“On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place anyway.” Despite having fallen in and out of favour with its audience several times over, Arthurian myth is a cornerstone of the British literary canon; it’s been the subject matter for poems, plays, novels, paintings, operas, and films, and is thoroughly embedded Read More
Reading the runes of history as an intertext to the present, emphasising the circularity and tragedy of human lives or simply to give lie to the adage that the past is another country, has proved a rich novelistic seam. In the hands of a gifted writer such as Michael Ondaatje, archival texts, rendered with a Read More
Likely best known for The Dark Room, a debut which was both Man Booker listed and adapted for film, Rachel Seiffert may be a young writer, but already her achievements are remarkable. The Walk Home, her fourth novel, is set in Glasgow, a city the writer knows well. Specifically, the narrative is sited largely in Read More
I Am China is possibly Xiaolu Guo’s most ambitious work to date, combining the struggles of communication which she explored in A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers with the snapshot, cinematic style of her 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. Much like that latter work, this novel is composed of an intricate collage of artefacts, Read More
In her career to date, Cusk has been loved and loathed in equal measure, as much for her forthright opinions as the quality of her writing. Outline is her eleventh work and, read in the light of her controversial memoirs about motherhood and divorce, blurs the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. With a female novelist Read More
Sara Taylor’s debut novel draws the reader into a harsh and deeply connected world. In a group of small islands off the coast of Virginia, a small community of outsiders has struggled to survive against all odds, not only for their own sake but for the continuation of their family lines. Interlinking familial connections act Read More
As in her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O’Neill turns to the streets of Montreal in The Girl Who was Saturday Night, once again portraying a young female dreamer, here living in the beautifully gritty Boulevard Saint-Laurent. Nouschka Tremblay and her twin brother Nicolas are beautiful, promiscuous and totally unstable nineteen year olds Read More
A new novel from prolific American author Anne Tyler is always cause for excitement, although as she has said it will be her last, this is tinged with some sadness too. A Spool of Blue Thread does not disappoint. It tackles some of the enduring themes of modern American life: the family as both platform Read More
One of the novels on the longlist for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction 2015, Samantha Harvey’s entry Dear Thief offers a simple yet beautifully written exploration of memories and character. The plot of this book is rather basic and largely uneventful. It is written as a long letter from a woman to a long Read More