LATEST TITLES

THE NEED by Helen Phillips, Chatto & Windus, £16.99 (ebook £9.99) ★★★★★

IT IS hard to say too much about this eerie tale, as the idea at the core of it is so compelling and original that too much information would spoil the reader’s surprise.

Molly is a mum of a toddler and a baby and works as a paleobotanist at a fossil quarry where she has recently uncovered a series of odd artefacts that defy interpretation, including a Coke bottle with lettering that leans the wrong way, and an alternative version of the Bible.

Trapped in the dark, disorienting ‘cosmic precariousness’ of sleepdeprived childcare, she is quietly losing her grip on reality. Unless she isn’t.

Things start to go wrong from the first chapter, when Molly senses an intruder in her flat. It turns out to be a slight figure in a deer mask, who reveals themselves in time as someone Molly knows only too well. Unless of course she doesn’t.

Told in terse, claustrophobic chapters in a wonderfully economical yet powerfully descriptive style, this is a creepy, poignant tale that picks at the very edges of what we understand to be reality. Or not.

ASK AGAIN, YES by Mary Beth Keane, Michael Joseph, £14.99 (ebook £9.99) ★★★★★ THIS is a story of New York suburban life, and the physical and emotional closeness – and drama – that can materialise between neighbours. Peter and Kate are best friends, having grown up in identikit houses, side-by-side, but a moment of violence sends their futures skidding in different directions. Mary Beth Keane draws two families in sharp, moving detail, as Ask Again, Yes skates through their lives, encompassing decades with guile and grace. It considers friendship and mental illness, how love changes and warps, and despite a fairly slow start, does so beautifully.