LITERARY FICTION
THE HARPY by Megan Hunter
(Picador £14.99, 256 pp) THE legendary harpy — taloned, winged and mercilessly vengeful — has long obsessed former Classics student Lucy.
When she discovers her husband Jake has been having an affair, she hits upon a novel method of revenge. Channelling the spirit of the fearsome creature, she determines that she will hurt Jake three times in return, after which, and with his agreement, they will be even.
The preposterousness of the solution is only momentarily distracting. It permits Hunter to write viscerally and incisively about her real themes: the taboos of female desire and rage; the loss of self that comes with motherhood; and the violence inflicted on women’s bodies by both childbirth and men.
As Lucy’s anger becomes an energy, she begins to feel herself transforming. The momentum builds to a hallucinatory conclusion which sets this striking, pared-down modern myth apart from the mass of domestic noirs.
PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke
(Bloomsbury £14.99, 272pp) THE hermit-like Piranesi of this book isn’t the 18thcentury Italian artist, but he does inhabit the kind of fantastical, labyrinthine building that his namesake obsessively etched.
Filled only with seabirds and marble statues, the ‘House’ is an edifice of enormous proportions, its rooms giantsize and its corridors endless. Piranesi’s sole companion — besides a small collection of human remains — is ‘the Other’, a neatly bearded, stylishly suited scholar for whom Piranesi dutifully maps the House’s countless halls.
Mysteries teasingly mount up in this tale of academic obsession, false imprisonment and ancient magic from the author of the blockbusting Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
It’s a gently comic, thoroughly beguiling read, although in spite of a late twist that sheds new light on Piranesi’s world, Clarke’s plot never quite persuaded me. However, the ‘House’ — its upper rooms lost in clouds, its lower chambers drowned by the sea — will haunt my dreams.
D (A TALE OF TWO WORLDS) by Michel Faber
(Doubleday £16.99, 304 pp) THE heroine of this ‘modernday Dickensian fable’ is schoolgirl Dhikilo, a refugee from littleknown Somaliland who now lives in the fictional seaside town of Cawber-on-Sands with her adoptive mum and dad.
Her dramatic backstory is, however, nothing compared to the adventure that awaits when the letter ‘D’ mysteriously disappears from the language.
While Cawber residents seem oblivious, the eccentric Professor Dodderfield knows that the only way to get the stolen letter back is for Dhikilo to track it down in the fantastical, wintry land of Liminus.
While D is part-affectionate homage, part-exuberant fan fiction — a mash-up inspired not just by Dickens, but by Narnia, Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard Of Oz — there’s no mistaking its moral intent: this is a Brexit-era tale about the evils of racism and intolerance, and the importance of respect.
YA readers will love it, but with baddies including the crone-like ‘Magwitches’, Faber’s brio and bubbly ingenuity will delight adult readers, too.