Newest Literary Fiction Reviews
The Sorrow of Angels by Jon Kalman Stefansson
Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at the café for three weeks now, so we are following on very closely from Heaven and Hell. After the tragedy and soul-searching of that first book, he seems settled in the ridiculous family that has formed around him there, finding employment, enjoying the literature, yet being very intrigued by the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as the boy might have latched on to stability for once, and replaced the family and best friend he had lost. But everything is restless in this environment, and once again he might just be tempted to go on a journey, with another male companion, despite the harshness of the surrounds. Full review...
Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson
Iceland, a hundred years ago. From a place that is the very definition of rural and remote, a small fishing boat leaves for four hours' hard row to a profitable bank. It carries six men on the way out, and five on the way back. The deceased is the best friend – or perhaps only friend – of the main character, who is still young enough to merely be known as boy. When he returns to port he enters an almost Camus-like semi-existence, wondering just how much life is an answer, and for what, after the tragedy he has witnessed. Full review...
The Son by Philipp Meyer
Philipp Meyer's second novel, The Son, is an epic, multi-generational saga of Texas life. Tracing the McCullough family from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day, Meyer joins those writing today's masterpieces of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, David Vann, Richard Ford and especially Cormac McCarthy. Like McCarthy's Blood Meridian, The Son is a gory Western that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy to draw broader conclusions about the universality of violence in a nihilistic world. Full review...
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
'My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn't yet missed a day of letting me down.'
This is how we meet Bobby - Bobby Mahon, as we'll learn - and he's brutally honest about his feelings for his father, who has deliberately drunk away the farm he inherited from his father. But Frank Mahon isn't Bobby's only, or even main, problem. He's been earning big money as Pokey Burke's foreman but the financial crash has hit and Pokey has done a runner. An investment in a fake island off Dubai finished him and now he's disappeared. On the estate of forty houses he was building, just two are occupied and the rutted roads are nothing more than a racetrack for the joyriders. Full review...
The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons
On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out to buy a fridge for the princely sum of twenty-one guineas. She'd saved hard for it - and her parents had given her the final few pounds - but then Juliet did something impulsive. Instead of buying a fridge she commissioned a portrait of herself and so began her involvement in the post-war art scene. Juliet wasn't - by any stretch of the imagination - an artist, but she had a startling ability to spot a good picture. It was simply something which she knew, much as she had known for certain that her husband had left for good on the day he didn't return home as expected. Full review...
Indiscretion by Charles Dubow
Charles Dubow's debut novel promises to be a modern day Great Gatsby. It too is set amongst the rich and famous outside New York, it too is narrated by a character seemingly on the outside, Maddy's childhood friend Walter. Full review...
Unfaithfully Yours by Nigel Williams
When Nigel Williams first really burst on to the best-seller list, a couple of decades ago, it was with a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mother. But then he produced two more in the same series, and we soon decided he was a bit of a one-trick pony, and could never be sure how much of the trilogy we'd read, or be too eager to read more. Flash forward, and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting this time is Putney. Wimbledon Common is now Putney Heath, and so on. But here he provides an epistolatory novel – and if there's one kind of novel to make me prick up my ears it is one built from letters. It is the blatant two-and-fro timing of the narrative, and the succinctness that characters are formed with, that strike me as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many more. Full review...
Russian Stories by Francesc Seres
This brilliant and varied collection of short stories is the product of a current academic interest in cross-cultural translation. Francisco Guillen Serés is a Catalan professor of Art History from Aragon. A Russophile, he has travelled widely to collect stories from those writing during the past hundred years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan and then into English. These unusual and delightful stories, some twenty one of them written by five writers read fluently and engagingly. They form an informative tapestry of Soviet and post-Soviet life, moving back in time with the older, earlier writers like Bergchenko, who died in the siege of Stalingrad, at the end. Ranging over mythic and symbolic tales to realistic portrayals of personal relationships; love trysts in St Petersburg, ferocious bears in the deep heart of the Taiga to the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit in space. All aspects are impressively recounted. Full review...
The Parrots by Filippo Bologna
When confronted with the topic of parrots, most people would describe them as tamed tropical birds that are taught to repeat simple phrases, having no particular intelligence to engender an originality of their own. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written a book about birds, but about writers - in fact, three writers. Just as the Neo-Pagans have a liking of the Triple Goddesses of The Maiden, The Mother and The Crone, our three writers are similarly split into The Beginner, The Writer, and The Master. All three of these novelists are battling it out for The Prize, a prestigious award that would revitalise the career of The Master, legitimize the efforts of The Beginner and assure The Writer a place in the annals of history. The setting of Rome is utilised to provide both a stunning backdrop and one that is sympathetic to the mood of our characters. The stories of our three protagonists are interwoven in a delightfully clear fashion; Bologna's prose is delicate and descriptive, but not at the sacrifice of pacing. The stage is set; the characters have learned their lines. There is just one problem... out of the three writers, none of them deserves to win The Prize. Full review...
