Patrick Ryan: Connecting lives
PATRICK RYAN’S CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED short story collection The Dream Life of Astronauts (2017) marked him out as a writer to watch. His stories brim with rounded often-unforgettable characters living quietly, with yearning, humanity and acceptance. He is a master of dialogue, the unsentimental and the subtle. So when his debut novel Buckeye arrived, I approached...
(eventually) Embracing the sisterhood
I SENT MY FIRST MANUSCRIPT OUT in December 2003, when I was 14. It was a 100,000-word fantasy novel about dragons, and I explained to the lady behind the Post Office counter how I was going to be a published author. She was like, “Ooh, I’ll watch this space.” No agent, at all, wanted to...
Writers behaving badly
SHARP, SLY, AND IMPOSSIBLE to put down, The Book Game is a biting, often funny exploration of friendship, ambition, class, rivalry, missed chances and the reckless pull of desire. Its modern-day setting is Hawton Manor, in the lush Cambridgeshire countryside. Successful egomaniac Cambridge professor Lawrence and his wealthy stay-at-home wife Claudia host eight close friends...
Daria Lavelle: Savouring the beyond
A DELICIOUSLY ORIGINAL supernatural thriller that reads like it could be a script for a mesmerising Punchdrunk production, Daria Lavelle’s Aftertaste blends food and ghosts with romance and menace. It’s lively, it’s colourful, it’s funny. It’s a feast of a story, boasting engaging characters and a riveting plot. The novel’s beating heart is Kostya, who...
Brontë country
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, my parents would walk me out into the wilds of England’s moorlands in a bright-coloured anorak, wellies that squelched. I didn’t like walking then; I was a sickly child with constant migraines, preferring to read books curled on the sofa. And so, dragged across the barrens with a blinding stick...
The dark side of the mirror
“One thing needs to be made clear. I did not kill my twin sister.” SO BEGINS LIANN ZHANG’s fiercely entertaining debut Julie Chan Is Dead. The novel charts the hair-raising fortunes of the eponymous narrator, an impoverished grocery store cashier, after she responds to an apparent cry for help from her estranged twin sister Chloe...
Welcome to the Green Zone
IT’S NOT LIKE I WAS EXPECTING STALINGRAD, but Baghdad took the piss. Arriving for the first time, tucked into a UN car, I watched as the city lights refracted through the bulletproof glass. Floodlights hovered over a pickup football game, square lamps uplit the National Museum, fairy lights dripped down palm trees beside the Tigris...
Brouhaha in Baghdad
HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO Nussaibah Younis, whose debut social and political satire has been shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, having already gathered a truckload of rapturous reviews including The Irish Times, Guardian and The Times, which describes Fundamentally as Bridget Jones in Iraq. This novel, a tale of a heartbroken English academic who...
Under the circumstances
SWEET AIR, DIVINE LIGHT! How long have we waited for this happy sight? This ancient city, its sun-baked streets, the Acropolis in the distance, raging with light. We are here, so it begins. The first night. Everybody orders wine. It comes in little jugs called carafes. Red or white, it doesn’t matter. We simply ask...
How it goes
YOU ARE SITTING on the living room floor, spooning strawberry yoghurt onto the carpet. On the carpet, an insect crawls. Your mum asks what you’re doing even though it’s obvious what you’re doing – you’re spooning strawberry yoghurt onto the carpet where an insect crawls. ‘What are you doing?’ your mum asks. Her question is...
That first night
I WORE A DRESS on the night I first met Ming. A crowd swarmed the union bar, and my shoulders jostled as boys dressed as girls and girls dressed as boys pushed in and out of the front line. A tightness seized my brain, a vacuum-pack seal over its folds. I looked up. Large paper...
Harriet Constable: The Instrumentalist
In 1696 a baby was posted through the wall of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage in Venice. She was named Anna Maria della Pietà and become one of the greatest violinists of the eighteenth century. Her teacher was Antonio Vivaldi… YET THIS EXTRAORDINARY MUSICIAN remains largely unknown today. Numerous historical records exist – she...
