Night Boat, Alan Spence’s sixth novel, is a fictional “autobiography” of the life and teachings of Hakuin, an 18th-century Japanese Zen Buddhist master. It opens with Hakuin as a young boy, listening to a sermon about the Eight Burning Hells: The hells, the monk explained, descended in order of severity, down and down, ever deeper Read More
Y is a debut novel by Canadian author Majorie Celona, who was previously a writing fellow at Colgate University and was writer in residence at Hawthornden Castle, near Edinburgh. She has published short stories in The Best American Non-required Reading, Harvard Review and Crazyhorse, amongst other collections. The novel is set on Vancouver Island, where Read More
How does one bear truthful witness to a real tragedy in an age that is all too aware that truth is not divorced from the telling of stories? Or write a fictional narrative that must remain true to itself as fiction but which does not falsify the real? Instead of seeking the “truth” of the Read More
On September 9th this year, Scotland commemorated the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Flodden. It is thought that King James IV declared war on England as a way of diverting his brother-in-law Henry VIII from military action in France. In honouring the “Auld Alliance”, James was responsible for the bloodiest battle in Scottish history. Read More
Longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, Richard House’s third novel, The Kills, is quite simply massive in every sense. Originally published as four separate e-books, The Kills brings together Sutler, The Massive, The Kill and The Hit into an ambitious volume of satisfying and gripping crime conspiracies which stretches to over 1000 pages in Read More
Tash Aw’s third novel, Five Star Billionaire, made the longlist for the 2013 Man Booker prize but wasn’t shortlisted. A case, then, of nearly but not quite. And that same epithet – nearly but not quite – turns out to be an apt way of summing up the novel as a whole. Set in contemporary Read More
Donal Ryan’s debut novel is an evocative portrayal of a small Irish town following the recent financial crash. The Spinning Heart presents the voices of a variety of individuals, each giving their perspective on life in the town at a particular moment and centring on the same act of murder. Throughout the novel, stories of Read More
Almost English is Charlotte Mendelson’s fourth novel. Just past forty, she has already accumulated a significant array of prizes, and is a regular contributor to The Guardian, the TLS and other equally respected journals. This is her most autobiographical novel to date. Having studied history, Mendelson became increasingly perplexed by the great gaps in her Read More
TransAtlantic amply demonstrates two of Colum McCann’s greatest strengths, namely his dexterity in occupying the voice of those observing, or in the orbit of, the famous (this is not new ground – his earlier novel Dancer is an enthralling novelisation of the life of Rudolf Nureyev) and his ability to depict the significant moments of Read More