As racial tensions in the football team erupt, Gwendolyn Brooks is used as an example, by one of the characters in Friday Night Lights, of a great American writer who’s not a white male or Emily Dickinson. A surprising reference in such a mainstream serie…

When did I first see Midnight Cowboy? Maybe in a double bill with something similar at The Scala, King’s Cross, a suitably sleazy venue, especially in the early eighties. On the dole with just enough money for a concessionary ticket, all hunched up on one…

The music industry has always been awash with the blood and vomit from drugs, drink and risky behaviour and yet other than references to televisions and swimming pools and that unhelpful (still) walking cliche, Keith Richards, the hangover (and damage don…

I put off reading Douglas Stuart’s first novel, the Booker-prize winning ‘Shuggy Bain’, for many a month because it sounded like 400+ pages of misery. Set in 1981 in Glasgow, it tells the story of Shuggy and his many tribulations as he tries to negotiate …

In his previous three “hard” science fiction novels, Morden has taken readers to those explorable, exploitable regions of our own solar system that might just offer refuge to a humanity. Though Flight of the Aphrodite references those earlier books, it’s …

A spin on the classic haunted house story, Tell Me I’m Worthless paints a bone-chilling picture of fascism in Britain. The novel follows two former best friends: Alice, a trans woman who sells ‘sissy porn’ to make ends meet, and Ila, a half Asian, half Je…

Newcastle poet Rowan McCabe has made something of a name for himself over the last few years as the world’s first door-to-door poet. This venture saw him knocking on stranger’s doors to ask what was important to them. He then took himself off to his garre…

Mortimer Blackley, assistant editor at the small publishing company ‘The House Of Marvellous Books’ has taken it upon himself to keep a log of what may be the final days of the business. This epistolary novel features his daily musings, along with his rec…

This book might be on your radar, if not for its critical acclaim, then maybe because it’s set in the Toon. A beautiful, well-off Geordie girl scouts average-looking men to model for her artwork. To say I enjoyed Boy Parts would be partially untrue — Irin…

There are echoes of Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel but, grotesqueries aside, Missouri Williams’ The Doloriad is a much stranger and disturbing beast. In a poisoned new world of rotting apartment blocks and disused bui…

There’s something about schools and bullying which is irresistible to novelists, and who can blame them because the scars, literal and metaphorical, run deep. Most of us have been there, running the gauntlet between lessons or waiting, on edge, for the fi…

Karen Joy Fowler scored a huge worldwide hit with ‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’, a family drama with an audacious mid-story twist. Her long-awaited new novel is even better. It’s another family drama (cum saga), this time set in the US in the m…

Anita Kelly's full-length debut is the perfect tonic to the dystopian world we find ourselves in. As politicians work to invalidate so many identities, this queer romance is not just wanted, it’s needed. Dahlia and London are both competing in the competi…

Anita Kelly's full-length debut is the perfect tonic to the dystopian world we find ourselves in. As politicians work to invalidate so many identities, this queer romance is not just wanted, it’s needed. Dahlia and London are both competing in the competi…

If you’re wondering what the new generation of writers will sound like, Saba Sams’ collection of short stories is an incredibly promising offering. Each story depicts the realities of life for millennial and Gen Z women, from the adventure of music festiv…

Who doesn’t love feminist retellings of ancient stories? Well, probably a lot of people. But if you worship Margaret Atwood and Madeline Miller, Shit Cassandra Saw is going to scratch that itch. Unlike those novels, Shit Cassandra Saw is a collection of s…

In a developed world that celebrates the clean - and, because of Covid, more or less demands it - Come Join Our Disease celebrates the dirty. It’s a counterintuitive novel because its theme runs so doggedly counter to the washed, scrubbed and sparkle so c…

Novels about being in bands? A literary micro genre, probably because being in most bands is so bloody tedious. For every thirty-minute gig there are weeks and weeks when not much happens. Sure, there are gigs to arrange, weekly rehearsals to attend, song…

