Fading passions of a She Devil

RUTH PATCHETT, trad-feminist high priestess and the original She Devil, runs the Institute of Gender Parity from the crumbling High Tower by the sea.

But the tide is rising and her energies are waning, unlike those of Valerie, Ruth’s opportunistic young PA with her profile-raising ideas.

Will the Women’s Widdershins Walk come off? Weldon’s fond satire sends up feminism old and new, and contemporary life in general.

A rich cast includes Jobcentre Plus supervisors, family therapists, vain parents and smartphone-obsessed teens. Best of all, it includes Tyler, the She Devil’s handsome, engaging, transitioning grandson.

Does he represent the end of the gender wars?

Elegantly written, sharply perceptive and fantastically good fun.

THE SHADOW LAND by Elizabeth Kostova (Text Publishing £14.99) AS CHILDREN in America, Alexandra and her brother Jack chose their favourite countries on the map of Europe. Jack liked Bulgaria and so, after his tragically early death, it is to Bulgaria that Alexandra goes.

On reaching the capital Sofia, she takes a family’s baggage instead of her own by mistake.

In it are the ashes of one Stoyan Lazarov. But who was he? And how can she return him? Answering this question takes Alexandra to many places, always accompanied by faithful taxi-driver Bobby.

Her encounters peel back Bulgaria’s troubled recent history and comprise the biography of a nation as much as of a family.

I could have done without some of the labour camp detail, but this is a beautifully written, gently gripping novel from the author of bestselling The Historian, in which enduring love, persistent guilt and lingering evil combine to powerful effect.

MIRROR, SHOULDER, SIGNAL by Dorthe Nors (Pushkin Press £10.99) THIS novel reads like a sort of Danish Woody Allen; existential, domestic, gently humorous.

Sonja is a provincial singleton living in Copenhagen. She’s lonely, disappointed in love and misses the landscape of her birth. Driving lessons with exuberant Folke and spiritual massages with strong-fingered Ellen attempt to address her general lack of direction.

But Sonja’s alienation persists and contrasts with the violent fantasies of Gosta Svensson, the stratospherically successful Scandi-noir writer it is her job to translate.

On the one hand, this poetic, thoughtful book is an affectionate send-up of the modern Nordic mindset.

But in a deeper way it’s a love letter to a vanished land, that of childhood.