Fiction
Hitting the buffers: The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, reviewed
‘They’ll slowly undress us first and then kill us, so our clothes won’t get bloody and our banknotes won’t get…
An independent observer: Whereabouts, by Jhumpa Lahiri, reviewed
After falling in love with Italy as a young woman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri broke with English and…
Stealing the story: A Lonely Man, by Chris Power, reviewed
Robert Prowe has writer’s block. An Englishman reaching middle age, he lives in Berlin with his Swedish wife and their…
Water, water everywhere: Touring the Land of the Dead, by Maki Kashimada, reviewed
Maki Kashimada won the 2012 Akutagawa Prize for Touring the Land of the Dead, the strange, unsettling novella that makes…
Eliminate the positive: Come Join Our Disease, by Sam Byers, reviewed
Sam Byers’s worryingly zeitgeisty second novel, Perfidious Albion, imagined a post-Brexit dystopia dominated by global tech companies, corrupt spin doctors,…
A meditation on everyday life: Early Morning Riser, by Katherine Heiny, reviewed
There were many moments in Early Morning Riser that made me laugh out loud in recognition. An episode where the…
Ice and snow and sea and sky: Lean Fall Stand, by Jon McGregor, reviewed
Jon McGregor has an extraordinary ability to articulate the unspoken through ethereal prose that observes ordinary lives from above without…
Puzzle Pieces: Cowboy Graves, by Roberto Bolaño, reviewed
This might seem an odd confession, but the work of Roberto Bolaño gives me very good bad dreams. When I…
A study in vulnerability: The Coming Bad Days, by Sarah Bernstein, reviewed
When the unnamed narrator of Sarah Bernstein’s The Coming Bad Days leaves the man with whom she has been living…
Dark days for Britain: London, Burning, by Anthony Quinn, reviewed
Not long ago, a group of psychologists analysing data about national happiness discovered that the British were at their unhappiest…
Ghosts of the past: The Field, by Robert Seethaler, reviewed
Give dead bones a voice and they speak volumes: George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo was clamorous with the departed…
A celebration of friendship: Common Ground, by Naomi Ishiguro, reviewed
Naomi Ishiguro began writing Common Groundin the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. The title refers to both Goshawk Common in…
Problem parents: My Phantoms, by Gwendoline Riley, reviewed
Gwendoline Riley’s unsentimental fiction hovers on the edge of comedy and bleakness, and has drawn comparisons from Jean Rhys to…
The dictator of the dorm: Our Lady of the Nile, by Scholastique Mukasonga, reviewed
In the cloud-capped highlands of Rwanda, even the rain-makers sound like crashing snobs. When two teenage pupils from Our Lady…
Man about the house: Kitchenly 434, by Alan Warner, reviewed
I have enjoyed many of Alan Warner’s previous novels, so it gives me no pleasure to report that his new…
Mommy issues: Milk Fed, by Melissa Broder, reviewed
This is a novel about ‘mommy issues’. Rachel is a Reform Jew, ‘more Chanel bag Jew than Torah Jew’, and…
Escape from reality: How to Survive Everything, by Ewan Morrison, reviewed
Ewan Morrison is an intellectually nimble writer with a penchant for provocation. His work has included the novels, Distance, Ménage…
Slanging match: rein GOLD, by Elfriede Jelinek, reviewed
I’ve tried hard to think of someone I dislike enough to recommend this novel to, but have failed. Elfriede Jelinek…
Celebrating Jesus’s female followers: Names of the Women, by Jeet Thayil, reviewed
The gnostic Gospel of Mary has long been the subject of controversy, even as to which of the several Marys…
Bright and beautiful: Double Blind, by Edward St Aubyn, reviewed
Edward St Aubyn’s ‘Patrick Melrose’ novels were loosely autobiographical renderings of the author’s harrowing, rarefied, drug-sozzled existence. Despite their subject…
Two for the road: We Are Not in the World, by Conor O’Callaghan, reviewed
A father and his estranged 20-year-old daughter set off across France, sharing the driver’s cabin of a long-haul truck. This…
Women of the streets: Hot Stew, by Fiona Mozley, reviewed
For a novel set partly in a Soho brothel, Hot Stew is an oddly bloodless affair. Tawdry characters drift in…
The robot as carer: Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, reviewed
The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is…
Savage aperçus: Fake Accounts, by Lauren Oyler, reviewed
Lauren Oyler is viral and vicious. A critic with a reputation for pulling no punches, she is known for delivering…
Algeria’s War of Independence still leaves festering wounds, two new novels reveal
In France, even the car horns yelled about Algeria. A five-beat klaxon blast — three short, two long — signalled…
