Fiction
Urban gothic: I Want to Go Home, But I’m Already There, by Roisin Lanigan, reviewed
A rented London flat starts to exude hostility and malevolence – or could our impressionable heroine just be imagining it?
Deep mysteries: Twist, by Colum McCann, reviewed
An enigmatic captain tasked with repairing undersea communication cables disappears, and it’s up to his shipmate to discover why
A novel in disguise: Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser, reviewed
De Kretser’s witty, innovative take on the immigrant’s predicament tries ingeniously to persuade us that we are not reading fiction but documentary truth
Escape into fantasy: Stories of Ireland, by Brian Friel, reviewed
Friel’s tightly knit rural communities like to cling to illusions, whether it’s belief in sunken gold in the bay or in the continual prosperity of impoverished gentry
Don’t write off literary fiction yet
I don’t intend to start a feud. Most of Sean Thomas’s essay on The Spectator’s website last week, titled ‘Good…
Fight or flight?: 33 Place Brugmann, by Alice Austen, reviewed
Residents of a sedate apartment block in Brussels react in very different ways to the Nazi invasion of Belgium in 1940
A picture of jealous rivalry: Madame Matisse, by Sophie Haydock, reviewed
Henri Matisse’s wife and longstanding model was understandably enraged when the artist, in later life, preferred his much younger Russian mistress as a sitter
The mystery of the missing man: Green Ink, by Stephen May, reviewed
Things look bad for the former socialist MP Victor Grayson after he threatens to expose David Lloyd George’s cash for honours scandal in 1920
A satire on the modern art market: The Violet Hour, by James Cahill, reviewed
A world-renowned painter becomes the ghost of his former self, betraying his instincts to embrace sterile abstraction – and even outsourcing his work to ‘a fabricator in Zurich’
Clouded memories: Ballerina, by Patrick Modiano, reviewed
An ageing narrator looks back 50 years to ‘a most uncertain’ period of his life in Paris and his relationship with a mysterious, elusive ballet dancer
Nazis, killer dogs and weird sex: Empty Wigs, by Jonathan Meades, reviewed
Meades’s 1,000-page doorstopper is also vast in scope, containing 19 overlapping stories of a family scattered through time and space, and their role in a variety of nefarious goings-on
Things Fall Apart: Flesh, by David Szalay, reviewed
The fluctuating fortunes of an ambitious young Hungarian in London provide a gripping study of the choices that can make or break a life
Hope springs eternal: The Café with No Name, by Robert Seethaler, reviewed
It’s Vienna, 1966, and a young labourer casts a speculative eye on a ramshackle café in the corner of the Karmelitermarkt, daring to restore it and improve his lot
Three’s a crowd: The City Changes its Face, by Eimear McBride, reviewed
Tension mounts between young Eily and her 40-year-old partner, Stephen, when Stephen’s daughter, Grace, appears, underlining the couple’s different ages and experiences
A gloom-laden tale: The Foot on the Crown, by Christopher Fowler reviewed
Returning to his roots in horror fiction, Fowler portrays Londinium as a dismal citadel, ruled by an enfeebled dynasty clinging to pointless rituals
A mild diversion for a wet afternoon: Three Days in June, by Anne Tyler, reviewed
Tyler is known for making the ordinary compelling, but this quiet tale of family relationships is subtle to the point of stupor
The pursuit of love letters: My Search for Warren Harding, by Robert Plunket, reviewed
Our magnificently monstrous anti-hero goes in quest of a cache of reputedly pornographic letters written by the former US president to his mistress
The perils of poaching: Beartooth, by Callan Wink, reviewed
Two impoverished brothers from the Montana backcountry are tempted by the prospect of a daring heist in Yellowstone National Park
Putin’s éminence grise: The Wizard of the Kremlin, by Giuliano da Empoli, reviewed
Modelled on Putinism’s founding father, Vladislav Surkov, the protagonist of this internationally acclaimed novel pales by comparison with the real-life ideologue
The need to feel seen: Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico, reviewed
A young couple in thrall to the beauty of their Instagrammed life soon grow dissatisfied with reality, and ennui follows them wherever they go
Visionary tales: Mrs Calder and the Hyena, by Marjorie Ann Watts, reviewed
Sharply drawn characters, young and old, gleefully challenge conventional judgments and form liberating new friendships in this exhilarating collection of short stories
A painful homecoming: The Visitor, by Maeve Brennan, reviewed
Returning to the family house in Dublin after the death of her mother in Paris, 22-year-old Anastasia expects a warm welcome – only to be steadily spurned by her embittered grandmother
This other Eden: Adam and Eve in Paradise, by Eça de Queirós, reviewed
Published in 1897, Queiros’s novella revisits Christianity’s first man and woman, departing from the Creation story in ways both playful and profound
Bad vibrations: Lazarus Man, by Richard Price, reviewed
Shudderings from a subway extension in Harlem causes a tenement building to collapse, killing six people and leading to many missing in this cinematic thriller
The unfulfilled life: Ask Me Again, by Clare Sestanovich, reviewed
Our aimless young heroine struggles to find herself in New York, Washington and Los Angeles – but even the novel’s inconclusiveness is compelling
