,…
Second chances: The Marble Staircase, by Elizabeth Fair, reviewed
To reject ‘in rainy middle age the poignant emotions that belonged to youth and Italy’ is the lesson learned by…
Wall Street madness: Trust, by Hernan Diaz, reviewed
‘I don’t trust fiction,’ the famous author told me, both of us several glasses to the good. ‘It contains too…
A lost brother: My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is, by Paul Stanbridge, reviewed
Grief leads us down some strange roads. Few, though, can be as peculiar as those charted by Paul Stanbridge in…
Nazi on the run: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, by Olivier Guez, reviewed
Who would have thought that someone would write a novel about Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor and infamous experimenter on…
Murder most foul: The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’Farrell, reviewed
There’s a moment near the end of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue ‘My Last Duchess’ when it becomes clear that the…
The diary of a tortured man: Deceit, by Yuri Felsen, reviewed
Yuri Felsen, born in St Petersburg, was an exile in Riga, Berlin and Paris and died at Auschwitz in 1943.…
An angry poltergeist: Long Shadows, by Abigail Cutter, reviewed
Long Shadows, a powerful novel set mainly in the American civil war, is very unlike Gone with the Wind. The…
Adrift in Berlin: Sojourn, by Amit Chaudhuri, reviewed
Feelings of dislocation are at the heart of Amit Chaudhuri’s award-winning novels. Friend of My Youth (2017) followed a writer’s…
A shaggy drug story: Industry of Magic & Light, by David Keenan, reviewed
The Scottish writer David Keenan has published five novels in five years: This is Memorial Device (2017), For the Good…
Seize the moment: Undercurrent, by Barney Norris, reviewed
Barney Norris’s third novel opens with a wedding in April. The couple tying the knot don’t matter; it’s the occasion…
Propaganda from the Russian Front: The People Immortal, by Vasily Grossman, reviewed
On its posthumous publication in 1980, Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate was widely compared with War and Peace. For all…
