Newest Literary Fiction Reviews
From TheBookbag
Literary fiction
The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
Having launched my one-woman campaign against blurb writers who tell you so much, it's hardly worth reading the book, I suppose I was due a come-uppance. Chris Cleave and the good people at Sceptre have taken me at my word. Not only does the blurb for The Other Hand tell you virtually nothing at all – it enjoins you to keep the faith and allow other readers to discover the book 'blind' as you have done. Full review...
The Act of Love by Howard Jacobson
Many of us like to share our enthusiasms. If we love a piece of music, a place - or even a book - we tend to urge others to experience it. In the case of Felix Quinn, that impulse extends to his wife, Marisa. Not content with knowing that Marisa has affairs, Felix so adores his wife that he finds her a new lover, Marius, so that he can more fully share the experience.
Perverted? Why, of course. Felix is nothing if not self-aware. This whole book is an extended mix of confessional and self-justification as Felix dissects his uxorious abasement in obsessive, masochistic detail. Full review...
Her Three Wise Men by Stanley Middleton
In Her Three Wise Men, Alicia Smallwood writes her doctoral thesis, gets a lecturing job and finds love in a small village in the North Midlands. Stanley Middleton's latest novel follows her various trials and tribulations over the course of about a year. Full review...
Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb
Nick Framingham is utterly beguiled by his childhood friend and hero, Rob Castor, who disappears after having killed his ex-girlfriend and fellow novelist, Kate, in Chinatown, Manhattan. This has a catastrophic effect upon Nick from whose viewpoint the story is related in a fast paced narrative. Nick writes It was as if the violent subtraction of Rob from life had produced a wind of sorts, a strong cross draft that had blown away the fake stage set of my paternity, and in doing so, helped speed the ruin of my marriage, estranged me from my children, sent my father into hospital… He and his long-suffering wife, Lucy, have already resorted to therapy with an overweening New Age counsellor, Purefoy. This is a most intriguing novel that deals with the convoluted mid-life crisis of Nick as he further undermines his relationship with his wife in the pursuit of another blast from the past - his old flame and Rob's wayward sister, the radiant hippy, Belinda. Nostalgia for adolescence is one major theme of the book. Full review...
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
It was the beginning of June, the start of the long, golden summer of 1975 when northern light held that little radio station in the large palm of its hand.
This isn't quite the opening sentence of Late Nights on Air but it does make the first page. For those of us who remember that long, golden summer of '75 which was equally as long and golden on this side of the Atlantic and, in my case at least, just as full of late night radio, it encapsulates context perfectly. Time and place perfectly sketched in one sentence, with more effect that some more expansive authors can conjure in a chapter or two. Economy of expression is Hay's hallmark; even writing about the vast expanse of northern Canada she avoids rambling: every last word is necessary and of value. Full review...
The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
If any doubters remain amongst your cohorts as to whether a man can write convincingly from the perspective of a woman, urge them to read The Story of a Marriage for the final definitive absolute: yes.
We think we know the ones we love is the echo that haunts this tale which is, as it says, simply the story of one marriage. How it came to be, what it endured, how and why it ended… and what it left behind. Full review...
Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame
Janet Frame, who died in 2004, is acknowledged as one of the most distinguished writers to come out of New Zealand. She won just about every prize going, wrote an autobiography (An Angel at My Table) that is adjudged to be a classic of the genre and inspired a similarly appreciated film, was awarded a CBE and honorary membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters…
…and to my shame I'd never heard of her. Full review...
The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine
A young married mother is snatched while walking down her street, bundled into the back of a car, bound and gagged. As the vehicle tries to get through the London traffic, there is a dreadful accident. The woman and one of the men is killed, the other left comatose. But this is no real kidnap – instead the whole thing is a ruse invented as a sub/dom game by her lover for her birthday, now gone horribly wrong. Oh, and the boyfriend happens to be an up-and-coming Tory MP. Full review...
The Wolf by Joseph Smith
The press sheet tells me that The Wolf is a stunning combination of nature writing and imagination. And it is. And to be honest, I'm left wondering what else there is to say about it without spoiling it for you. Full review...
Dreams of Rivers and Seas by Tim Parks
John James is a research student based in London, working on ways to attack (or prevent) TB at the molecular level. This is the only way science can be done these days he insists. The sum of knowledge is too great for any one individual to understand. Teamwork and specialism is all.
