Taking the best fiction lying down
The best new paperbacks to read this summer, reviewed by EITHNE FARRY
DAISY JONES AND THE SIX
Taylor Jenkins Reid
Hutchinson, £8.99
Composed as a series of interviews with band members, their families and friends, this gorgeous novel tells the story of Seventies band The Six and their fabulous but flawed lead singer Daisy Jones. It’s an explosive mix of drugs, bad decisions, volatile emotions, competitive egos, heartfelt lyrics and sexual tension, as the selfdestructive behaviour of Daisy and brooding frontman Billy Dunne leaves its scars on everyone involved.
MARILOU IS EVERYWHERE
Sarah Elaine Smith
Hamish Hamilton, £12.99
Cindy, 14, is a poverty-stricken, motherless outsider, desperate to escape an existence that’s “all dust and no song” in rural Pennsylvania. Following the disappearance of Jude, the cool, on-off girlfriend of her brother Virgil, Cindy insinuates her way into Jude’s home, slowly taking the place of the missing girl. It’s an audacious premise but Smith’s beautiful, poetic prose transforms this strange coming-of age-story into something wondrous.
DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT
Lucy Ellmann
Galley Beggar, £14.99
Told in a breathless rush of vibrant words, this epic 1,040-page novel follows the seemingly random thoughts of an Ohio housewife as she bakes her way through the days, worrying about the future of her children and the planet, and about gun laws. It’s a state-of-the-nation novel with a powerful plea for the environment at its heart. Funny, furious and fabulously inventive.
BIG SKY
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday, £8.99
Grumpy, big-hearted private investigator Jackson
Brodie is looking into run-of-the-mill infidelity cases when he unwittingly discovers a sex trafficking ring in the sleepy coastal town he calls home. He sets about trying to save the exploited girls while attempting to identify the lynchpin – and finds himself in a tangled web of old secrets and new lies. Crime fiction at its very best.
GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
Bernardine Evaristo Penguin, £8.99 Crackling with life, this novel celebrates modern Britain and black womanhood. Evaristo, left, describes the lives, loves and struggles of 12 very different characters, from 93-year-old Hettie to lesbian playwright Amma, unspooling the interconnected stories of their lovers, families and friends in a poetic novel that travels across the country and through the decades. Funny, fierce and poetic, it gives voice to flawed, complicated women and the feminism that inspires them.
THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD
Claire Lombardo Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £8.99 (Published July 9) The Sorenson sisters are a messy, moody bunch living in “a vast hormonal hellscape” where old rivalries and fresh grievances underlie their affection.With loving but often bewildered parents, the siblings deal with a secret pregnancy, adoption, relationship dilemmas, mental illness and grief as they work through the intricacies of a melodramatic sisterhood and their conflicted attitudes to their parents. Spry, sly and funny.
LANNY
Max Porter
Faber, £8.99
Set in a village outside London, this devastating, disquieting novel captures the wonders of the natural world, the gossipy to-ing and fro-ing of the villagers and the supernatural, dangerous
Papa Toothwort who has woken from his evergreen slumber and set his age-old sights on little Lanny. Lanny is joyful and eccentric and, when he disappears, his parents’ world cracks apart as they search the eerie countryside for their child.
DIARY OF A SOMEBODY Brian Bilston Picador, £8.99
In his hilarious diary of a ruefully unfulfilled life, fictional character Brian skewers the daftness of office jargon, bin collections and his romantic mishaps, and shares laugh-out-loud poems. His ex-wife has taken up with a motivational speaker, his son’s football team is atrocious – and as if that wasn’t bad enough, he comes under suspicion of murder following the disappearance of his arch rival poetToby Salt.A brilliantly funny, deadpan debut.
EXPECTATION Anna Hope Doubleday, £8.99 (Published July 9)
What happens when your dreams don’t come to pass? Best friends Hannah, Cate and Lissa are forced to face up to a reality which is a far cry from the wild ambition of their younger days, as faltering careers, failing relationships, fertility issues and fraught motherhood scupper their dreams.Anna Hope captures the dynamics of female friendship, her relatable characters getting to grips with very real challenges in this engaging read.
THE CARER Deborah Moggach Tinder Press, £8.99
Deftly skewering the guilt of grown-up children with ailing, elderly parents, Moggach tells the tender, funny, touching tale of James, who’s broken his hip and needs looking after, and his bickering middleaged offspring Phoebe and Robert who are busy making a mess of their own lives.They are happy to leave the care of their father to bubbly Mandy until a revelation forces them to re-evaluate their views of her and each other.
REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL Nina Stibbe Penguin, £8.99
LizzieVogel is 18 and about to leave her ramshackle home and her mother’s erratic parenting for a grown-up life of her own. She gets a job as a dental nurse, working alongside Tammy Gammon (“apricot hair and matching lipstick”), moves into a flat above the surgery, and gets to grips with bad driving lessons, illegal dentistry, hideous bosses and passionate crushes in this fizzy, funny comingof-age story.
THE TRUANTS Kate Weinberg Bloomsbury, £8.99
Messy emotions and hapless hero worship are the hallmarks of this compelling campus thriller. Jess Walker heads to university, eager to study with neon-bright tutor Lorna Clay whose specialism is Agatha Christie.As Jess discovers the thrill of re-invention, her best friend, aristocratic, pillpopping Georgie, gets involved in a bad romance. When tragedy strikes and secrets are revealed, Jess finds playing detective reveals awkward truths.
THE DUTCH HOUSE Ann Patchett Bloomsbury, £8.99
After their father dies, Maeve and Danny are turfed out of the grand family home by evil stepmother Andrea. They obsess about everything they have lost in this funny but heartbreaking novel which explores how long-standing recriminations and nursing old grievances can keep a family in perpetual conflict, instead of building a
future.
THE TESTAMENTS Margaret Atwood Vintage, £20 Hardback
In the spare, tense and exciting sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, three women – wily Aunt Lydia, naïve but insightful Agnes, and kick-ass Daisy – describe how the state of Gilead, with its rigid control of women and their reproductive systems, is starting to crumble, undermined by a clandestine resistance movement that helps women and girls escape and find freedom.
BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE Trent Dalton Fourth Estate, £8.99
Set in Brisbane’s gritty suburbs, and inspired by real-life events in journalist Dalton’s childhood, this compelling debut tells the story of 13-year-old Eli who’s coping with a jailbird mum, a drug-dealing stepdad, a missing father and a brother who refuses to speak. Lit up by love and a madcap mind, Eli’s determined to overcome the obstacles that life pitches in his path in this captivating coming-of-age story.