Simple stories are sometimes the most appealing ones. Love, trying to fit in or to find oneself are examples of themes present not only in Akhil Sharma’s short story collection, but also in the everyday lives of most people. However, these topics are also painfully commonplace in art and culture, and thus often feel cliched Read More
The suburbs of an unknown town seem to be as ordinary as it gets. The only thing making these places unique is that in every house there is a room reserved for the president. Nobody can use it and it has to be maintained to the highest standard at all times, for the visits are Read More
Bone Deep is a taut, psychological thriller which cleverly threads themes of love, betrayal and revenge through parallel stories. The title, like that of Sandra Ireland’s debut novel, Beneath the Skin, conveys her fascination with the inner world: what compels people to act, and how their actions subsequently affect their psyche. Mac, a retired academic, suffering Read More
The story of George Washington Black is told in the first person by Esi Edugyan’s protagonist of the same name in her Man Booker shortlisted novel. Starting as an eleven-year-old field slave in Faith Plantation in Barbados in 1830, the conditions of his slave life in the harsh setting of the sugar plantation is perhaps Read More
cos cheum nach gabh tilleadh For some, Robin Robertson’s book-length narrative poem is “unclassifiable”. Shortlisted for awards invariably dominated by prose, it is epic in both scale and ambition. Resisting the strict fit of epic form, its protagonist (the aptly-named Walker) is overly human for deification; its netherworld trips, earthly hells. Remembered paradises are also Read More
The Overstory is about trees. There’s more to it, but trees (‘The most wondrous products of four billion years of life’) are at its core. The novel casts no illusions about its focus or its intent, leading the reader into a sublime wander through forests and parks, building rage at the injustice meted out to Read More
A novel’s first line is crucial. George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) begins, “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) begins, “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of Read More
“I was woken at two a.m. and shackled and counted, Romy Leslie Hall, inmate W314159, and lined up with the others for an all-night ride up the valley.” This is how we first meet our protagonist in Rachel Kushner’s third novel ‒ a 29 year old mother serving two life sentences for murdering her stalker. Immediately, two Read More
‘I think often of all the dead who live in the water.’ Everything Under is a disturbing examination of the way our fears and secrets haunt us. Gretel Whiting recalls her search for her flighty mother, Sarah, and the shadows it unearths. She remembers her childhood on the canals with the woman who abandoned her Read More
Ten years ago, a brilliant and shrewd mind emerged out of the social and political schisms of India. As if firing arrows, Aravind Adiga scribed his fictional arriviste hero’s every thought and deed in his 2008 Man Booker Prize-winning debut novel, The White Tiger, with sufficient force and accuracy that its target – India – Read More