THE BEST NEW FICTION

Carrying Albert Home

Homer Hickam

HarperCollins €20

Hickam’s novel blends fact and fiction in a delightful tall tale, as his parents – the loving, unadventurous Homer Sr and the irrepressible, difficult Elsie – cross America to return their pet alligator to its rightful home in Orlando. Along the way they get caught up a bank robbery, an illegal moonshine run, and a hurricane, while encountering John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway.

Eithne Farry

Beatlebone

Kevin Barry

Canongate €19.50

It’s 1978 and John – that’s John Lennon – is hiding out in the west of Ireland in the throes of a breakdown. Ten years earlier he bought an island, but he can’t remember its name or whereabouts, so he sets out to look for it with the aid of a philosophical driver. Based on true events, it’s a gift of a story, and Barry’s richly textured descriptions sometimes verge on poetry.

Anthony Gardner

Trust

Mike Bullen

Sphere €22

When business colleagues go off to an IT conference and indulge in some drunken extracurricular activity, they are unprepared for the profound consequences of their seemingly harmless fun. Undeniably entertaining, this is also rather inconsequential – more sitcom superficiality than a genuine attempt to offer real insight into what happens when trust in a relationship is tested.

Simon Humphreys

Little Aunt Crane

Geling Yan

Harvill Secker €22

Yan’s intriguing, if overlong novel, begins with a disturbing scene from the complex web of Far Eastern history: a young Japanese woman is bundled into a sack and sold to a Chinese couple, to bear children for them. Her future looks likely to be one of servitude, but, against all odds, she becomes emotionally entwined in the lives of her purchasers. Yan follows the trio’s affection, rivalries and bravery through the turbulent Mao years.

Eithne Farry