Novelist Naomi Alderman and her newly widowed father sets up a wildlife camera in the back garden of her parent’ home, a few months after he mother dies, capturing the first image of a strange new animal. Low to the ground about the size of a badger, flat face, long, trunk-like nose. Suddenly these “mimmoths” are as common as foxes or dogs. And no one knows where they’ve come from. Alderman created something curious, messy and unexpectedly comforting. The element of solace serves as a counterpoint in the novel’s emphasis on a world in cataclysm; at its centre is an … Continue reading Mammoth’s eliciting a momentary peace

Patrick deWitt’s Dodge City is a novel about a young man Lee Clarke in 1967, Los Angeles, on an amphetamine-fuelled cross-country road trip, fleeing the draft for the safe haven of Canada. He has received his draft notice, calling him up to fight in the Vietnam War. A straitlaced, apolitical twenty-three-year-old from Concrete, Washington, Lee is studying at UCLA until a fistfight leads to his expulsion- and his removal from the deferment list. The draft notice forces him to make the first political decision of his life, and though he’s happy in California and loves his girlfriend, he will leave … Continue reading A nation in crisis: Amphetamine-fuelled trip across the US in the 1960s

Sebastian Faulk’s  protagonist, Philip Deval, is a quite youth with a degree in philosophy and a soldier recently returned from the beaches of Normandy, arrives in Palestine on a peace-keeping mission in the final days of the British Mandate. The Sea of Galilee glitters in the distance as war-weary troops marvel at the novelty of oranges and sun- a paradise that belies a fierce new conflict about to erupt. Some years later, Philip begins work teaching at a school in the English countryside and meets the enigmatic music mistress, Frances Darwood. Over long evenings spent listening to records in her music … Continue reading Meet the enigmatic music mistress

Fallow is a fictional novel of a debt-laden young woman who had  seven pregnancies in 10 years, after signing up to be the world’s first in-house professional surrogate for a corporate behemoth, then finds herself caught in a social experiment of another kind. Natalie knows one truth, there is no such thing as a good job. As the clock ticks away at the workplace harassment call centre, she tries to ignore the increasing pain in her jaw. She has no dental insurance. She has no skills or ambitions. She has student loans. And, minute by minute, she hears the many ways … Continue reading Disarmingly tender, slyly funny world of surrogacy