Contemporary fiction Archives

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

25 April 2025 / 15 Comments

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’

16 April 2025 / 18 Comments

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 The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop

The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop: ‘There is never only one version’

29 March 2023 / 13 Comments

I reviewed Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World back in 2015 describing it as an unexpected treat. The novel’s cover had suggested a light diversion but it turned out to be much more than that which is what made me want to review The Anniversary despite its chunkster proportions. Bishop’s new novel sees

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Cover image for Fracture by Andrés Neuman

Fracture by Andrés Neuman (transl. Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia: ’The art of mending cracks without secrecy’

24 June 2020 / 6 Comments

Part of my attraction to Fracture was its jacket which seemed to fit the title so beautifully. Andrés Neuman’s novel is largely set in Japan and, thanks to BBC4’s excellent series of documentaries about Japanese culture, I knew about the practice of kintsugi: repairing broken porcelain emphasising the cracks rather than disguising them as we

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The Portrait by Ilaria Bernardini: Every picture tells a story

3 April 2020 / 10 Comments

This is the second novel I’ve read recently in which two women become close to each other, one knowing very much more about the other. In Tayari Jones’ Silver Sparrow, a half-sister is entirely ignorant of her new friend’s relationship to her. Ilaria Bernardini’s The Portrait sees a celebrated writer whose lover of several decades

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To the Volcano by Elleke Boehmer: Stories of longing and loneliness

6 November 2019 / 8 Comments

I’d not heard of Elleke Boehmer before To the Volcano turned up, despite the five novels she has under her belt. She’s also the author of an acclaimed biography of Nelson Mandela not to mention editor of the bestselling 2004 edition of Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys. I knew about the latter from Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

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We, The Survivors by Tash Aw: Confession of a decent man

5 April 2019 / 12 Comments

I remember being very impressed by Tash Aw’s debut, The Harmony Silk Factory, which was surrounded by a great deal of hype when it was published back in 2005 but for some reason I’d not got around to reading anything else by him until We,The Survivors turned up. Set in rural Malaysia, it tells the

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A Separation by Katie Kitamura: Ties that can’t be unbound

17 February 2017 / 18 Comments

Last month I posted a review of Addison Jones’ Wait for Me, Jack, a novel about a long marriage which survived a multitude of difficulties, the premise of which I found fascinating. As you can tell from the title, Katie Kitamura’s A Separation is the other side of that coin, a marriage that doesn’t endure.

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The Easy Way Out by Steven Amsterdam: There isn’t one

23 November 2016 / 10 Comments

This novel is unlikely to appeal to everyone although we should all read it. It’s about assisted suicide, one of the great moral dilemmas of the twenty-first century Western world where medicine has advanced in leaps and bounds but not the ethical framework for dealing with its unintended consequences. Steven Amsterdam’s sharp, funny novel explores

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