Fiction
Dangerous secrets: Verdigris, by Michele Mari, reviewed
A lonely teenager on holiday in Italy befriends his grandparents’ elderly gardener and slowly coaxes out his painful memories of betrayals and reprisals during the war
Ménage à trois: Day, by Michael Cunningham, reviewed
When Dan, his wife Isabel and her brother Robbie decide to spend lockdown together, claustrophobic domesticity develops into a painful love triangle
She’s leaving home: Breakdown, by Cathy Sweeney, reviewed
One ordinary November day in Dublin, without forethought or planning, a woman walks out on her husband and two teenage children and never comes back
Septuagenarians behaving badly: Stockholm, by Noa Yedlin, reviewed
Four elderly people conspire, for different reasons, to keep the death of their friend a secret until he’s safely awarded the expected Nobel Prize for Economics
Dark days in Wales: Of Talons and Teeth, by Niall Griffiths, reviewed
At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution a mountain is being hollowed out for mining, and everyone is covered in mud or worse in this memorable and highly original novel
The last battle: The Future, by Naomi Alderman, reviewed
Sinister preparations for the apocalypse by a few Silicon Valley billionaires must be thwarted in this part-thriller, part-Big Tech critique, part-meditation on doomsday
A multicultural microcosm: Brooklyn Crime Novel, by Jonathan Lethem, reviewed
Lethem returns to the borough with a tale of violence, neglect and demographic change over the decades, tinged with nostalgia but far from sentimental
Heart of Darkness revisited: The Dimensions of a Cave, by Greg Jackson, reviewed
Conrad’s classic is updated in this sinister tale of the US government’s involvement in a morally suspect virtual reality programme
Why did Jon Fosse win the Nobel Prize for literature? It’s baffling.
If Jon Fosse’s novels are experimental, they are experiments in exhausting banality, says Philip Hensher
Books of the year I: a choice of reading in 2023
Recommendations from Andrew Motion, Jonathan Sumption, A.N. Wilson, Andrea Wulf, Peter Frankopan, Clare Mulley and many others. To be continued next week
In search of utopia: Chevengur, by Andrey Platonov, reviewed
After crossing the vast steppe, Sasha Dvanov reaches an isolated town where the communist ideal appears to have been achieved. But at what cost?
Escape into the wild: Run to the Western Shore, by Tim Pears, reviewed
A chieftain’s daughter flees an arranged marriage with the Roman governor of Britain, enlisting the help of slave and risking both their lives
The hell of the antebellum South: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward, reviewed
Teenage Annis and her enslaved mother endure beatings and rape as they are marched in chains to New Orleans to be sold to the latest brutal plantation owner
Satirical pulp: The Possessed, by Witold Gombrowicz, reviewed
The 1939 Gothic pastiche which the author was at pains to distance himself from is now considered a delightfully devious work of Polish modernism
Anonymous caller: This Plague of Souls, by Mike McCormack, reviewed
A man returns to his remote rural home after an absence – to be greeted not by his family but a sinister stranger on the telephone
A satire on the American art world: One Woman Show, by Christine Coulson, reviewed
Rich, pretty Kitty has been admired since childhood – but will the Park Avenue princess spend her entire life as a collectable object for connoisseurs?
Wallowing in misery: Tremor, by Teju Cole, reviewed
An introspective art lecturer immerses himself in the history of slavery – and fears he has grown addicted to screen depictions of extreme brutality
Ravenous rats
Surprisingly for a novel riffing on Orwell’s dystopia, Julia is portrayed as a cheerful young woman uninterested in politics and believing in nothing at all
Everyday life in the Eternal City: Roman Stories, by Jhumpa Lahiri, reviewed
Each story circles around events both big and small, such as lunch at a simple trattoria, a birthday party, a summer holiday or the funeral of a friend
Murder by the Mississippi
When the mutilated corpse of a Ku Klux Klan member is discovered, the stability of an entire city is threatened in this tale of racial tension set beside the Mississippi
Remember, remember
The world that blossoms in this haunting novel about the importance of memory is in the aesthetic vein known as ‘mono no aware’, or ‘the pathos of things’
Stark realities
Lawyers, teachers, architects and engineers all enjoy sex behind the scenes at a Houston gay bar in a novel focusing on relationships among black urban men
Rising star
The second volume of Knausgaard’s trilogy serves as a prequel to the first, tracing the origins of Norway’s ominous new celestial body
The changing face of Ireland
A dead poet’s dangerous aura continues to haunt his daughter and 23-year old granddaughter in this story of an unhappy family set in rapidly changing Ireland
Public lies and secret truths
Smith’s sweeping historical novel spans slavery in Jamaica in the 1770s and the marathon trials of the Tichborne Claimant in London a century later
