LITERARY FICTION
THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK by David Foenkinos
(Pushkin €14) A LIBRARY for rejected manuscripts established by a book-loving loner in a sleepy Breton town becomes the talk of literary Paris, when an ambitious young editor publishes to overnight success a novel she found gathering dust on its shelves.
The novel bears the name of Henri Pick, a now deceased local pizzeria owner, and his secret writing life comes as a shock to his wife and daughter, who never remember him reading a book, let alone producing one.
So begins this charming literary caper, which combines a journalist’s quest to discover who Pick really was with a tender evocation of small town France, peopled by loners, dreamers and romantics who find their lives transformed by even the most tangential contact with the story of the manuscript.
A playfully droll satire of the French publishing scene and a completely delightful jeu d’esprit.
THE MOTION OF THE BODY THROUGH SPACE by Lionel Shriver
(HarperCollins €18.20) LIONEL SHRIVER stares down some of the most contentious issues of the day with her latest novel, about a couple in their 60s whose marriage comes under strain when the husband, Remington, takes up running.
Remington has been recently fired from a life-long job in local government after Lucinda, a younger, black colleague promoted above him, accuses him of threatening her. The consequence both propels Remington into a farcically fanatical embrace of endurance fitness and provides Shriver with a platform from which to challenge the grip of our toxic culture wars on intellectual and artistic freedom.
It might have acquired greater focus as a short story, and Shriver’s decision to rail against the politicisation of literature by creating in Lucinda a character whose purpose is explicitly political feels like an own goal. But you’ve got to admire her for wrestling to the floor subjects many authors wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.
A REGISTRY OF MY PASSAGE UPON THE EARTH by Daniel Mason
(Mantle €21) AN OUTSTANDING collection of short stories from an American novelist best known for his historical fiction, this immerses the reader in various imaginatively realised moments from history while conducting a series of dazzling forays into style and form.
A fight between a humble dock worker and an infamous pugilist in 1820s Bristol, with each punch and lunge bloodily detailed, builds up an almost incantatory force. A mother goes on a desperate midnight journey through 19th-century London to seek relief from a botanist for her dangerously asthmatic son.
A budding scientist waits feverishly and in vain to hear from Darwin after sending him a letter detailing his own discoveries on natural selection. In the Edgar Allan Poe-esque The Second Doctor Service, a man is driven half mad by the belief his doppelganger is trying to take over his body and soul.
The language combines featherweight grace with immense muscle across a collection that contains not one dud.