Philip Hensher  begins in “A History of the Novel in Britain”, a new history of both an art and an industry, in the eighteenth century, when people began to read in ever greater numbers, seeking words that helped explain their hopes and desires. A new kind of literature was needed for this growing market for readers, one that reflected as many different lives in its pages as there were people to buy them, that could change with the times and do something new: something novel. Hensher describes how the evolutionary scramble by writers and publishers to get attention drove constant innovation … Continue reading Invigorating survey of British fiction

Imagine the place of  future technology in American, as the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Trust turns to the future with an extraordinary novel that examines the palce of technology in the American imagination. Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch filled with both uncertainty and promise, an orphan is adrift in a city on the brink of a great transformation. The state has been dismantled, and humans are reinventing social bonds and learning new ways to co-exit with nature. Following a childhood defined loss, survival and found family, the orphan grows up to become a “pincher,” someone … Continue reading A novel about connection

New York Times bestselling author Sigrid Nunez has become one of the contemporary fiction’s most distinctive voices producing nine penetrating, profound novels celebrated by fans and critics alike. Ordinary and middle-aged women, living in cramped New York apartments feature in “It Will Come Back to You”. Elderly women, living in memory care facilities, somewhere upstate. Teenage girls, spending their summers in Connecticut, alienated by their parents. Divorcees, single mothers, daughters and grand-daughters. Women of the American middle class, women of the American proletariat. Women of the 1970s; women of the Covid-19 pandemic, Nunez who has always been a New York … Continue reading New body sexualising it for the very first time

In the fourth instalment of Balle’s expansive, Danish writer Solvej Balle’s speculative fiction septology, we pick up with Tara Selter, former antiquarian book dealer, who has been repeating the 18th of November for 1,892 days, over five years, According to her calculations, she is now about 35 years old and teems with new faces, new people and voices from every corner of the western world. She is no longer alone in her repetitions. In Book III, Tara met other people also trapped in the same repeating day, first sociologist Henry Dale, whom she encountered at a University lecture on Roman supply … Continue reading Lessons from the time loop saga