Some novels win you over with their cover, others come highly recommended by critics and friends, but Supper Club sold me on the premise alone. A secret society of women meet up to feast on insane amounts of food, do drugs and practice being unapologetic …

Nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021, Detransition, Baby is a story about three women who are brought together by an unexpected pregnancy and forced to confront their ideas of queerness and motherhood. Ames, who is mainly referred to using mal…

In a high rise on outskirts of Birmingham, Daniel Quinn has rented a flat that was used for a few scenes in his favourite film noir. He watches the videotape on repeat, searching for the answer to a puzzle he keeps us in the dark about. As Quinn describes…

I have to admit, when this book – a self-published piece of non-fiction detailing someone’s experiences working as a cycle courier for Deliveroo – landed on my desk, my heart sank. What next, I thought? My Life As A Baggage Handler at Tees-Valley Airport?…

Graeme Macrae Burnet is surely one of the best writers working in the UK today. His second novel ‘His Bloody Project’, about a brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands in 1869, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016, and …

If you can imagine a conflation of Hubert Selby Jr. and Shirley Jackson, you’d probably have The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez’s unsettling and stiletto sharp book of short stories. Horror, body-shock and subtle social and political commenta…

Take Ten Thousand Apologies (Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure) with a pinch of salt or, more appropriately, a line of something stronger, and revel in its well written mythologies. Questions about truth or otherwise are totally beside the point…

Rob Doyle’s Autobibliography? The kind of book you repeatedly throw across the room only to scamper after it like a dog retrieving a ball. Maddening and beguiling in equal measure, it’s about the year he spent rereading his favourite books. Fifty-two shor…

The work of Buster Keaton – who was making his masterpieces back in the 1920s – continues to enthral today. Two new books on the silent superstar come at his life and legacy from two very different angles. Buster Keaton was renowned for his incredible stu…

‘Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style’ is a new book that charts a period in American history when Black men across the country adopted the clothing of a privileged elite to make it their own. I’ve loved the Ivy League look ever since I became enraptured by Dexy’…

Joan Didion’s account of the year she lost her husband, John Dunne, is invaluable for anyone who has loved someone close to them. Since the world lost Didion in December, it has become even more essential. When the most common responses to bereavement are…

Jenn Shapland’s debut book – which tells the story of mid 20th century writer Carson McCullers – subverts genre conventions, blurring the lines between autobiography and memoir. Shapland beautifully entwines Carson’s story with her own, reflecting on thei…

Nat Ogle’s debut novel details the story of Corina, a young nurse who works at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospital in London. She also spends a good chunk of her time caring for her mother who has advanced breast cancer. In short: she’s got her hands full. But…

This short story collection, set in the north-east, shows how a variety of characters can live in communities where everyone thinks they know each other’s secrets. While stories like ‘Slipping the Cable’ don’t shy away from the darkness found in so many h…

Ten working class poets are represented in this anthology including Keith Armstrong, Jane Burn, Nev Clay, Lisa Matthews, Joan Johnston and Paul Summers, and, pleased to report, it’s a volume that contains little nuggets of delight on every page. In her in…

January is a tough month for a lot of people (that being said, what month hasn’t been tough recently?). If you’ve been tired, broke and frustrated, the influx of self-improvement propaganda the new year brings has the potential to irritate you even more. …

Hell’s Angels living in a quiet suburban street, black widow spiders in the dusty rooms of an abandoned house overlooking the Mexican border, someone with a BB gun shooting a Gila monster in the eye. The kind of random scenes from a childhood Joan Didion …

Always slightly cynical when I see a paperback smothered in hyperbolic pull quotes from publications as different as The Guardian and, spit, The Daily Mail, but Luster is as great as every reviewer says it is. The book’s protagonist aspiring painter Edie,…

