It is a bright day in Glasgow on the day I go to interview Bernard MacLaverty. I mount the steps to his home in the West End of the city; one of the storm doors is open which feels akin to a welcome and several umbrellas are propped in the corner at the front door. 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
Elif Batuman has had remarkable success with her debut novel, The Idiot. The American author, academic and journalist has long been a non-fiction writer for The New Yorker, but her turn to fiction has already garnered her critical acclaim – she was a Pulitzer prize finalist and made it onto the shortlist for the Women’s Read More
One to hear One to remember And one to drink. The quietness of this little novel, The Noise of Time, is its weapon. Inside a jacket which shouts its title in blocky text and sings the author’s praises, a story is whispered covertly to the reader in snatches of non-linear narrative. This fictionalised biography of Read More
Gorsky is Vesna Goldsworthy’s first novel, although she has previously written a memoir and a poetry collection. She moved to London from Belgrade when she was 25 and she writes in English, which is her third language. Gorsky is a re-telling of The Great Gatsby, set in the twenty first century London. Throughout the novel, Read More
Sometimes there is irony in a book’s appearance and format. This ‘Little Red Book’ is not a collection of quotes by Chairman Mao, but a novel that echoes the great American jazz-age classic, The Great Gatsby. The (anti?) hero in this case is Roman Gorsky, a billionaire Russian oligarch who has settled in London, during Read More
Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel, The Gap of Time, is the first “cover version” in Hogarth Shakespeare’s series where writers including Margaret Atwood, Howard Jacobson and Anne Tyler re-tell Shakespeare’s plays to mark, in 2016, the 400th anniversary of his death. Winterson has The Winter’s Tale and, given its focus on abandonment, adoption and forgiveness, it’s Read More
Colin Barrett’s Young Skins is another debut which emerges from the abundance of talented up-and-coming novelists . This collection of short stories is set in an unspecified rural area of Ireland. It creates a world in which the young are embracing their youthfulness and living in the moment, seeking thrills, adventures and making mistakes as Read More