Jessie Burton’s The Confession is, frankly, a bit heavy-handed
Jessie Burton is famous for her million-copy bestselling debut novel The Miniaturist, which she followed with The Muse. Now she’s…
Brutish Brits: You Will Be Safe Here, by Damian Barr, reviewed
Damian Barr explains the upsetting genesis of his impressive debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, in his acknowledgements: This…
The cruise of a lifetime: Proleterka, by Fleur Jaeggy, reviewed
Near the start of Fleur Jaeggy’s extraordinary novel Proleterka, the unnamed narrator reflects: ‘Children lose interest in their parents when…
Kristen Roupenian’s debut short stories fulfil all expectations
Kristen Roupenian’s debut collection, You Know You Want This (Cape, £12.99), comes hotly anticipated. Her short story, ‘Cat Person’, went…
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…
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…
Love and loneliness prevail in the latest short stories
Carmen Maria Machado’s debut collection Her Body & Other Parties (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99) takes a confident straddle across speculative fiction,…
Françoise Frankel: a spirited woman on the run in Occupied France
Françoise Frenkel was a Polish Jew, who adored books and spent much of her early life studying and working in…
A choice of first novels
Black Rock White City (Melville House, £16.99) is ostensibly about a spate of sinister graffiti in a Melbourne hospital. ‘The…
Mysticism and metamorphosis
‘I frankly hate Descartes,’ states a character in Nicole Krauss’s new novel, Forest Dark: ‘The more he talks about following…
The dark side of creativity
In Eureka, Anthony Quinn gives us all the enjoyable froth we could hope for in a novel about making a…
Dark secrets of village life
Jon McGregor’s first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, a surprise inclusion on the 2002 Booker longlist that went…
Intimations of immortality
A preoccupation with death is felt from the start of Margaret Drabble’s new novel, which opens with Francesca Stubbs, in…
Words on the street
A white van pulls up outside St Giles in the Fields, an imposing 18th century church in central London, around…
London’s lost rivers
I found my first of London’s many lost rivers when I walked across Holborn Viaduct, looked down at the sweep…
London’s lost rivers
I found my first of London’s many lost rivers when I walked across Holborn Viaduct, looked down at the sweep…
The power of music and storytelling
Madeleine Thien’s third novel, recently long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, begins in Vancouver with Marie, who, like the author,…
Holiday reading
Holidays are a welcome chance to lose ourselves between the covers of a book, especially for those of us who…
Holiday reading
Holidays are a welcome chance to lose ourselves between the covers of a book, especially for those of us who…
Books aren’t medicine. They’re more powerful than that
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
Hot Milk’s heroine has snaky curls and a basilisk stare
With ‘both arms stretched out like a starfish, her long hair floating like seaweed at the sides of her body’,…
A bookseller’s guide to book thieves
At my shop, it seems to be everyone from students to organised professional gangs
Meet the librarians – and book borrowers – of the Calais Jungle
In the middle of the Calais migrant camp, there is a book-filled haven of peace
Jonathan Galassi’s fictional poet made me doubt my knowledge of American literature
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old…
The dark side of Delhi
When Sara discovers that her husband died in India, rather than being killed in Afghanistan as she was told, she…