He is in love, he thinks, maybe, with Elaine an aspiring actress. They are, obviously, penniless, reliant on the allowance from his parents.
Then his mother, Helen, phones from Delhi. Your father died this morning. And he finds himself on the first available flight, for a funeral to take place the day following his arrival. Full review...
The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
Ren is missing his left hand. Neither Ren nor any of the brothers at the orphanage know what happened. It had already gone when he was left at St Anthony's as a tiny baby. Father John says he'll never be adopted because of it. So when Benjamin Nab comes along and announces he is Ren's long-lost brother, Ren is sent along with him. Benjamin tells stories. He's a nineteenth century New England Del Boy. And he and his partner Tom introduce Ren to the art of the scam. From fake wonder cures to thieving, all the way up to body-snatching, light-fingered Ren gets closer to finding out what really happened to his hand. And as the truth closes in, he needs to decide... is he a good thief, or a bad one? Full review...
America, America by Ethan Canin
In the popular imagination, certain events stand for American politics in the 60s and 70s. Vietnam. JFK's assassination. Watergate. Maybe Chappaquiddick. In this fable of that era, the first three naturally play a part. The latter, strangely, does not. But it is the incident around which the novel revolves, if only by implication. Full review...
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
I have been a fan of Kurt Vonnegut since the early 1970s. I still have the old paperbacks – Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse 5. There was something about his style, and especially about the things he had to say, that was refreshing and new. But he began to go off the boil, or fell out of style, and I stopped reading his books around about the time I stopped buying Crosby, Stills and Nash LPs. For me, Breakfast of Champions was both the last decent book he wrote, and the first of the stream of below-par books that followed. I just checked my bookcase – Slapstick in 1976 was the last Vonnegut book I bought, and the ancient bookmark stuffed midway through shows I never managed to finish it. And I had problems trying to finish his 'new' collection, too. Full review...
An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy
There is a picture the house in the picture is afloat on a river the innocuous colour of darkening sepia. The river in the photograph is still far from the house, held back, temporarily by the works of man. But it did not stay that way, the indecisive river wandered in such a way as to come not to the very steps of the house, but beyond them, swamping all within… and not just in its waters. Full review...
The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker
Helmer Van Wonderen never had any intention of being a farmer. He was already into his university studies in Amsterdam when his twin bother, Henk, was killed in a car accident. Henk was engaged to Riet and she was driving when the car ended up in Lake IJsselmeer and the unconscious Henk drowned. Helmer's father told Riet that he never wanted to see her again and Helmer was instructed that his studies were at an end. He was going to be a farmer – like it or not. Full review...
Blue Horse Dreaming by Melanie Wallace
There is little in Blue Horse Dreaming that is precisely pinned down. Set sometime after the Civil War, at a frontier posting somewhere in the United States, a band of soldiers returns having rescued two white women from captivity with the native 'savages'. One couldn't be more pleased to be back in a 'civilised' place, the other - Abigail Bulwell - couldn't be more horrified. Full review...
Breath by Tim Winton
In a squeal of sirens and lights Bruce Pike arrives at the suburban home to find a middle-aged guy broken and huddled on the front steps. Inside the daughters are hunched and silent, separate.
Upstairs a mother is tending to her son…who is dead. Full review...
Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi
Dr Jamal Khan is a successful psychoanalyst but he is approaching a difficult age. His son Rafi will soon be a teenager and the will soon no longer be able to greet each other by touching fists and exchanging the traditional middle-class greeting, 'Yo bro – dog!' Already, the twelve-year-old hides his head when he sees his father. Meanwhile, the boy's mother Josephine, from whom Jamal separated eighteen months ago, has a new boyfriend. Full review...
Gross Margin by Laurent Quintreau
It's eleven o'clock and the President has called a meeting. There are eleven executives around the boardroom table and in the next two hours the President will harangue them about such matters as cost cutting, redundancy (as cheaply as possible) and restructuring. They must all look engrossed in what is being said but their thoughts are fleetingly elsewhere and it's their thoughts that make up this book. Told as stream-of consciousness and lacking punctuation it's a trip deep into the individuals' psyche. Full review...
