THE BEST NEW FICTION

Chances Are Richard Russo Allen & Unwin €22

When three old college pals reunite for a nostalgic late summer getaway to Martha’s Vineyard, their thoughts soon turn to Jacy, the girl they were once all mad about, who vanished without trace shortly after holidaying with them there some 40 years earlier. We cut between Teddy, a lonely, frail book publisher, and Lincoln, a happily married father of six, digging for clues in the archives of the local press, but it’s Mickey, a rock guitarist who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, who knows the truth. Cleverly paced, Russo’s latest novel folds page-turning suspense into an unhurried, warmly observed portrait of friendship in later life.

Anthony Cummins

In Love With George Eliot Kathy O’Shaughnessy Scribe €23.99

Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of her birth, this debut novel focuses on George Eliot’s most creative years, when she produced enduring works including Middlemarch and scandalised Victorian society by living openly with a married man, the writer George Lewes. O’Shaughnessy succeeds admirably both in bringing to life Eliot’s interior mind and the oppressive world she inhabited, and in showing her to be an indomitable pioneer for women’s emancipation. An accomplished tribute to one of the world’s greatest authors.

Simon Humphreys

Christmas in Austin Benjamin Markovits Faber €23.99

Markovits continues his chronicle of three generations of the Essinger family, last seen in A Weekend In New York.

In part two, they gather a year later for Christmas at the family home in Texas.

The adults are well-educated Caucasians – Oxford, Harvard, Yale – who reckon with death, old age, ambition, ailing children, and the heart’s upheavals. Markovits has a keen eye for these clannish rituals with their small dramas and occasional revelations.

Jeffrey Burke

Ness Robert Macfarlane Hamish Hamilton €20.99

What would it mean for land itself to come to life? The question pulses throughout this quirky little work, beautifully illustrated by Stanley Donwood. Ness styles itself as ‘part novella, part prose-poem and part medieval mystery play’ and was inspired by a bleak spit of land off the Suffolk coast. The book might equally be billed as an allegory, featuring a character called The Armourer, while other, more benign spirits circle. It is a bitty, fugitive piece but has some haunting moments.

Max Davidson