Books SO good, even Santa can’t resist!
Give the best gift of all — a novel they won’t want to put down. Our critics choose their favourites of 2017 ...
CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS
by Sally Rooney (Faber £14.99)
IrIsh writer sally rooney’s debut novel is a bit Elena Ferrante, a bit rachel Cusk and at the same time like nothing else I’ve ever read.
The story of an English student in Dublin who is caught between her feelings for her ex-girlfriend and a married man, it contains an awful lot of casual chat about politics, gender, feminism and capitalism — and is as bracing to read as a shot of vodka is to drink.
by Roddy Doyle SMILE
(Cape £14.99) ThErE are very few smiles in this slithery novel from roddy Doyle, which is narrated by Victor, a wannabe writer returning unhappily to the Dublin streets and pubs of his much younger self after the break-up of his marriage. Doyle pulls off a spectacular
volte-face in the final pages, which forces you to question everything you thought you knew. The impact is devastating and entirely without consolation.
An unforgettable journey into Ireland’s darkest past.
STEPHANIE CROSS RESERVOIR 13 By Jon McGregor (4th Estate £14.99)
LongLIsTED for the Booker prize and now shortlisted for the Costa novel Award, this story begins with the disappearance of 13-year-old rebecca shaw on the edge of the Peak District.
But reservoir 13 isn’t a straightforward thriller: it’s something far more interesting and original. As the days, months and years pass and rebecca remains missing, normal life gradually resumes. Mcgregor keeps his distance, insisting that we notice too the larger cycles of joy and sorrow, life and death, which are echoed in the rhythms of the natural world.
This is a haunting, haunted book and yet, material that could have been unbearably bleak is, in Mcgregor’s hands, transformed into something of hypnotic and transporting power, shot through with beauty and unexpected humour.
MONTPELIER PARADE by Karl Geary
(Vintage £8.99) noMInATED for the Costa First novel Award, this is a timeless tale of star- crossed lovers: on one side of the divide, sonny, the teenage son of an illiterate builder, and on the other, Vera, a beautiful, cultured and much older Englishwoman.
sonny’s existence is miserable: his father is a gambler, his beloved mother a domestic drudge and his troublemaking older brothers dully lumpen. As that world slowly disintegrates, sonny clings to Vera and all that she seems to offer.
geary’s use of the second person is unfaltering and brilliantly sustained, it creates an intimacy and intensity that is utterly absorbing.
JOHN HARDING MIDWINTER BREAK by Bernard MacLaverty
(Cape £14.99) WhEn retired couple gerry and stella fly to Amsterdam on holiday, they find themselves contemplating their marriage and the uncertain future.
gerry is a heavy drinker and deluded enough to believe that stella is unaware of his secret forays to buy whisky and down it in the bathroom.
stella, however, is tired of gerry’s drinking and his ridiculing of her religious beliefs, and is considering entering a Dutch Catholic community.
This is a heart-rending analysis of the weary affection and annoyances of a long marriage in its fragile twilight years.
STANDARD DEVIATION by Katherine Heiny
(4th Estate £12.99) grAhAM CAVAnAUgh is desperately in love with his stunning second wife Audra, but frustrated by her, too.
she’s a motormouth who shares intimate details with strangers in supermarkets and invites people she hardly knows to stay in their Manhattan apartment.
Yet her daffy spontaneity and kindness make her impossible not to love. Except, when graham’s first wife re-enters his life, he begins to wonder if he was right to leave her for Audra.
This is not only one of the funniest books you will ever read, but true and poignant, too.