At this time of year, walk into most bookshops and you’ll be greeted with a tonne of tomes hoping to tie-up that quirky Christmas gift market: books that generally contain material that can be consumed in small chunks: toilet books. I’d usually give such …

When Abby’s mother-in-law commits suicide, it feels like something of a fresh start. Finally, her overbearing influence on Abby’s husband Ralph can be exorcised, and the two can move on from their past traumas and start a family of their own. But when Abb…

Newcastle. The modern day. Two women are at an impasse. Vivien is a property developer looking to totally revamp the run-down and crime ridden Valley Park Estate. Everyone on the estate has been relocated accept one. Binty. She’s lived in her house for de…

The Bad Politics of Good Taste. The Nation magazine’s perfect summation of Nathalie Olah’s Bad Taste. How does ‘good taste’ in the world of fashion or leisure or art, for instance, support the world of big business and capitalist fundamentalism? How has l…

For obvious reasons the only novels that made sense to me this year were novels by Palestinian writers like Adania Shibli, Selma Dabbagh and Isabella Hammad. Ibtisam Azem is another writer I’m adding to this list as her novel The Book of Disappearance (su…

Kate Atkinson takes obvious delight in creating memorable characters and she’s at it again with her latest. All the main players here are given colourful backstories, and even those with walk-on parts are skilfully sketched with a quick swish of her pen (…

This twice Booker nominated author has an enviable reputation, and his latest features a truly impressive bit of world-building. Actually, scratch that. Let’s go with: world-dismantling. It’s sometime in the future and the world has suffered catastrophic …

1927. With the coming of recorded sound, the United States is ushering in a new age of popular music. The Catchers are the men – and in Xan Brooks’ fine new novel, The Catchers are all men – tasked with travelling the country on behalf of their record com…

I don’t usually go a bundle for Science Fiction – all that nonsense about hyper-jumps and star clusters exploding beyond the moon of Xoon – but I found plenty to enjoy in this short story collection from local author Gray Rankin. As the book’s title kind…

One of the defining novels of the nineties, ‘The Beach’ is a story about a young British man’s adventure to a tropical Thai paradise that has been untouched by tourism. Written by an infuriatingly young Alex Garland, who was only twenty-six at the time, t…

It’s rare that I take an interest when a book I love gets turned into a movie – usually I don’t even watch it. But a couple of years ago, it was announced that Saoirse Ronan was going to be starring in ‘The Outrun’, and Christ was I excited. It’s an irres…

The unluckiest wannabe pop-star in the world? Not quite. Lawrence has got a back catalogue that’s well regarded and still available to purchase, he’s the subject of a very good documentary, countless articles and this book - i.e. more than enough for post…

Recognising the Stranger (On Palestine and Narrative) is an attempt by Isabella Hammad to subtly wrest the Palestine conflict away from non-fiction writers. To show how in Rashid Khalidi’s words, “Literature can be much, much more revealing than political…

The English author Celia Dale died in 2011, just shy of her 100th birthday, and during her lifetime she published thirteen novels. The first of these was ‘The Least of These’ (1943), which shone a light on a family as they lived through The Blitz. Her fin…

The United States. Maine. Charles is a white man who was raised by a white mother and a Penobscot stepfather, the Penobscot being an indigenous people native to North America. After the passing of the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, in 1980, Charles, …

How do you deal with grief when the person you’re grieving is still alive? Overwhelmed by both her father’s critical injuries after a car accident and her husband’s long-term chronic illness, Melissa Broder’s latest protagonist flees to the desert to answ…

Towards the end of this fine debut, one of the characters says: “I think mamas are mostly always trying their best. It just looks different depending on the cards they are dealt and the hurt they are holding.” The cards dealt to the characters in Rachel S…

Ania Card's first novel is a “love letter to all the mistakes we make in our twenties, to friendships that feel like love”. It certainly transports you to the age where you feel like you should know who you are but still find yourself searching to truly w…

