Fiction
Seize the moment: Undercurrent, by Barney Norris, reviewed
Barney Norris’s third novel opens with a wedding in April. The couple tying the knot don’t matter; it’s the occasion…
Propaganda from the Russian Front: The People Immortal, by Vasily Grossman, reviewed
On its posthumous publication in 1980, Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate was widely compared with War and Peace. For all…
Three men on a pilgrimage: Haven, by Emma Donoghue, reviewed
I used to envy Catholic novelists – Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, François Mauriac – as having that extra point of…
Fleeing paradise: eden, by Jim Crace, reviewed
Since announcing his retirement in 2013, Jim Crace has had more comebacks than Kanye West, something for which we should…
The invisible man: The Glass Pearls, by Emeric Pressburger, reviewed
Not all Germans were swayed by Hitler, but the majority were. Karl Braun, the fugitive Nazi doctor at the heart…
A post-racial world: The Last White Man, by Mohsin Hamid, reviewed
Mohsin Hamid’s fifth novel opens with a Kafkaesque twist: Anders, a white man, wakes to find that he has turned…
Close to extinction: Venomous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman, reviewed
Ned Beauman’s novels are like strange attractors for words with the letter ‘Z’. They zip, zing, fizz, dazzle and sizzle.…
Russian escapism: Telluria, by Vladimir Sorokin, reviewed
Vladimir Sorokin, old enough to have been banned in the Soviet Union, flourished in the post-Gorbachev spring, and he fled…
The price of courage: On Java Road, by Lawrence Osborne, reviewed
Lawrence Osborne’s novels are easy to admire. They tend to deal with characters trapped in morally questionable situations and their…
Fleshing out family history: Ancestry, by Simon Mawer, reviewed
DNA test kits may have been all the rage in recent years, but how much can they really tell us…
Dark days in Hollywood: Mercury Pictures Presents, by Anthony Marra, reviewed
Summer is a time for blockbusters and Anthony Marra has delivered the goods with Mercury Pictures Presents, a sweeping book…
Hysterical outbursts: Bewitched, by Jill Dawson, reviewed
‘Witch-hunt’ has become a handy metaphor for online persecutions, especially of women, though these days it is reputations that go…
Dangerous liaisons: Bad Eminence, by James Greer, reviewed
Vanessa Salomon is an internationally successful translator. Clever, beautiful, privileged – ‘born in a trilingual household: French, English and money’…
An immorality tale: Lapvona, by Ottessa Moshfegh, reviewed
Has there been a better novel this century than Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation? There might not…
Connecticut connections: A Little Hope, by Ethan Joella, reviewed
A Little Hope, Ethan Joella’s debut novel, is about the lives of a dozen or so ordinary people who live…
Women behaving badly: Ghost Lover, by Lisa Taddeo, reviewed
Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women established her as a narrator of female desire in all its complexity. Her study of three…
A twist on the American classic: The Sidekick, by Benjamin Markovits, reviewed
On the cover of The Sidekick, just below a broken basketball hoop, a quote from Jonathan Lethem suggests Benjamin Markovits…
Too close to home: Nonfiction, by Julie Myerson, reviewed
Julie Myerson has, somewhat confusingly, written a novel called Nonfiction. The confusion of course is the point, because this is…
A flawed utopia: The Men, by Sandra Newman, reviewed
The problem for feminism is men. Not, specifically, in the sense that men are the source of women’s problems, although…
A child’s eye view: Fight Night, by Miriam Toews, reviewed
Writing from a child’s point of view is a daredevil act that Miriam Toews raises the stakes on in her…
The real Norfolk: Stewkey Blues, by D.J. Taylor, reviewed
D.J. Taylor is a Norfolk native who, un-usually, has stayed put. These stories, written during the pandemic, are all set…
Life’s great dilemma: Either/Or, by Elif Batuman, reviewed
In this delightful sequel to her semi-autobiographical novel The Idiot (2017), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Elif…
Travels in time and space: Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel, reviewed
It’s a bold writer who confronts a major historical moment such as a pandemic before it’s over, but Emily St.…
Snafu at Slough House: Bad Actors, by Mick Herron, reviewed
Reviewers who make fancy claims for genre novels tend to sound like needy show-offs or hard-of-thinking dolts. So be it:…
A bitter sectarian divide: Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart, reviewed
Douglas Stuart has a rare gift. The Scottish writer, whose debut novel Shuggie Bain deservedly won the 2020 Booker Prize,…
