Fiction
Almost English, by Charlotte Mendelson - review
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
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
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
Thick, sentimental and with a narrative bestriding four decades, Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings feels above all like a Victorian novel,…
Chaplin & Company, by Mave Fellowes - review
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
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
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
Colonel Eli McCullough, formerly known as Tiehteti, is a living legend. The first male child born in the Republic of…
Wreaking, by James Scudamore - review
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
There is always meat in Michael Arditti’s novels. He is a writer who presents moral problems via fiction but is…