LITERARY FICTION
THE FOURTH SHORE by Virginia Baily
(Fleet £16.99, 384 pp) VIRGINIA BAILY’S effortlessly enjoyable third novel shares some similarities with its predecessor Early One Morning, which maps the turbulent family dynamics between a woman and a Jewish boy following the Nazi occupation of Rome.
This time, the lesser-known Italian occupation of Libya between the wars is the setting for a sweeping story about the disastrous consequences of an adolescent sexual awakening, as Liliana Cattaneo, a young naif from Italy, falls for an Italian fascist while staying with her older brother in Tripoli.
Much of the story is told in the form of recalled memories, and Baily is very good at exploiting the poignancy of flashback. Liliana, now a widow who has been living in England for decades and unhappily estranged from her Italian family, returns to Rome on a whim after the assassination of her nephew, ordered by Gaddafi.
Italian brutalities in Libya remain a quiet but insistent presence in an emotionally rewarding novel so succulent with detail that you can almost feel the Tripoli sand storms whipping across your face.
LIAR by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
(Pushkin £12.99, 256 pp) THIS latest novel by the acclaimed Israeli writer is initially hard going but by the end it has the momentum of a psychological thriller. Mousy student Nofar, 17, has been verbally abused at work in an ice-cream parlour and, in the confusion that immediately follows, she allows a policewoman to believe her aggressor sexually assaulted her.
From this small slippage of the truth, a distortion of enormous proportions grows, as Nofar becomes a national celebrity, paraded on TV and praised for her moral courage, while her alleged attacker faces public opprobrium and a probable prison sentence.
There is one problem: a boy saw what really happened, and soon he and Nofar are embroiled in a compromising quasisexual relationship.
Gundar-Goshen carefully shades in the grey between the black and white, allowing our sympathies to slide around the more others become implicated in Nofar’s deceit. The power of testimony lies not just in what is said, but in what people seek to hear, and she explores that minefield with historical perspective and clearsighted detachment.
SPRING by Ali Smith
(Hamish Hamilton £16.99, 352 pp) JUST when things were starting to look really bad, along comes the third instalment in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet to lift us out of the gloom.
Her great project is to novelise the moment in which we live — Spring was finished only weeks ago. It abounds with fecund narratives about borders and migration, while extending and deepening what, three novels in, is becoming an extraordinary embodiment of the ways in which storytelling connects us.
A lapsed film-maker, mourning the death of his scriptwriter, decides on impulse to take a train to Scotland. A worker at a detention centre also finds herself hurtling north, alongside a preternaturally clever 12-year-old girl, whom she strongly suspects of somehow helping detained refugees break free.
At the same time, the work of Katherine Mansfield and Rilke, the history of Culloden, Greek myths and the propulsive lyricism of spring itself, thread together in narratives of loss and rejuvenation.