This is a highly readable, commercial bookclub novel set in 1960s London, told in the third person, and centred on the constraints placed on women seeking purpose, autonomy and creative fulfilment. It combines a feel-good historical tone with a bookish premise and the contemporary appetite for spicy fiction. Mitzy Barlow is an average housewife, married […]
The new novel by Sally Rooney is set in Dublin after the COVID-19 pandemic. Peter Koubek, 32, is a commanding, eloquent, and highly competitive barrister. As the eldest son, he insists on giving the eulogy for his father, who has died of cancer as the story begins. Peter is very successful but troubled by his […]
This is set in the early 80s, and 15-year-old Mungo, raised by siblings and partially raised by an alcoholic mum in a very Protestant family, is lovable and handsome, but a flystrip for misfortune. Described as not very bright, with facial tics, he knows there’s a distance between what people say and mean, but doesn’t […]
The narrator’s name is Alan in the present and Briar in the past, which occurred five years earlier. The narrator recounts the moment their mother left them with her friend Leif, as she had to replace her sister in a factory to prevent her sister from losing the job, and thus couldn’t care for the children. When their mother’s house is condemned, Leif takes them to an empty house, leaves them with a week’s worth of tinned food, takes their passports and money, and is never seen again.
The novel is comprised of three sections in three time periods. The first is 635 AD. The narrator is EDIVA, a teenaged girl who works as a cook for a travelling group of monks and believers who are carrying the remains of Saint Cuthbert around the North of England as they attempt to evade the […]
Sophia really needs to kill her husband. She’s been back and forth, contemplated killing herself, but has decided, no – her husband must die. There is no other way. No one would let her leave him – after all, Chris didn’t hit her. It was the small things – how he’d get up in the early morning and remind her she hadn’t emptied the […]
The novel unfolds the life of Roland Baines, beginning when he is ten years old. His father, Captain Robert Baines, a working-class Scot with wartime injuries, is stationed in Libya during the Suez Canal crisis, where Roland and his mother, Rosalind, join him. Robert is an outgoing but underconfident man with a violent streak and […]
In this moving and revelatory collection, Deborah Levy traces the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her life and work as a writer. From Marguerite Duras to FrancescaWoodman,Ann Quin, and J.G. Ballard — among other figures one feels and relishes the richness of their work, and in turn, the richness of her own. Each […]
In this modern retelling of The Great Gatsby, Nic Carraway, a young woman from a wealthy background, embarks on an adventure in New York to gain life experience for her writing. Initially planning to make a living from copywriting and blogging, Nic’s journey takes unexpected turns as she becomes entangled in the lives of her […]
Maali Alemeida wakes up to find himself in a ghoulish tax office that he later realises is in fact the afterlife. He doesn’t know how he died; he’s a war photographer, gambler and closeted gay man at a time when Columbo is deeply divided and heaving with death squads and hired goons to make people disappear. Maaali […]