Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

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'''11 SEPTEMBER'''
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'''26 FEBRUARY'''
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|author=Olga Tokarczuk
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|author=Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)
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|title=House of Day, House of Night
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|title=The Disappearing Act
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|rating=5
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|rating=4
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|genre=Literary Fiction
 
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|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
 
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The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.
 
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|isbn=1804271918
 
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}}
 
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'''9 OCTOBER'''
 
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{{Frontpage
 
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|author=Claire-Louise Bennett
 
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|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
 
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|rating=4.5
 
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|genre=Literary Fiction
 
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|summary=Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.
 
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|isbn=1804271934
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
 
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|author=Thea Lenarduzzi
 
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|title=The Tower
 
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|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
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|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.
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|isbn=1804272329
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In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy.
 
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|isbn=1804271799
 
 
}}
 
}}
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'''23 OCTOBER'''
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'''9 APRIL'''
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
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|author=Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator)
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|author=Polly Barton
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|title=Vaim
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|title=What Am I, A Deer?
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.
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|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?
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|isbn=1804271829
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|isbn=1804272175
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}}
 
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'''29 JANUARY'''
 
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{{Frontpage
 
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|author=Makenna Goodman
 
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|title=Helen of Nowhere
 
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|rating=4.5
 
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|genre=Literary Fiction
 
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|summary=It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.
 
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|isbn=1804272205
 
 
}}
 
}}

Latest revision as of 10:15, 8 February 2026

26 FEBRUARY

1804272329.jpg

Review of

The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself. Full Review

9 APRIL

1804272175.jpg

Review of

What Am I, A Deer? by Polly Barton

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved? Full Review

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