How far would you go to belong? So runs the tagline to Emily Fridlund’s Booker shortlisted debut novel History of Wolves. It is suggestive of the latest pseudo-psychological thriller, but this does the book a disservice, belying a much subtler, somber work. The book is about a quiet desperation: yes, to belong; but also to Read More
Twice short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Mohsin Hamid is an author who never disappoints. Born in Lahore, a place that has suffered bombings and terror attacks, Hamid has taken inspiration from one of his own personal crises and created his fourth short novel Exit West, where we join hopeful couple Saeed and Nadia on Read More
I feel the need to start this review by making a confession. Since its publication in 2016, Colson Whitehead’s latest novel, The Underground Railroad, has been crowned with some of the most prestigious literary awards: National Book Award for Fiction 2016, The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017, even, oddly enough, the Arthur C. Clarke Award Read More
Madeleine Thien is not unused to being shortlisted for prizes, or winning them. Her previous work Dogs at the Perimeter was shortlisted for Berlin’s 2014 International Literature Award and won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Internationaler Literaturpreis. She, as with the narrator of Do Not Say We Have Nothing Marie Jiang, is the daughter of Read More
Virginia Reeves (Scribner, 2016) hbk. 14.99 A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Virginia Reeves has produced Work Like Any Other as her debut novel, a remarkable achievement given its impressive authenticity and potency. Apparently, after seven years of life in the wide-openness of the lone-star state, she has Read More
Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton, 2016); pbk, £12.99 In an interview given at the time of her previous Man Booker nomination in 2012, Deborah Levy is recorded as saying, “I want to walk my female characters into the centre of my work. They don’t have to be likable but they have to be compelling and complicated.” Well, Read More
Ian McGuire (Scribner, 2016); Hbk, £14.99 Ian McGuire was born near Hull and studied in Manchester and Virginia, USA. The North Water is McGuire’s second novel; his first, Incredible Bodies, follows the career of a University Lecturer. He is currently Co-Director of Manchester University’s Centre for New Writing. It might have been useful for McGuire Read More
J.M. Coetzee (Harville Secker, 2016); hbk, £17.99 Coetzee is canonical, curricular – you are unlikely to reach the end of an English degree without having read his Booker and Nobel prize winning novel Disgrace. Coetzee’s mature novels are dazzling, harrowing and beautifully written, in taut, elegant prose that never turns away from the sorrowful, traumatic Read More
Paul Beatty (Oneworld, 2016); pbk, £12.99 Paul Beatty’s latest work, Man-Booker Prize 2016 shortlister, The Sellout, is a novel about town planning. Not, perhaps, the stuff of what the New York Times has called “the most badass” American novel in years but, as Beatty’s vivid depictions of L.A. and Washington show, appearances can be deceiving. Read More
A.L. Kennedy (Jonathan Cape, 2016); hbk. £17.99 Dundee-born A.L. Kennedy needs no introduction, being extensively published in fiction, no slouch in non-fiction, and a respected commentator in various media. She sidelines as an acerbic stand-up comedian; all these abilities and honed forms of observation feed Serious Sweet. At the time of reviewing, this book has Read More