International fiction
Betty by Tiffany McDaniel
I’m still a child, only as tall as my father’s shotgun.
So begins Betty’s story. Betty is a fictionalised account of the author’s own mother as she comes of age in Breathed, a town set in the foothills of Ohio…
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
Last year, when I heard that a new Elena Ferrante novel was imminent, I experienced palpable waves of excitement through my body. That’s the kind of writer Ferrante is – she inspires feverish devotion. Like many of my colleagues, I…
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
I loved God, my brother, and my mother, in that order. When I lost my brother, poof went the other two.
Yaa Gyasi’s sophomore novel is a study of relationships. With family. With God. With science. With addiction and depression.
…
The Abstainer by Ian McGuire
In my reading life, there are a handful of writers whose next novel I anxiously await. In 2016, I read the rollicking, adventure-filled historical thriller The North Water. With that, its author Ian McGuire became another to add to…
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend is one of my highlights of recent reading years, and it has become so much a part of my own reading autobiography that it’s hard to believe that is has only been in my memory bank…
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Published in 2004 and the winner of a slew of literary awards, Susanna Clarke’s debut Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of those remarkable books that changes the landscape of an entire genre. Fifteen years later, Clarke has finally…
No Presents Please by Jayant Kaikini
Mumbai is the central, beloved character of Jayant Kaikini’s story collection, yet plenty of space remains to fall in love with the protagonists of each story. In No Presents Please, the stories are drawn from Kaikini’s vast oeuvre, spanning…
Sisters by Daisy Johnson
Something terrible has happened. Sheela’s only recourse is to spirit away her two teenage daughters, July and September, and herself, from their home in Oxford to a run-down shack in the Yorkshire Moors known as the Settle House. It is…
True Story by Kate Reed Petty
If you don’t control your story, your story will control you.
Private schoolgirl Alice doesn’t know what happened to her the night of the party. She knows she was very drunk. She knows she was driven home by Richard and…
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
David Mitchell’s new novel, Utopia Avenue, is a love letter to the music of the 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic. In it, the process of music-making is inhabited so convincingly, it made me wonder whether writing was…
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