There is something almost unbearable in the experience of reading Annaleese Jochems’s debut novel, yet at the same time Baby is utterly arresting, oozing with sex and tension in a sickly-sweet package. Nothing embodies this concept more than Jochems’s protagonist, Cynthia. At first, she appears to be a sheltered, childishly naive young woman. Nevertheless, Cynthia Read More
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, joint winner of the Booker Prize 2019, was eagerly anticipated despite a high bar having already been set by its popular predecessor The Handmaid’s Tale, which encapsulated the potential consequences of suppressing women. The handmaid Offred, in her iconic white veil and red dress, became a symbol of feminism now Read More
Everything seems to be going wrong in Endland. Gods are being banished from Olympus and forced into dead-end jobs, a teenager vanishes after she uploads herself to the internet, and even the space-time continuum is in danger thanks to two alcoholic, quantum physics enthusiasts. It is a place of abuse and negligence, and all its Read More
A psychological thriller, entwining local myth and legend with modern day themes of love, loyalty and survival, The Unmaking of Ellie Rook leads on from Sandra Ireland’s previous works, Beneath the Skin and Bone Deep, to explore the dark side of family dynamics, skewed loyalties and emotional manipulation. Set in a fictional village based around Read More
Ducks, Newburyport is Lucy Ellmann’s eighth novel. This is a big book by any standard. In it I met a woman who made me look at the world her way: a working Mom, anxious about her four children, worried about Trump, the state of America, gun violence, and broken by the death of her mother, Read More
A 36-year-old queer working-class migrant arrives on the Isle of Wight and gets a job with best friend Shae in a trashy hotel with an absent boss and equally hard to pin down wages. Attempts to gain citizenship amidst the Brexit chaos are constantly thwarted, UKIP supporters lurk on street corners, and an alcoholic parent Read More
Amy Arnold’s novel Slip of a Fish is an exuberant exploration into whether language can be trusted to convey meaning; the protagonist, Ash, collects words as a way of coping with the confusion they cause her, whilst Arnold’s own inventive literary styling gradually exposes this complex inner mind to readers. Abbott says there’s no need, Read More
The Man Who Saw Everything is Deborah Levy’s seventh novel and her third, along with Swimming Home and Hot Milk to be nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Levy has also written plays and short stories, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The novel’s protagonist, Saul Adler, narrates two separate incidents Read More
Twenty four years of marriage and two children might make everyday conversations mundane, unless the object of these discussions is somebody else’s life. Following an unnamed couple, Main documents their lives through short dialogues, each beginning with ‘Good day?’. It quickly becomes apparent that both parties are hiding more than they would be willing to Read More
Mark Haddon is best known for his 2003 bestseller, The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-time. The Porpoise is his fifth novel for adults and it begins with a tragic accident; a light aircraft collides with a grain silo. Philippe, a wealthy businessman loses his pregnant wife in the crash, but his baby Read More