Fiction Reviews

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Cover image for Dream State by Eric Puchner

Dream State by Eric Puchner: ‘Marriage, the only adventure open to the cowardly’  

I’m sucker for author endorsements from favourite writers. Eric Puchner’s Dream State comes with lots of them including Danielle Evans and Andrew Sean Greer, but it was Alice McDermott’s that swung it for me. It’s a doorstopper which takes its readers from wedding preparations in the late twentieth century through to the mid-twenty-first before coming

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Cover image for What a Time to be Alive by Jenny Mustard

What a Time to Be Alive by Jenny Mustard: A quietly accomplished, coming-of-age novel

I read Jenny Mustard’s debut, Okay Days, back in 2023. Unflashy, perceptive and absorbing, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable novel which made me happy to put up my hand when What a Time to be Alive popped up on NetGalley. A coming-of-age story, it follows Sickan who’s changed her name from Siv hoping to reinvent herself

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Cover image for Back in the Dday by Oliver Lovrenski

Back in the Day by Oliver Lovrenski (transl. Nichola Smalley): ‘You might love the streets but theyre never gonna love you back’

Oliver Lovrenski’s Back in the Day topped the bestseller lists in Norway for months, winning the country’s prestigious Bookseller Prize when Lovrenski was just nineteen. Set in Oslo, his episodic, fragmented novel follows four boys through their school days onto the streets into a life that will likely lead to an early death. argan was

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Cover image for On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle

On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle (transl. Barbara J. Haveland): Here we go again

Recently shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize, the first book in Solvej Balle’s septology comes garlanded with praise from a wide range of writers including Jon McGregor whose endorsement swung it for me; that and its intriguing premise. On the Calculation of Volume 1 follows Tara Selter who wakes up every morning to find

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