There are real rock stars and then there are a whole load of corporate shills who are factory farmed into existence for one job, and one job only. Their job is to milk the consumer cash cow without doing much to either rock the system or shock said cow in…

Billions of years in the making, this story features no extra-terrestrials, no ancient underground cities and not even the odd alien pyramid. Instead science-fiction author Simon Morden puts on his “Real, Unashamed Science” hat to give us the biography of…

In today's culture where there is a fear of “saying the wrong thing”. Imani’s book helps us to do the opposite. It is a fantastic starting point for anyone who feels daunted by the discourse around identity politics and intersectionality. Each chapter tac…

Man Enough To Be Woman is the new autobiography from Jayne County, transgender punk rocker and pioneer, best known as the lead singer of Wayne County and the Electric Chairs. Growing up openly gender nonconforming in Georgia in the 60s and 70s, County’s e…

Dedalus remain one of the most interesting publishers in the UK. They established themselves in 1983 and became known for novels that explored the bizarre, the unusual and the surreal. Since then they have specialised in both European literature – in tran…

Since daylight savings came to steal our joy away in October, my main source of joy has been listening to music. When I saw the title The Importance of Music to Girls, needless to say I thought this memoir would connect with me, and it absolutely did. It …

Sarah Hall’s searing new novel is set in a world at a slight remove to our own. We know this because when a deadly new virus arrives at our shores, the Prime Minister who announces a national lockdown live on TV is a woman. We also learn that the virus in…

William Atkin’s introductory piece alone is worth the entry price. His dissection of the worst traits of travel writing along with the best traits acts as a benediction: we can read Granta 157, Should We Have Stayed at Home, in the knowledge we haven’t pa…

I don’t say this often, which tells you all you need to know about the publishing industry, but this book of London set short stories by Iphigenia Baal reminded me of some of the ‘repetitive Beat Generation’ fiction that came in the wake of Irvine Welsh’s…

I only noticed Selina Todd’s biography of Shelagh Delaney, Tastes of Honey (The making of Shelagh Delaney and a cultural revolution), was out in paperback because I’m the kind of nerdy ex bookseller who’s obsessed about such things - boxes of which I felt…

Mahmood Hussein Mattan was a much-travelled former merchant seaman from Somalia who eventually settled in Tiger Bay in the docks district of Cardiff. It was here that me met, and married, Laura Williams – a worker at the local paper factory. This was in t…

Since we found ourselves in the pandemic hellscape we’ve been through for nearly two years now, it can feel strange to revisit media that was made before the turn of the decade (where are their masks?!). But The Lonely City, Olivia Laing’s exploration of …

Talia Hibbert writes steamy, witty books with diverse casts. ‘Get a Life Chloe Brown’ is no exception. Chloe has moved out of her family home, the first task on her “get a life” list. She has suffered with fibromyalgia for the last few years. After her di…

In this bite-sized 80-page read, Sarah Perry reclaims the ‘Essex Girl’, vouching for the importance of loud, unapologetic women. Bear in mind: the term ‘Essex Girl’ is used very loosely in this book. While it’s inspiring to read about the histories of Ros…

There was a time when female pilots captured the imagination of the press – particularly during the early era of flight. Amy Johnson and her airborne ilk were regularly featured in newspapers, and on newsreels, when their daring and skill saw them break v…

I started to watch a documentary about the artist and writer Brian Catling the other day, but I was so freaked out by what I was seeing I had to turn it off. But what it had immediately reminded me of was the short stories in Scar City by Joel Lane, a wri…

In Weird Fucks you are on the road with a nameless narrator as she couples and uncouples in various countries in the sixties and seventies. It’s an uncomfortable grand tour though, as the sexual encounters are mainly the kind selfishly manipulated by the …

Halfway through this beautifully written biography I realised that what I understood about the politics of punk specifically and about music generally was almost all filtered through the philosophical lens of Malcolm McLaren. Jesus, alert the punk police …