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
Harry D’armour, private eye to the supernatural has been chosen as a witness. A mad Cenobite, a Priest of Hell known as Pinhead wants Harry to write his Gospel, to chronicle the Cenobite’s challenge for the throne of Hell. Pinhead will not take no for an answer and convinces Harry the only way he knows 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
Jacques Strauss’ The Curator is, first and foremost, disturbing and unsettling. It makes you feel repulsed and disgusted, yet eager to read on. Set in Strauss’ native South Africa, flitting between the events of 1976 and 1996, its plot simultaneously shows the immediate aftermath of the murder of a family and how the effects of Read More
Sara Maitland recently wrote in The Guardian (5th March 2015): “I believe that most of us have a deep yearning for the magical, for a secret ‘otherness’, for an environment flowing with abundance – not just with nature but with super-nature too”. To that end, she urged the trustees of Wayford Woods, near Crewkerne, not Read More
Freight Books presents novelist and short story writer Vicki Jarrett’s debut short story collection The Way Out. This short and bittersweet cluster of tales is an offering which undoubtedly reveals the author as a talent to watch, with both capacity and potential that will keep her audience engaged. The collection has an interesting cohesion despite Read More