International Fiction reviews
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
Karen Joy Fowler has ruined the next few books for me – whatever I pick up next, it can’t possibly measure up to the sprawling, ambitious, captivating saga of her latest novel, Booth. Fowler is the b…
When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
It begins with the tale of Port Angeles, a bustling city that now rests upon an ancient but forgotten place. A place of violence, buried deep down beneath its concrete surface, from a time when anima…
Paradais by Fernanda Melchor & Sophie Hughes (trans.)
With her award- winning English- language debut Hurricane Season, Mexican journalist and novelist Fernanda Melchor demonstrated her remarkable ability to grapple with violence on the page. In this da…
Careering by Daisy Buchanan
Careering, the second novel from author and journalist Daisy Buchanan, is an ode to any woman – or any person, really – who has ever felt overwhelmed by a seemingly cavernous divide between their ‘dr…
The Voids by Ryan O’Connor
The narrator of this book is one of the last residents of a condemned apartment block in Glasgow. The local council has offered relocation money which has been accepted by most of his neighbours. As …
Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale
This beautiful novel opens with our protagonist, Charles Causley, working furiously onboard a Royal Navy ship in the control room, deciphering coded messages and relaying them to the captain of the s…
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
Julie Otsuka’s third novel, The Swimmers, opens in a strange but spellbinding way, with a cultural anthropology of a California swimming pool and the people who regularly swim in it. We meet them, th…
All’s Well by Mona Awad
All’s Well by Mona Awad is dark and sharp. It is, like its namesake Shakespeare play, a ‘Problem’ – a wondrous blur between comedy and tragedy that deals with the issue of chronic pain and its ‘treat…
A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp
The last time I read a book that happened to have ‘girl’ in the title, things didn’t pan out too well for the main character. But that was a crime fiction book, and A Very Nice Girl is literature, al…
Free Love by Tessa Hadley
Tessa Hadley’s fine new novel opens on a late summer evening in comfortable suburban London. It’s 1967. Phyllis Fischer, 40, lives with husband Roger, who fought in World War II and now serves with t…
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