A trucker’s load of love and loss

WE ARE NOT IN THE WORLD

Conor O’Callaghan

Penguin, £8.99

Struggling to process his mother’s death, and the ending of his affair with a married woman, rookie haulage driver Paddy has borrowed a lorry to drive to France.

He’s also smuggled along his daughter, Kitty, hoping that a road trip will mend their relationship. At first, father and daughter just indulge in “interminable twaddle”, but they have a multitude of issues to come to terms with, including the reason for Kitty’s recent stay in hospital. O’Callaghan takes the non-chronological route, sometimes leaving things hanging mid-sentence, as he pieces together the fragments of a dysfunctional family. The title expresses alienation, and Paddy longs for the haven of his former family home in Ireland, now sold, but the landscape they move through epitomises his and Kitty’s rootlessness and disconnection. Downbeat in mood, poet O’Callaghan’s second novel is sometimes confusingly opaque, but it’s graced with intelligent, lyrical writing and a strong emotional pay-off.

A STUDY IN CRIMSON Robert J Harris

Polygon,

£8.99

Robert J Harris (not to be confused with the Fatherland author) has written adventures for John Buchan’s creation Richard Hannay, but I find his Sherlock Holmes more engaging. Following the example of the Basil Rathbone films, he has placed Holmes and

Watson in the London of the 1940s, where, under the cover of blackout, a copycat is recreating the murders of Jack the Ripper. He has struck twice, both times on the anniversary of the original killing, and Holmes has less than a month to prevent a third. Like Anthony Horowitz’s 2011 pastiche, The House of Silk, A Study in Crimson goes to slightly darker places than Conan Doyle would have, and Harris allows himself a few liberties with his sleuths’ backstories, but it’s a solid detective thriller that moves at a good pace. The Second World War, and the suggestions of a society on the brink of change, make an intriguing backdrop.

DEEP WHEEL ORCADIA Harry Josephine Giles Picador, £10.99

Deep Wheel Orcadia is a groundbreaking book: a science fiction novel in verse and the first adult novel written in the Orcadian dialect for 50 years. It’s set on a space station in orbit around a gas giant, where miners farm the atmosphere, but supplies are becoming exhausted and commercial interests are moving elsewhere. Astrid, newly home after attending art school on Mars, falls in love with Darling, a trans woman running away from her privileged background. Interestingly, the original Orcadian is often plainer and more comprehensible than the parallel English translation, which runs words together in an attempt to approximate the meaning of the Orcadian term. While exploring themes of gender and capitalism, the sci-fi tropes aren’t particularly original, but it’s the kind of book that makes you regret that there isn’t more science fiction poetry, as the mythic sweep suits the form while the traditional dialect roots it in lived experience.