In The Dutch Mountains by Cees Nooteboom
Often, when asked if what I’m reading is a good book I hesitate before answering, trying to decide what the asker really means. Do they mean is it exciting? Funny? Full of interesting characters? Recently, someone asked me that and when I hesitated they gave me this as a clarifier: “Are you better off for having read it?”. In this instance, yes. I think I am. However, despite coming away from this book with a strong positive feeling about it, it’s also left me a little befuddled. Full review...
Every Promise by Andrea Bajani
Italian writer, Andrea Bajani's Every Promise is narrated by Pietro. His partner, Sara, has left him due to their inability to have a baby, but soon she finds herself pregnant after a one night stand and reliant on Pietro's mother for advice. Meanwhile Pietro meets Olmo, an elderly man who lives in their old family apartment, who reminds Pietro of his own Grandfather, Mario, who, like Olmo, served in Mussolini's ill-fated Russian campaign. Olmo persuades Pietro to go to Russia to visit the scenes of some of the photographs he has to try to come to terms with the past. It's a story about the past, the present and the future and the struggle for one man to make sense of this. It's packed with surpassingly detailed imagery and Bajani is at times breathtakingly unflinching in exposing the vulnerability of his narrator. However, it is very much a slow burn of a book and it's not always an easy book to read. Full review...
In Between Days by Andrew Porter
After Chloe Harding is forced to leave her East Coast college, for reasons she refuses to explain to her recently divorced parents or older brother Richard, her family's lives start to unravel. Will the rest of them ever find out what caused her fall from grace, and can they solve their own problems? Full review...
Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda
Red Hook, Brooklyn and it is blisteringly hot. Two fifteen year old girls decide the best and most exciting way to cool off is to take a small inflatable raft on to the river. The next morning one of the girls is found unconscious and washed ashore with no memory of what happened in the river and the other girl is nowhere to be found. This becomes a big local story and the survivor, saviour and community have to deal with the loss in their different ways. Full review...
Nowhere Ending Sky by Marlen Haushofer
Little Meta is growing up in a childhood paradise with two parents who love her and a younger brother to tease and train to do all the things that Meta wants him to. However the world outside Meta's paradise will soon change beyond all recognition as the Austria and Germany of the 1920s makes way for the Austria and Germany of the 1930s. Full review...
Eleven Days by Lea Carpenter
Sara raised Jason alone; even when she was with his father it felt as if she was a lone parent. Jason's father always seemed to be away doing something indefinable abroad; then he disappeared leaving her completely. Two years later Jason's father was dead. However Jason is a lad to be proud of, never giving Sara a moment's trouble and now a member of the elite US Navy SEALS. Now he's missing in action… Now she has to hang on and hope. Full review...
The Trader of Saigon by Lucy Cruickshanks
In the Saigon of the 1980s the Vietnam War is over but the traces remain. Alexander has deserted from the US army and makes a comfortable living selling girls to local business men. Phuc used to be a business man, complete with mansion and the means to keep his wife and three children in affluence. Now his family live in a shanty hut, afraid of the ruling government that spies through the eyes of children. At last he finds a way out, his luck just needs to hold. Hanh also lives in poverty, desperately trying to help her sick mother with the pittance she earns from cleaning one of the city's many open latrines. Then one day she meets someone who offers so much more. His name is Alexander. Full review...
All Is Silence by Manuel Rivas
The small community of Noitía is a place where everyone knows each other and each other’s business, which considering most of the adults are involved in the one business, smuggling, is potentially dangerous knowledge. We follow a small group of three young friends growing up in the area as they play and learn and even experience a little of the black market dealings. They stumble across a stash of smuggled whisky and are caught by the charismatic king pin responsible for the trafficking, who teaches them that silence is the most important lesson to learn when growing up in Noitía. Full review...
From The Fatherland, With Love by Ryu Murakami
From The Fatherland, With Love is a 2005 Japanese novel set in the then-near future of 2011. Fatherland (as I will abbreviate it) explores the social and political ramifications of one speculative scenario: what if North Korea invaded Japan? Full review...
The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell
The Other Typist is set in 1920s New York City, with Prohibition at its height and Rose Baker, an orphaned young woman, working as a police typist. While she has no real friends, she's good at her job and seems to have the respect of the Sergeant, whom she admires and the Lieutenant Detective, whom she's less keen on. Then a perfect storm comes into their lives, in the shape of the enchanting Odalie, and nothing will be the same again. Full review...
