Float trough summer with the best holiday reading
LITERARY FICTION
STEPHANIE CROSS THE LANGUAGE OF BIRDS by Jill Dawson
(Sceptre £18.99, 272 pp) Jill Dawson has always had a knack for spotting sensational true-life stories and making from them intelligent, thought-provoking and terrifically absorbing page-turners.
Her latest is no exception. The language of Birds is based on the infamous lord lucan murder case, but lucan — here re-imagined as Dickie, the charismatic, mustachioed Earl of Morven — isn’t the focus. instead it’s the nanny’s story that Dawson has chosen to tell.
Yet ‘Mandy’ is so much more than a victim, and if the conclusion of this novel is undeniably devastating, what goes before is often joyous. The sights and sounds of vibrant seventies london pop off the page, and the whole thing crackles with life, ideas and — hurrah — unapologised-for female desire.
FRANKISSSTEIN by Jeanette Winterson
(Cape £16.99, 352 pp) winTErson’s brainy romp begins on the rain-lashed shores of lake Geneva in 1816, where Mary shelley is about to be struck by the idea for Frankenstein.
shortly after, we’re whisked off to more-or-less present day Memphis Tennessee, where transgender doctor ry shelley is falling for artificial intelligence genius Victor stein. as the two strands begin to merge, so winterson teases away at other boundaries — between genders, life and death, fact and fiction, human and machine — to great, and hugely entertaining, effect.
Mummy’s boy and sex- bot inventor ron lord is a cover pricejustifying comic creation too.
ANTHONY CUMMINS THE PORPOISE by Mark Haddon
(Chatto & Windus £18.99, 336 pp) THE so- so novels Mark Haddon published after The Curious incident of The Dog in The night-Time hinted that he didn’t yet know how to follow its incredible success.
That changed with the dark, snarling stories of his 2016 collection The Pier Falls, and his brilliant new novel confirms the sense of a gifted writer letting his talent off the leash at last.
a time-travelling adventure for grown- ups, it cuts magically between a lonely, daydreaming girl, angelica — raised by a megarich father hiding dark crimes — and the swashbuckling escapades of an ancient Mediterranean prince whose story uncannily echoes her own.
Mind-bending yet marvellously readable, it stakes Haddon’s claim to be one of the best writers in Britain right now.
THE DEATH OF MURAT IDRISSI by Tommy Wieringa (Scribe £12.99, 112 pp)
iT HarDlY screams ‘beach read’, but this brutally searing minimasterpiece has haunted me all year. we follow two young Dutch women lured into crime while on holiday in Morocco, where their parents were born.
Hoping to earn some extra cash, they let a small- time crook persuade them to hide a poor villager in their car when they take the ferry back across the Mediterranean. on reaching spain, though, they find the stowaway has suffocated to death. Panicking, the women drive on — his body still in their boot — while figuring out what to do next. The horribly tense set- up leads to a razor- sharp exploration of migration that, at just over a hundred pages long, proves remarkably far-reaching.
CLAIRE ALLFREE LATE IN THE DAY by Tessa Hadley (HarperCollins £16.99, 288 pp)
You know you are in safe hands with Tessa Hadley who, on a sheer sentence- by- sentence level, delivers more enjoyment than almost any other living writer.
This latest explores the complicated hidden relationships between two bohemian couples that become nastily exposed when affable, affluent Zachary dies unexpectedly from a heart attack. Zachary was once a boyfriend of Chris’s but it’s her husband who has an affair with Zach’s fabulously indolent widow lydia, leaving Chris to reassess everything about the self she has become.
Hadley writes with such compassion and wisdom about these privileged but rudderless people that you’ll be hanging on to every word. (Fleet £16.99, 384 pp) VirGinia BailY’s historical novels are so effortlessly enjoyable she almost slips into the guilty pleasure category, yet she is also so accomplished there’s really nothing to feel guilty about.
Her third novel is the story of an abusive love affair between a young italian girl, liliana, and a much older italian fascist in libya during the italian occupation.
it is told in retrospect by the widowed liliana who, now living in England, has become estranged from her family.
Yet when liliana discovers a nephew of hers has been assassinated on the orders of Gaddafi, she resolves at last to return home. Baily sheds light on a neglected area of pre-war history in ways that are both politically astute and deeply satisfying.
POPULAR FICTION WENDY HOLDEN THE FRANK BUSINESS by Olivia Glazebrook
(John Murray £14.99, 288 pp) iF You’rE spending any of the summer with your family, this might strike a chord. a meditation on those close and complex relationships, it’s fabulously written, moving and funny.
it starts with a death, works through various shock revelations and ends in satisfying resolution.
Jem has not seen her father Frank for years when he dies from a heart attack in an airport. But where was he going on Christmas Eve? and what is his and Jem’s connection to the brilliantly selfish Kathleen, star of a Downton abbey-type TV hit, and her handsome-but-flaky actor son sonny?
To find out, Jem must confront the painful past and come to terms with the difficult present.
VINTAGE 1954 by Antoine Laurain
(Gallic Press £8.99, 208 pp) a Glorious timeslip caper in which a glass of the blushful Hippocrene sends the characters back to the Paris of the Fifties.
Mixologist Julien, Goth girl Magalie, american tourist Bob and French businessman Hubert go on a magical mystery tour in which Edith Piaf, audrey Hepburn, Jean Cocteau and salvador Dali all make cameo appearances.
while they are back in the past, they manage to right future wrongs, avoid mistakes about to happen, invent cocktails and fall in love. Just wonderful.
