Fiction

Almost English, by Charlotte Mendelson - review

7 September 2013 9:00 am

Novels about growing up have two great themes: loss of innocence and the forging of identity. With this sparky, sharp-eyed…

419 by Will Ferguson - review

7 September 2013 9:00 am

The term ‘419’ is drawn from the article in the Nigerian penal code that addresses fraud. However, it has transcended…

Lion Heart by Justin Cartwright - review

31 August 2013 9:00 am

Justin Cartwright is famously a fan of John Updike — and here he seems to owe a definite debt to…

The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer - review

31 August 2013 9:00 am

Thick, sentimental and with a narrative bestriding four decades, Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings feels above all like a Victorian novel,…

Canal boat

Chaplin & Company, by Mave Fellowes - review

31 August 2013 9:00 am

The unlikely heroine of Mave Fellowes’s Chaplin & Company (Cape, £16.99) is a highly-strung, posh-speaking, buttoned-up 18-year-old with the unhelpful…

This Town, by Mark Leibovich - review

24 August 2013 9:00 am

Many books have been written about the corruption, venality and incestuousness that characterise Washington DC, but none has been as…

Red or Dead by David Peace - review

24 August 2013 9:00 am

The last time David Peace wrote a novel about football he got his publishers sued for libel, which may help…

The Son, by Philipp Meyer - review

3 August 2013 9:00 am

Colonel Eli McCullough, formerly known as Tiehteti, is a living legend. The first male child born in the Republic of…

Shire, by Ali Smith - review

3 August 2013 9:00 am

Pastoral elegy is not what you expect to find in a collection of short stories, but then Ali Smith is…

Wreaking, by James Scudamore - review

27 July 2013 9:00 am

An abandoned lunatic asylum, a nasty pornographer in a wheelchair, a bizarre glass-ceilinged viewing dome beneath a scummy lake, a…

The Breath of Night, by Michael Arditti

27 July 2013 9:00 am

There is always meat in Michael Arditti’s novels. He is a writer who presents moral problems via fiction but is…

Jane Gardam on Barbara Comyns - essay

6 July 2013 9:00 am

The Vet’s Daughter is Barbara Comyns’s fourth and most startling novel. Written in 1959 when she was 50 it is…