What Lot's Wife Saw by Ioanna Bourazopoulou and Yannis Panas (Translator)
It's been over 20 years since The Overflow came, flooding half of Europe. Around the same time Violet Salt, a new multi-functional mineral, appeared, its production now governed globally by the mysterious, all-powerful Consortium. Meanwhile back in Europe The Colony, a haven for those escaping floods and indeed justice, is ruled by Governor Bera and six officials, the 'Purple Stars'. All seems to be well in a despotic, lawless way until the six wake up to the realisation that the Governor has died mysteriously in the night. The Consortium needs answers so choose the greatest crossword compiler of the age, Phileas Book, to investigate, whether he wants to or not. Full review...
Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston
- There are two women in an operating theatre and when one starts bleeding heavily - fatally - the other freezes, unable, despite all her training and undoubted skills, to do anything at all. Whatever the outcome it cannot pass unnoticed, unreported and surgeon Nancy Mullion is called to appear before a tribunal appointed by the General Medical Council. Over a period of weeks she's forced to confront the effect of being a doctor who has killed as well as cured. You're probably making assumptions now and nodding wisely. Don't - because you are almost certainly going to be wrong. This will not be the story which you are expecting and it was certainly not the story which Nancy's hospital wanted to hear.
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Set mainly in New York's art district in the late 1970s, Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers tells the story of a young girl, known only to the reader as Reno, after the city she comes from. She's a girl who loves motorbikes and photography, but struggles to find her place in the New York art scene. When she falls for the estranged son, Sandro, of the Italian motorbike manufacturer Valero, himself an artist in New York, Reno finds herself in situations she cannot control. Full review...
Sketcher by Roland Watson-Grant
Nine-year-old Skid Beaumont lives with his three brothers, father Alrick and mother Valerie in the swamps beyond the New Orleans city limits. Life is hard and home is a rundown shack with no running water but they're only there temporarily; a 'temporarily' that is rather long-term. Alrick moved them from their nice home in New Orleans because the land was cheap and soon the city would build out to envelop them. Years later they're still waiting for that to happen. Life isn’t exactly mundane though; there are rumours that when Skid's brother Frico draws left-handed, strange things seem to happen. Full review...
The Story of My Purity by Francesco Pacifico
In Francesco Pacifico's translated Italian novel 'The Story of My Purity', Piero Rosini is a 30 year old, ultraconservative Catholic working for a radical Catholic publishing house. His marriage is devoid of physical contact, and he yearns for his virginal sister-in-law. Largely to escape these longings, he heads for Paris, never the first choice of one seeking to preserve their purity, where he is further tempted by a slightly unlikely group of girls, and one in particular, which is further complicated for him by the fact that she is Jewish. Almost living a separate life in his head, he cannot escape either the intellectual or physical constraints of his old life in Rome. Full review...
The Valley of Unknowing by Philip Sington
In the mid-to-late eighties the German Democratic Republic looked like enduring. Bolstered by a system of Mitarbeiter (fellow workers is a much more amenable term than informers) the Stasi kept their populace in check. Western media was easy to censor in those days. Border controls were brutal. People were shot on a regular basis trying to cross the no-man's-land into West Berlin and along the other inner German borders. Full review...
The Walk and other stories by Robert Walser
The publication of this collection of around forty short stories affords the English speaking public a unique opportunity; that of reading Walser, possibly the leading modernist writer of Swiss German in the last century. He has received high praise in 'A Place in the Country', W G Sebald's recently published posthumous collection and he is well-known as being a significant influence on Franz Kafka. His work here dates from 1907 to 1929 and along with his poetry won him recognition with Berlin's avant garde. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observation; reflective melancholy with criticism of brash commercialism. The fine writing in this volume strives to achieve a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflection. It challenges the reader and provokes him to new insights. Full review...
The Watch by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya
Nizam pushes a barrow up to a fortified US army base in Afghanistan. What is she doing there? How will the soldiers react? What do they believe: their experience, their training, their gut reaction or a young girl amputee in the middle of the desert who may be the last thing they ever see? Full review...
How I Killed Margaret Thatcher by Anthony Cartwright
What motivates someone to become a killer?
When the reader first meets Sean Bull, he is nine years old, living a seemingly carefree and happy existence surrounded by his family and friends in a close-knit community in Dudley, West Midlands. He loves Star Wars and playing football with his school friends and adores his teenage uncle Johnny, who tells him stories and creates the most wonderful pieces of art. Full review...
