International Fiction reviews
Love Marriage by Monica Ali
At the heart of Monica Ali’s latest novel is, as the title suggests, the universal story of love and marriage. Those who have read Ali’s 2003 Booker-shortlisted novel Brick Lane will recognise her th…
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
This highly anticipated follow-up to 2015’s A Little Life is an epic tour de force. In fact, it’s impossible for me to praise To Paradise enough. Set in an alternative America, this is a novel of thr…
Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitzer
Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is a brilliant collection of short stories spanning Hilma Wolitzer’s entire career. From 1966 to the 2020 pandemic, the stories are largely set in New York C…
Men in My Situation by Per Petterson & Ingvild Burkey (trans.)
Men in My Situation paints a portrait of the effects of grief upon a fragile psyche, and as you are already guessing, the results ain’t pretty. Our first-person narrator, Arvid, lives in Oslo and his…
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
When I picked up a review copy of Louise Erdrich’s book about a bookseller who is haunted by a particularly annoying customer after she passes, I thought: ‘Fantastic! Finally, a lighthearted, cathart…
The Fell by Sarah Moss
It is my belief that Sarah Moss is the undisputed queen of taking everyday stories that seem ordinary at first glance, and stuffing them full of delicious, near unbearable tension. The Fell does not …
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Scour the formal historical record and you won’t find much about the woman known as Marie de France beyond information that she lived in the 12th century and wrote a series of Breton lais, or short r…
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Theo Byrne, a rising star in the field of astrobiology, has lost his wife, leaving him the sole parent to nine-year-old Robin. Robin is both a fascinating and a troubled boy. His love and appreciatio…
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Crossroads, abandons the overt political messaging of Freedom and the narrative globetrotting of Purity, returning instead to the neurotic dramas of the Midwestern fa…
I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins
‘I’ve tried to tell this story a bunch of times. This will be my last try…’ So begins Claire Vaye Watkins’ crackling original novel I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness. Its narrator is a woman called…
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