“This is the story of what happens when Issy Bradley dies.” Printed large on the inside of the dust jacket, this is the sentence we read before we reach the first page of Carys Bray’s A Song for Issy Bradley. This is the story of a Mormon family’s struggle to deal with the death of Read More
“Do not judge a book by its cover” would be a highly useful warning for the potential reader, who might be put off by the extreme vagueness of the title. Any concern that the content of the novel might be some kind of abstract, pseudo-existential pretentiousness is absolutely ungrounded. On the contrary, the eponymous Book Read More
Richard Flanagan’s novel is written in tribute to his father who survived the horrors of working on the Thailand to Burma railway. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is largely written through the perspective of an Australian surgeon called Dorrigo Evans; it comprises three main arenas, each with its own distinct emotional and physical Read More
Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake’s inclusion in the Booker longlist should come as no surprise, given Hilary Mantel’s successes with English historical fiction and recent popular interest in the Anglo-Saxon period. JRR Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf was published earlier this summer. Yet, The Wake is neither a translation of Old English nor a conventional historical novel. Read More
“We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling.” Sequestered in an attic room in her ramshackle family home in County Clare, Ireland, separated from the outside world by a debilitating medical condition, ‘plain Ruth Swain’ has only the constant rain and a Read More
Ali Smith’s sixth novel, How to Be Both is, to put it simply, extraordinary. It is written in two parts – two Part Ones, that is – which overlap and intertwine. One part brings to life Francescho Del Cossa, the real-life Italian Renaissance artist known for the frescoes of Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, Italy. The Read More
“They plait together too tightly for Peter’s ear to make out everything that happens inside the five-way weave. The sound surrounds him […] a small but crucial part of everywhere” In true epic style, and with breathtaking ambition, Orfeo, opens in media res, the death of avant- garde composer Peter Els’ dog alerting neighbours to Read More
What is a novel for? What can the novel do, if it indeed “does” anything at all? George Eliot once wrote that great art surprised “even the trivial and the selfish” into consciousness of others, thereby enhancing our human capacity for empathy and morality. Georg Lukacs, the Marxist literary theorist, thought the novel’s “social totality” Read More
Karen Joy Fowler’s seventh novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, is a gripping read which breaks the mould of the traditional family narrative. It is a story like no other about sibling love and rivalry, raising fascinating questions about what makes us human, about animal rights, and the nature-nurture balance. The novel centres on Read More