LATEST TITLES

SWEET HOME Wendy Erskine, Picador, £12.99 (ebook £7.99)

EACH of these piercing short stories is set in

Wendy Erskine’s hometown of Belfast, covering themes of uneasiness, loneliness, boredom, intrigue and restlessness. A woman reluctantly prepares for her mum to get out of prison; a man whose daughter died takes an interest in his gardener’s child; a grouchy teacher obsesses over a Gaelic football volunteer – on the surface, the narratives are somewhat mundane, but Erskine infuses them with multiplicity, and twists them with darkness. Impressive and bold.

THE WARLOW EXPERIMENT

Alix Nathan, Serpent’s Tail, £12.99 (ebook £6.83)

ALIX NATHAN has devised a dark tale of obsession, solitude and the human mind here. Amateur scientist Herbert Powyss advertises for a volunteer to live without human contact in his cellar for seven years. Only labourer John Warlow comes forward, but proves a less predictable subject of investigation than the plants in Powyss’ hothouse. Nathan compellingly draws the increasing psychological toll on Warlow, Powyss and the other inhabitants of Moreham House, while the Revolutionary Wars with France rumble in the background.

LIVE A LITTLE Howard Jacobson, Jonathan Cape, £18.99 (ebook £8.99)

HOWARD JACOBSON is a giant in modern British literature. Here, he is on familiar territory dealing with the lives of British Jews. Beryl Dusinbery, in her 90s forgets everything, other than the odd tidbit about past lovers, and Shimi Carmelli, one of the last eligible bachelors in Finchley who is plagued with insecurities. Jacobson deftly balances humour with ageing and the inevitability of death, but there’s not enough of a plot to entirely sustain it.