THE STRAWBERRY THIEF by Joanne Harris (Orion £20, 368 pp)
Fans of Chocolat will be thrilled at this return to lansquenet, the rural French village setting for Harris’s most famous novel.
wise chocolatiere Vianne is still there as, down by the river on his houseboat, is the mysterious roux. But it’s their teenage daughter rosette, a mute, who is the focus of this story. an old man has left her some land in his will, but his nasty relatives are not pleased.
Meanwhile, trouble arrives for Vianne in the lissom shape of Morgane who opens a tattoo parlour in the village. Before long, even the vicar’s been inked. Is she a witch? Packed with magic and mystery, this beautifully written tale is an absolute holiday must.
CONTEMPORARY SARA LAWRENCE THE BOOK OF LOVE by Fionnuala Kearney
(Harper Collins £7.99, 416 pp) Pack this modern, epic love story in your beach bag and prepare to get lost in the waves of emotional wisdom it contains. Dom fell in love with Erin the first night he met her.
They have a whirlwind wedding and brush off digs about their relationship not standing a chance.
Their secret weapon is a notebook where they must write down those things they find impossible to say. But this tactic works only with brutal honesty and when a huge secret is withheld for far too long the cracks are immediate and apparently insurmountable.
I OWE YOU ONE by Sophie Kinsella
(Bantam Press £20, 384 pp) ThIs latest from the internationally bestselling author is a wonderful companion for a long sunny day in the garden.
Perfectly named protagonist Fixie is an out- of- control people pleaser who is so concerned with making sure everyone else is Ok that she barely considers her own needs.
The hardest grafter in the family business, Fixie is resistant to pressures from her brother and sister to modernise and change it completely.
however, she isn’t used to standing up for herself or being heard so Fixie must work out what she wants to say and find her voice.
I loved it.
SHORT STORIES EITHNE FARRY
SALT SLOW by Julia Armfield (Picador £12.99, 208 pp) JulIa arMFIElD’s debut is wild and wonderful, full of mythical transformations that take place in the most ordinary of contemporary settings.
The opener, Mantis, sets the tone; it’s a vivid, visceral tale of an ordinary teenage girl recognising an extraordinary familial trait, as she finally grows into her own skin: ‘a suddenness of mandibles and curving neck.’
Elsewhere, a city of reluctant, weary insomniacs are taunted and haunted by their own individual sleeps who’ve stepped out of their hosts’ bodies. and in the marvellous stop Your Women’s Ears With Wax, we head on the road with an all-female band whose music works a siren spell on the girls who come to listen, conjuring a ‘rushing wild euphoria’ in their hearts.
SHOW THEM A GOOD TIME by Nicole Flattery (Bloomsbury Circus £14.99, 256 pp)
ThE funny, sorrowful characters in Flattery’s bold, bracing stories are ‘sick with chaos’, in situations that have tip-tilted into the surreal.
lives have been hollowed out — jobs lost, romances gone awry, parents gone — even as the weight of emotion has bowed them in unexpected ways.
In sweet Talk a small- town teenager develops a hot summer crush on a much older seasonal worker as a killer stalks the country.
and in the title story, a young woman, who has been employed in the porn industry, heads back home to a pretend job in a pretend garage, and poignantly asks: ‘What have I done to deserve this life?’
DEBUTS FANNY BLAKE WHEN ALL IS SAID by Anne Griffin
(Sceptre £8.99, 272 pp) NOW an elderly man, Maurice hannigan sits alone in his local hotel bar.
as he lines up five drinks, he dedicates each one to a person who has helped shape his life: his brother Tony, his stillborn daughter Molly; his disturbed sister-in-law Noreen; his son kevin, and last, but very much not least, his late wife, sadie, who died two years earlier.
running through their stories is the mystery of the whereabouts of an Edward VIII gold sovereign that Maurice, when a boy, stole in an act of revenge. From these narratives emerges a portrait of a life in which revenge, love, loss, and misunderstanding all play their part.
This is a wonderful piece of storytelling that is intimate, compassionate and extraordinarily assured. Maurice’s voice has haunted me since I first read this.
MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Atlantic £12.99, 240 pp)
kOrEDE is a nurse in a lagos hospital who bares her soul to a man in a coma, confident her secrets cannot be repeated.
Just as well, since one of her greatest anxieties involves her sister, ayoola, who has murdered her last three boyfriends and gone as far as roping in korede to help dispose of the bodies.
When ayoola falls for Tade, one of the doctors in the hospital, korede has an uneasy sense of foreboding — but is powerless.
When the comatose patient regains consciousness and has clear recall of what he has been told, things take a decided turn for the worse.
Its short, sharp chapters and distinctive voice make for a funny, sassy, super-smart read that was right up my street.
THE DOLL FACTORY by Elizabeth Macneal (Picador £12.99, 336 pp)
rOsE and Iris Whittle paint faces on dolls in Mrs salter’s Doll Emporium, but Iris nurses ambitions to be an artist.
When she catches the attention of pre-raphaelite painter louis Frost, she agrees to model for him if, in exchange, he will teach her to paint.
But lurking in the shadows is silas reed, a malign taxidermist who watches Iris from afar, nurturing his own plans for her, waiting for the right moment to pounce.
close research is worn lightly to evoke 1850s london life in all its Dickensian glory.
Boasting distinctive characters and a gripping plot fuelled by obsession and passion, this skilfully crafted novel kept me on tenterhooks until the end.