International fiction
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett
Don’t be fooled by the size of Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut story collection, Pond. This slim volume of 20 stories, the shortest of which runs to a couple of sentences, is staggeringly ambitious and utterly delightful. A compelling account of…
Moonglow by Michael Chabon
In Moonglow, Michael Chabon does what Chabon does best, and with obvious relish. That is, using his familiar originality and postmodern cleverness, he presents the fiction as an archive, making solid, quotable, and factual that which is utterly, playfully…
The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler
Following the success of A Whole Life, and having been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize this year, Robert Seethaler’s The Tobacconist is an engaging piece of historical fiction set in Vienna as the spectre of Nazism approaches.
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Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Within the first few pages of Swing Time I was affected, again, by Zadie Smith’s ability to make universal truths personal. The story is a complete portrait of our time – our complex relationships with social media, parents, race, politics…
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Compared to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet which was very much an ensemble piece incorporating a dozen people and spanning light years of space, A Closed and Common Orbit is a more confined, almost claustrophobic story. The…
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed, the fourth novel in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, is a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, his late-career tale of magic and illusion. In Atwood’s version the plot takes place in a correctional facility (the…
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue is best known as the author of the Booker Prize-nominated novel, Room, which was adapted to become one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2015. In The Wonder she goes back a hundred or so years…
The Nix by Nathan Hill
While Nathan Hill’s debut novel The Nix is certainly ambitious, given that it contains the Chicago riots of 1968, the invasion of Iraq, the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as online gaming, a new, minimal, social media, growing…
Today Will be Different by Maria Semple
Eleanor Flood is a well off animator living in Seattle with her sports surgeon husband Joe and their 8-year-old son, Timby. Eleanor is generally depressed by her life, which is outwardly full of material comfort but unsatisfying. Eleanor wakes each…
Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney
Occasionally a slight snobbery emerges from working in a bookshop. With all the books out there, not all are equally worthy of our time. Is every book amazing? Life changing? No, but if it’s enjoyable often that’s expressly what you…
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