Book news, reviews and recommendations
There’s a coming-of-age theme running through the first few titles in April’s second fiction preview beginning with Seán Hewitt’s Open, Heaven which sees a deep bond form between two teenage boys. James is eager to begin his life away from the expectations of his family and the small village in which he lives. Luke has […]
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I’ve read two books from the first April preview instalment beginning with Solvej Balle’s International Booker Prize longlisted On The Calculation of Volume which is structured as a diary written by Tara, briefly in Paris for the antiquarian bookshop she runs with her husband. Nothing seems amiss until the following day begins to repeat itself.
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I’ve read just one from the second instalment of March paperbacks. Lisa Ko’s Memory Piece follows three American women of Chinese heritage who first meet in 1983, aged twelve, and maintain a connection into their seventies in a dystopian near future. Each of the friends has a lengthy narrative section charting the very different directions
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I’ve read all the titles in this first instalment of March paperbacks beginning with a 2024 favourite: Carys Davies’s Clear, set in 1843. Having impoverished himself and his wife by resigning his living to become a minister in the newly formed Free Church of Scotland, John Ferguson reluctantly accepts a lucrative offer preparing the clearance
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Back from Stockholm (more of which later in the week) with March’s second batch of new fiction. I’ve already read Theft, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first novel since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature. Described as ‘one of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers’ by the chairman of the Nobel committee, Gurnah continues to explore that
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By March, spring is firmly in my sights with hopes for fine weather and outdoor get togethers although I know we’re a long way from that. In the meantime, there’s lots of interesting fiction to look out for. Natasha Brown’s debut, Assembly, was one of my books of 2021: a brief, astonishingly powerful novella about
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February’s second batch of paperbacks includes three I’ve already read, beginning with one likely to be a Marmite book with knobs on for many readers. One of my books of last year, Helen Oyeyemi’s inventive, playful Parasol Against the Axe follows a hen party which has descended on Prague, Oyeyemi’s beloved adopted home and the
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Enough paperback goodies to brighten up what’s probably my least favourite month, I’m pleased to say, beginning with Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road billed as a state-of-the-nation novel which I always find appealing. Opening in May 2021, it follows Campbell Flynn, an art historian and celebrity intellectual who enjoys stirring things up, and Milo Manghasa, his
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Back from my London break (more of which later in the week) with February’s second batch of new fiction beginning with one I’ve already read. Opening in 1960s Vienna, Robert Seethaler’s The Café with No Name follows Robert Simon, whose dream is to run a bar, against a backdrop of a social change as Vienna
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Quite a few goodies to look out for in February’s publishing schedules, certainly enough to offer distraction from the grey gloom that usually prevails in my part of the world. I’ll begin with a gem I’ve already read. Garrett Carr’s adult debut, The Boy From the Sea, continues the seemingly never-ending stream of brilliant Irish
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I’ve read just two from January’s second batch of paperbacks, beginning with one I had hoped would make it on to my books of the year list. In Ainslie Hogarth’s Normal Women Dani has recently returned to her hometown, thanks to her husband’s promotion, and is now a fulltime mother. She slips into a routine
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