Fiction
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,…
Messy family matters: Bad Relations, by Cressida Connolly, reviewed
Cressida Connolly’s new novel begins with a couple of endings. It’s spring 1855, and on the battlefields of the Crimea…
Patterns in the grass: The Perfect Golden Circle, by Benjamin Myers, reviewed
The Perfect Golden Circle is ostensibly about male friendship. Two men, flotsam of the 1980s – Calvert, a Falklands veteran,…
A visit from Neanderthals: The Red Children, by Maggie Gee, reviewed
This is the kind of novel that will be discussed jubilantly in the book clubs of places like Lib Dem…
Murder, suicide and apocalypse: Here Goes Nothing, by Steve Toltz, reviewed
Angus Mooney is dead. Freshly murdered, he’s appalled to find himself in an Afterworld, having always rejected the possibility of…
Momentous decisions: Ruth & Pen, by Emilie Pine, reviewed
Emilie Pine writes about the big things and the little things: friendship, love, fertility, grief; waking, showering, catching the bus.…
Boy wonder: The Young Pretender, by Michael Arditti, reviewed
During his brief stage career Master Betty, or the Young Roscius, was no stranger to superlatives: genius, unparalleled, superior, Albion’s…