Deus Ex Machina by Charles Matthew Sauer
Once upon a time an author starts to write a book. He is swamped in computer machine code at work, and so unable to speak to anyone, and inspired by things he has seen and found on holiday in Pompeii and elsewhere, and legends. Deciding at first against dialogue (as it will all be written by himself, the duo part of dialogue would be missing, and Echo only had Echo to talk back to him), he has some semblance of his audience but cannot see them. All he knows is the audience is looking forward to a puzzle – the craft of turning numbered pages full of printed lettering into a novel, just as he has decided he must. He can't see the ending, but makes a start. Full review...
The Reserve by Russell Banks
Russell Banks is a respected, prizewinning American author. I suspect he is better known in the States than in the UK. The Reserve is his eleventh novel, and several of his previous works have been made into successful films. He lives in upstate New York, the setting for this meticulously-told story of secrets, lies and the clash of classes and cultures. Full review...
The Butt by Will Self
There's definitely some satire in Will Self's latest novel, The Butt. A tourist carelessly flicks away his final cigarette, and then finds himself charged with attempted murder after it hits his neighbour's head. The satire's target, however, is less clear. Is Self (a man pilloried for taking cocaine on a politican's plane, remember) simply having a dig at the absurdity of the smoking bans that are sweeping across the Western world? Or is this a more sophisticated examination of compensation culture? Moral relativity between different cultures? Post-colonialism? Or, as seems likely, all of the above? Full review...
A Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernieres
In A Partisan's Daughter, the latest offering from Louis de Bernieres, we are presented with two narrators. The first, Christian (Chris for short), seems to be writing now (i.e. in the early 21st century) about his relationship at the end of the Winter of Discontent (i.e. 1978-79) with the eponymous partisan's daughter, Roza. I am not the sort of man who goes to prostitutes he begins, and then admits that people would disbelieve it. Full review...
Amenable Women by Mavis Cheek
Ten days ago I found myself in Trafalgar Square with an hour to kill. The Tudor Room at the National Portrait Gallery beckoned and I sat and looked at the Ditchley Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. It was thought to have been painted to commemorate an entertainment which Sir Henry Lee gave to celebrate the Queen's forgiveness of his relationship with his mistress, Anne Vavasour. In the quietness of the room I found it easy to think back through Elizabeth's turbulent life and then to her father, the vainglorious Henry VIII. Had I known that this book would be waiting for me when I returned home I might have looked more carefully at some of the other portraits and listened to their stories too. Full review...
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines combines fact and fiction to tell the parallel stories of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing – two of the greatest mathematicians of the modern age. Gödel was plagued by mental illness and ended his days as a recluse, whilst Turing is most famous for breaking the Enigma code during the Second World War. Burdened by being homosexual at a time when it was criminalized, he too became increasingly isolated. Full review...
Love Marriage by V V Ganeshananthan
Yalini is a second generation immigrant and first generation American. Her parents, Vani and Murali, escaped ethnic violence in Sri Lanka, and married in the United States. Yalini, in her early twenties, is plagued by different conflicts, but conflicts familiar to many children of immigrants. Should she respect and live by the cultural traditions of her ethnic background, or should she throw herself into the modern Western world in which she's living? Arranged marriages or love matches? Added to this tension is the aura of secrecy surrounding exactly how and why her parents came to be living in America at all. Full review...
Consequences by Penelope Lively
Penelope Lively has been writing for thirty years now, and she has produced around forty novels. It is safe to say that in that time she has learnt her craft to perfection.
Consequences is the story of three generations of women, beginning in the 1930s with Lorna, then focusing on Molly in the post-war years and finally rounding off the tale with up-to-date Ruth. But this is no 'family saga' novel. The book is about the way time changes perceptions, and about memory and loss. Full review...
Taking Pictures by Anne Enright
Perfectly entitled, Taking Pictures, Anne Enright's collection of short stories provides wonderfully written snapshots of modern lives. With a focus on female characters, the nineteen stories are spot-on when describing the complexity of modern relationships between women and their husbands, friends, children and siblings. Full review...
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
People of the Book charts the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, which is considered to be one of the most valuable books in the world, and which has survived to this day against all odds. It is likely that it originated in Barcelona in about 1350, and was smuggled from Spain during the Inquisition by the Spanish Jewish community. Full review...
