![]() ![]() I decided I would read a few pages of My Name is Lucy Barton (Penguin) before bed and was halfway through a while later, no longer tired, only wondering how Lucy was doing and saying to myself, OK, 10 more pages then bed. It was an impulse like this that led me to Elizabeth Strout (yes, very late to the party). Sometimes I get a sudden impulse to read an author I’ve heard mentioned a lot, seen on tables in bookstores or on prize lists. I finished it only last month, but plan to take it with me abroad to enjoy it once more. I read this in two or three sittings only because I wanted to slow down and spend more time with Magee’s considered and companionate writing. Reading the book, it feels as though you’re surrounded by protagonists, each person worthy of a novel all their own. By the end of the novel I wanted to book a flight to Ireland just to walk around and imagine who was where. In Close to Home (Hamish Hamilton), he is easily able to bring you into the milieu of Belfast, creating a sense of affinity with any character he chooses to present to you. He is on Granta’s 2023 Best of Young British Novelists list Strands of their backstory emerge – a 1960s scandal and the more recent “Awful Incident”.Īuthor of That Reminds Me ( Merky ), winner of the Desmond Elliott prize. Going through airport security she feels liverish, misses her dachshunds, and dwells on squabbles she’s had with Mrs Baker, her cleaner-cum-companion, who had been the “clingfilm over the madder notions” and the “paperweight on her fluttering mind”, but has now, like Astrid herself, become “slightly unhinged”. The story begins as Astrid, now 82, sets off to stop him raking everything up again. ![]() ![]() Now Magnus is writing a tell-all memoir from his deathbed in Scotland. Astrid’s glittering stage career was wrecked by scandal when she was framed by her actor husband, Magnus. Windmill Hill (Quercus) by Lucy Atkins has it all: evocative setting, fabulous characters, precision plotting, poignancy, laughs, dogs and surprises. McKenzie is brilliant at spotlighting moments of love, romance and charming detail, in even the strangest, most difficult life. ![]() Soon there’s a trip to Australia to search one last time for her mother and stepfather, who disappeared presumed dead five years previously. She is picked up at the station by her grandmother’s accountant, Burt, who drives a battered Econoline (called the Dog of the North), shares a toupee with his brother, and has a pomeranian known as Kweecoats though his collar tag says “QUIXOTE”. The Dog of the North (HarperCollins) by Elizabeth McKenzie is a darkly comic novel that opens just as Penny Rush has quit her job and her marriage after confronting her husband, Sherman, thus: “I know all about Bebe Sinatra and the cocaine.” Then, hearing her grandmother has pulled a gun on the Meals on Wheels, she boards a train to Santa Barbara to investigate. Her latest book, Went to London, Took the Dog (Pan Macmillan), is out this autumn A medieval Franciscan monk and his young Benedictine sidekick investigate a murder at a monastery – a must-read for fans of Sherlock Holmes, the video game Pentiment and the theoretical controversy over the absolute poverty of Christ of 1322.Īuthor of Love, Nina (Penguin), which was adapted for the BBC by Nick Hornby, and three novels, including Reasons to Be Cheerful (Penguin). While The Name of the Rose (Everyman) by Umberto Eco may seem like an intimidating read, this historical murder mystery is often as charming and slapstick as it is thrilling and genuinely educational. Sticky, violent and exhilarating – Pollock’s southern gothic tale of thrill killers, pervy preachers and vengeance is best read on a long road trip or at a seedy motel poolside. The Devil All the Time (Vintage Publishing) by Donald Ray Pollock should not be eclipsed by its mediocre Netflix adaptation. A literary plagiarism caper with sharp insight into the power dynamics of the publishing world, Yellowface is an extremely entertaining satire which I read in about two days. Yellowface (Harper Collins) by Rebecca F Kuang is already a lot of people’s book of the year, and rightly so. Named on Granta’s 2023 Best of Young British Novelists list Author of Penance (Faber) and Boy Parts (Faber), Blackwell’s Fiction Book of the Year in 2020. ![]()
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