Book review – fiction
All things lead to 9/11: An American Story, by Christopher Priest, reviewed
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 many writers spoke of feeling immobilised. The scale of the attacks and the world’s…
A paean to lesbian love: Aftershocks, by A.N. Wilson, reviewed
The polymath writer A.N.Wilson returns to the novel in Aftershocks, working on the template of the 2011 earthquake which devastated…
Caught between fascism and witchcraft: All Among the Barley, by Melissa Harrison, reviewed
All Among the Barley, Melissa Harrison’s third ‘nature novel’, centres on Wych Farm in the autumn of 1933, where the…
Too much American angst: the latest short stories reviewed
In ‘A Prize for Every Player’ — one of 12 stories in Days of Awe, a new collection by A.M.…
The plight of the returnee: A Terrible Country, by Keith Gessen, reviewed
If the 20th century popularised the figure of the émigré, the 21st has introduced that of the returnee, who, aided…
Unlucky in love: Caroline’s Bikini, by Kirsty Gunn, reviewed
‘The most interesting novels are a bit strange,’ Kirsty Gunn once told readers of the London Review of Books. ‘They…
From the Iliad to the IRA: Country, by Michael Hughes, reviewed
Recently there has been a spate of retellings of the Iliad, to name just Pat Barker’s The Silence of the…
The horror of post-Brexit Britain: Perfidious Albion, by Sam Byers, reviewed
Edmundsbury, the fictional, sketchily rendered town in which the action of this novel takes place, is part of a social…
Shades of Rear Window: People in the Room, by Norah Lange, reviewed
A girl at a window, hidden behind curtains, watches three women in a dimly lit drawing room in the house…
A suffragette sequel: Old Baggage, by Lissa Evans reviewed
Lissa Evans has had a good idea for her new novel. It’s ‘suffragettes: the sequel’. She sets her story not…
Born again: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh, reviewed
The new novel by the author of the 2016 Booker shortlisted Eileen is at once a jumble of influences —…
Shades of the Mitfords: After the Party, by Cressida Connolly, reviewed
At the beginning of After the Party, Phyllis Forrester tells us she was in prison. While inside, her hair turned…
A cold archaeological gaze: In the Garden of the Fugitives, by Ceridwen Dovey, reviewed
Visiting Pompeii, it is hard to miss the garden of the fugitives. It is on every other postcard in the…
Foreign bodies galore: the best new crime fiction
Ghosts of the Past by Marco Vichi (Hodder, £18.99) is unashamedly nostalgic in tone. The title could not be more…
Crudo, by Olivia Laing, reviewed
Olivia Laing has been deservedly lauded for her thoughtful works of non-fiction To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring…
A Shout in the Ruins, by Kevin Powers, reviewed
We’re in Virginia, in the 1850s. A girl called Emily is tormenting her dog, Champion, and her father’s teenage slave,…
Lucia, by Alex Pheby, reviewed
In 1988, James Joyce’s grandson Stephen destroyed all letters he had from, to or about his aunt Lucia Joyce, the…
The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner reviewed
Asked how he achieves the distinctive realism for which his novels and screenplays are famous, Richard Price, that sharp chronicler…
The Female Persuasion, by Meg Wolitzer reviewed
It’s because it’s the land of the loner that the United States is so loved or loathed. Yet to me…
Motherhood, by Sheila Heti reviewed
‘I don’t think this was something I ever felt’, Sheila Heti writes in Motherhood — ‘that my body, my life,…
Missing, by Alison Moore reviewed
Whereas in an unabashed thriller, in the TV series The Missing, for example, the object of the exercise is well…
Couldn’t Diana Evans’s fretful couples just shut up and deal with it?
My husband started reading Diana Evans’s third novel, Ordinary People, the day after I’d finished it. Three days later, I…
The daring exploits of Romain Gary
When Romain Gary, a courageous and much decorated pilot in the RAF’s Free French squadron, was presented to the Queen…
A single mother hits rock bottom in Tokyo: Territory of Light reviewed
Before her death two years ago, Yuko Tsushima was a powerful voice in Japanese literature; a strong candidate for the…
Our sheltered lives have made us overly fearful: Aminatta Forna’s Happiness reviewed
In her keynote lecture for a conference on ‘The Muse and the Market’ in 2015 Aminatta Forna mounted a powerful…
Most Popular
- Read
- Recent
- Read
- Recent
Editor’s Choice
Cartoons