The Good Mayor by Andrew Nicoll
Tibo Krovic is the good and honest mayor of Dot. Dot is a small town in a forgotten part of the Baltic states… just across the water from Dash… nestling on the banks of the Ampersand.
To begin with, these understudies for locations irritated me. Was the author too lazy to do the research and come up with a real setting; or was it a kind of pretension towards those highbrow Russian novels that always referred to the main characters as Dr A or Professor K? Full review...
Animal's People by Indra Sinha
A short note from the editor tells us that this story was recorded in Hindi on a series of tapes by a 19-year-old boy. The editor has merely translated the tapes, allowing the story to stand precisely as it was told. It tells us that a glossary has been provided. There is a web-address should we wish to find out more about Khaufpur.
The glossary and the web-address are real.
The story is only a kind of fiction. The kind that you will find is true if you seek in the right place for the characters.
The place you should seek is not Khaufpur. It is Bhopal. Full review...
Reconstruction by Mick Herron
Take an average primary school, in Oxford. The usual green surrounds, high and secure fences, spongy playground surface, and nursery block cobbled out of a prefab building. Take an unusual bunch of people, from a particularly snide and bitter cleaner, a humble teacher with a past, a parent with a past and his nearly-four twin boys, to an armed besieging youth, and stir. Full review...
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
We Need to Talk About Kevin is not one of your read-it-forgot-it books. Granted, it is about love, and loss, and finding the meaning - but it is one of those rare books that capture you despite the main idea, not because of it. In no time you are commiserating someone or something that society (you including) normally finds abhorrent. Full review...
The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa and translated by Edith Grossman, is a tale of apparently unrequited love that spans four decades and three continents. Ricardo is a Peruvian translator who spends most of the book living in Paris. As the years roll by, the girl he fell in love with at the age of thirteen flits in and out of his life. Ricardo spends his life devoted to 'Lily', and seems doomed to a lifetime of having his spirits crushed every time she vanishes to find another wealthy powerful man. Full review...
The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas
The End of Mr Y is a clever book full of complex ideas and a running joke about the nature of fiction. I am aware that I’m not in a story says the protagonist with no trace of irony. The world doesn’t revolve around you says her mother. Oh yes it does. Everything is a metaphor, and there are so many paradoxes, as the narrator says towards the end, you may be in danger of developing a headache. This is a multi-layered book that will entertain you while it makes you really think. Full review...
The Rowing Lesson by Anne Landsman
When the second person narrative is used – you this, you that – you have to be told quite quickly who is telling whom, and why. In this instance it would be a woman, Betsy, who is surrounded by her mother and brother and more, at the hospital bed of a dying man, her father. He has been a doctor at that same institution for over forty years, but is now suffering with hardly any chance of recovery. Full review...
The Seventh Well by Fred Wander
This book refuses to let me review it in any of my normal patterns. I can say where it starts – in a WW2 Nazi death camp – and indeed where it ends – in a WW2 Nazi death camp; however the whole point is that there is an entire world in between. Full review...
The Truth Commissioner by David Park
In the beginning, there is a boy taken on a journey. He'd never been anywhere before ‘except once'. And now he's frightened – and so he should be. He is in deep trouble.
But that was a long time ago.
Now people are getting on with their lives… Full review...
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
Seven-year-old Che Selkirk has a lot of questions. Why has he been taken away from his parental grandmother? Who is Dial, the woman who has abducted him? Is she his mother? Why have they left New York so suddenly for a hippy commune in the Australian outback? And most importantly, where is his daddy? Full review...
The Outcast by Sadie Jones
When the story opens it's 1957 and nineteen-year-old Lewis Aldridge is leaving prison, where he's spent the last two years. We don't know why he was there or what he's planning to do with his future, but his father has sent him a postal order which is large enough for Lewis to assume that his father would prefer him not to return home, but he buys some new clothes and goes back to his family. Would he have gone back if he'd known what this would lead to? I don't know. Full review...
Counting the Stars by Helen Dunmore
You might not have any Latin. You might not have read any Catullus. You might know nothing about this Roman poet's life. You might think it all too abstruse and obscure to have anything to do with you and what you'd want to read. Helen Dunmore, herself a poet, begs to differ. She's right. Full review...
