Fiction
Flight into danger: Freight Dogs, by Giles Foden, reviewed
Flying has always attracted chancers and characters to Africa. Wilbur Smith’s father so loved aviation he named his son to…
Thoroughly modern Marie: Matrix, by Lauren Groff, reviewed
It is 1158. A 17-year-old girl, born of both rape and royal blood, is cast out of the French court…
The secret life of Thomas Mann: The Magician, by Colm Tóibín, reviewed
In a letter to Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, who had married Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika sight unseen in order to…
Is there intelligent life on other planets?: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers, reviewed
We open with Theo, our narrator, and Robin, his son, looking at the night sky through a telescope. ‘Darkness this…
Irish quartet: Beautiful World, Where Are You?, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
The millennial generation of Irish novelists lays great store by loving relationships. One of the encomia on the cover of…
Lost to addiction: Loved and Missed, by Susie Boyt, reviewed
Ruth, the narrator of Susie Boyt’s seventh novel, is both the child of a single mother and a single mother…
A race against time: A Calling for Charlie Barnes, by Joshua Ferris, reviewed
What is life if not a quest to find one’s calling while massaging the narrative along the way? This question…
War between Heaven and Hell: The Absolute Book, by Elizabeth Knox, reviewed
Ursula Le Guin once described speculative fiction as ‘a great heavy sack of stuff, a carrier bag full of wimps…
First love: The Inseparables, by Simone de Beauvoir, reviewed
‘Newly discovered novel’ can be a discouraging phrase. Sure, some writers leave works of extraordinary calibre lurking among their effects…
Interpreting for a dictator: Intimacies, by Katie Kitamura, reviewed
If this is a cautious and circumspect novel, it’s because it involves a cautious and circumspect job: that of interpreter.…
Glasgow gangsters: 1979, by Val McDermid, reviewed
Like a basking shark, Val McDermid once remarked, a crime series needs to keep moving or die. The same could…
Startlingly sadistic: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, by Quentin Tarantino, reviewed
There’s no doubt that Quentin Tarantino is a movie director of brilliance, if not genius. But can he write? Well…
Gay abandon: Filthy Animals, by Brandon Taylor, reviewed
What does it mean to be a body in this world? It’s the question animating Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals. Our…
Funeral gatecrasher: The Black Dress, by Deborah Moggach, reviewed
Here is a rare dud from the usually reliable Deborah Moggach. Her protagonist, Pru, finds herself alone at 69 after…
Death and dishonour: The Promise, by Damon Galgut, reviewed
If death is not an event in life, as Wittgenstein observed, it’s a curious way to structure a novel. But…
The book as narrator: The Pages, by Hugo Hamilton, reviewed
It is a truism that a book needs readers in order to have a meaningful existence. Hugo Hamilton’s The Pages…
Terence’s stamp: The Art of Living, by Stephen Bayley, reviewed
Rumours reach me that the libel report for Stephen Bayley’s forthcoming biography of Terence Conran was longer than the book…
The man who made Manhattan: The Great Mistake, by Jonathan Lee, reviewed
What makes a city? The collective labour of millions packed into its history; the constant forgetting of incomers who arrive…
The young bride’s tale: China Room, by Sunjeev Sahota, reviewed
Sunjeev Sahota’s novels present an unvarnished image of British Asian lives. Ours Are the Streets chronicles a suicide bomber’s radicalisation,…
A matter of life or death: Should We Stay or Shall We Go, by Lionel Shriver, reviewed
Leave or remain? That’s the question hanging like a cartoon sledgehammer over Lionel Shriver’s 17th novel. Although she makes merry…
Studies in vulnerability: A Shock, by Keith Ridgway, reviewed
Keith Ridgway’s seventh book is a sultry, steamy shock of a novel, not least because nine years ago, despite the…
Life’s a bitch: Animal, by Lisa Taddeo, reviewed
Lisa Taddeo’s debut Three Women was touted as groundbreaking. In reality it was a limp, occasionally overwritten account of the…
Leni Riefenstahl is missing: The Dictator’s Muse, by Nigel Farndale, reviewed
Leni Riefenstahl was a film-maker of genius whose name is everlastingly associated with her film about the German chancellor, Triumph…
Return to LA Confidential: Widespread Panic, by James Ellroy, reviewed
Even by James Ellroy’s standards, the narrator of his latest novel is not a man much given to the quiet…
Sweet and sour: Barcelona Dreaming, by Rupert Thomson, reviewed
I’ve never been to Barcelona, but Rupert Thomson makes it feel like an old friend. The hot, airless nights and…
