THE BEST NEW FICTION

Moonglow Michael Chabon Fourth Estate €14.99

A narrator very closely resembling Michael Chabon relates family memories shared by his dying grandfather. The old man recalls bombs falling outside his London quarters near Selfridges, the horror of German prison camps and hunting for Wernher von Braun, the inventor of the V2 rocket. Back in the US, he marries a camp survivor whose sanity falters under the strain of past trauma. Chabon’s memoir-like narrative drifts, but he’s a gifted stylist and storyteller.

Jeffrey Burke

Bad Dreams Tessa Hadley Jonathan Cape €23.79

Each of these ten penetrating short stories finds its female protagonist at a crossroads. A plain teenager experiences sex for the first time; a convalescent grandmother is wooed by a younger man; a bookworm discovers the joy of writing her own novel. Family relationships are at the heart of the collection, which ranges from WWI to the present day: in the title story, a child’s midnight prank has unguessed consequences for her parents’ marriage. Whatever her subject, Hadley’s writing is beautifully poised and atmospheric.

Anthony Gardner

The Nix Nathan Hill Picador €17.99

Samuel is an embittered academic with a failed writing career and long-lasting emotional damage after his mother, Faye, abandoned him as a child. But now Faye is in the news – she chucked a rock at a right-wing Presidential candidate – and Samuel, determined to settle old scores, sets out ‘to deliver a book that told his mother’s story while also ripping her to shreds, rhetorically’. Things don’t quite go to plan as Samuel grapples with his own insecurities, reassesses all that he thought he knew about Faye, and ponders everything from political protest to online gaming and Norwegian ghosts in this tender, funny debut.

Eithne Farry