LITERARY FICTION

FRANKISSSTEIN by Jeanette Winterson

(Cape £16.99) DON’T let that terrible title put you off. This artificial intelligence (AI) love-story-of-sorts is a clever comic romp that teases at the nature — and future — of life, death and what it is to be human, without ever being ponderous.

We begin in Switzerland, where Mary Shelley has just had the idea for Frankenstein: this is 1816 and the world is on the brink of seismic change. Then we leap to Brexit Britain, to underline parallels with the present day.

Here, young transgender doctor Ry falls for AI genius Victor Stein. And mummy’s boy Ron Lord is about to make big bucks from sex-bots, a strand with which Winterson has huge fun.

The brushwork is often as broad as the humour, but, as the storylines mesh, there’s also shade: our fantasies stem not just from hubris and vanity, the author suggests, but grief and loneliness, too.

In a nutshell, first-rate beach fare.

SALTWATER by Jessica Andrews

(Sceptre £14.99) THE twentysomething debut author Jessica Andrews apparently cut up the manuscript of her millennial coming-of-age novel and rearranged it on the kitchen floor.

It might sound gimmicky, but the resulting narrative, which progresses via lyrical, numbered instalments, reflects narrator Lucy’s struggles to find a shape and space to inhabit — both metaphorically and literally.

We begin in Ireland’s coastal County Donegal, to where Lucy has fled after graduating from a posh London uni.

She drifts along and conducts a half-hearted affair, but we are also taken back to her Sunderland childhood and her sometimes painfully close relationship with her mother.

These visceral, high- definition sections — which also record Lucy’s growing awareness of, and estrangement from, her working-class background — are highlights.

Authenticating references are overegged (fake tan, Matey bubble bath, Skips crisps), and there’s a temporary loss of momentum mid-way, but this is nonetheless a sharply observed and poignant first outing.

RAINBIRDS by Clarissa Goenawan

(Corsair £8.99) YOU could be forgiven for mistaking the narrator of this enjoyable page-turner for a terse gumshoe from a classic Chicago noir.

Rainbirds even has a jazz soundtrack, not to mention a backdrop of rainy skies and night-time streets.

But what makes this atmospheric debut so piquant is its Nineties Japan setting. After the brutal, unsolved murder of his beloved older sister, Ren Ishida heads to the small-town scene of the crime to find answers.

Taking a job at the school where his sister worked, he finds himself haunted by ominous dreams and infatuated by a cynical, chainsmoking student, all the time realising how little he knew about his secretive sibling’s life.

This is a book in which the darkest depths — not least young Ren’s — are mostly skirted, rather than plumbed, and the quiet resolution will be too neat for some tastes.

But the dialogue snaps, and I found the subtle creepiness very moreish.