One reviewer wrote “if the Gallaghers were Scottish”, and my reply? Absolute bollocks. Certain rules forbid such rank comparisons - for more on this, check out Neil Kulkarni on Oasis. Sure, William and Jim Reid argued and fought like all brothers do but t…

Baltimore born, forged tough in the acid mania of 60s San Francisco, and dying as a seasoned New Yorker, Cookie Mueller would have been at home anywhere. Despite her rise from obscurity as a regular face in the Baltimore underground cinema scene – particu…

Foreverism by Grafton Tanner, published in 2023, is a short but powerful exploration of nostalgia and its multifaceted effects. The book analyses how contemporary culture continuously revisits and updates the past, coining the term “foreverism” to describ…

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos plots the course of a relationship as the end of East Germany looms. Hans is the kind of male character from a Milan Kundera novel: a married man who intellectualises why he can’t keep his cock in his pocket, whose wife cuts to th…

Lynne Tillman’s latest chronicles a series of one night stands and love affairs across New York, Amsterdam, London and other places in the 1960s. ‘Lost and disorientated women aimlessly drifting through life’ is a genre that makes up a decent chunk of my …

Service has three narrators: Daniel is a celebrity chef who has recently been accused of sexual assault. Julie is his wife and the mother of his two sons. Hannah is a woman who waitressed at Daniel’s restaurant while she was at university. She’s not one o…

It is no surprise that this, Laura Fish's third novel, was the ‘S I Leeds Reader's Choice Winner’ in 2022. It opens with the death of Koliwe's father, a tragedy which leads to her decision to travel to his birthplace in Eswatini, the former Kingdom of Swa…

Neoliberalism. It’s an ideology that has been pursued by just about every major party in the west – some, admittedly, with more zeal than others – since the late 1970s. And yet you never hear politicians describe themselves as staunch neoliberals: hence: …

William Boyd can turn his hand to any genre. He’s been responsible for some brilliant, Evelyn Waugh-like farces including ‘A Good Man in Africa’ and ‘Stars and Bars’. He’s also written romantic, foreign adventures such as ‘The Blue Afternoon’, and several…

The success of Rita Bullwinkel’s ‘Headshot’, released earlier this year, has promoted a quick reprint of ‘Belly Up’, her earlier short story collection. ‘Headshot’, which details the exploits of a bunch of young women who gather together to battle it out …

“I want to read about the trouble a person might have with making things. About what might stop a person making things, making art, I mean. Like money”. A request which leads Nicola Long to the letters of Donna Dreeman, a potter who died in the eighties, …

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson is one of the best books I have ever read, and I devoured it in no time. This utterly beautiful yet heartbreaking novel follows two young Black artists in London, both of whom remain unnamed. The story delves into the mal…

When I think of Billy Childish I also think of English outsiders like Lawrence from Felt, Denim etc, and David and Rachel from Comet Gain. People who’ve used the dole and housing benefits as a basis from which to build ‘careers’ as music makers no matter …

Jack is a 53-year-old copper working the Newcastle beat. He’s not exactly an old school dinosaur, but no one would ever accuse of him of being woke. When Jack is involved in a serious car crash, he’s sent for a routine head scan and the doctor breaks the …

Benjamin Myers’ last novel ‘Cuddy’ was a bold, mystical, millennium-hopping story about St. Cuthbert and the north – its people and its landscape – which cast one eye towards the heavens. ‘Rare Singles’ is an altogether more straightforward tale, but this…

The debut novel from Jenna Clake sees an unnamed 26-year-old woman living alone in a block of flats. She’s broken up with her relatively long-term boyfriend and over the course of the novel we learn that their relationship was a particularly abusive one. …

Seahurst, the place her father died, the house next to the ruins on the edge of a collapsing cliff was once Evie's sanctuary. As she escapes her abusive partner with her son, she hopes it will be again. But Seahurst has secrets waiting to be uncovered. S.…

Rachel Cattle’s UH HUH HER is a gripping and beautifully written trip through the scenes from an artist’s life, bouncing back and forth in time from the unnamed narrator’s early life to the present day. There’s punk and the Boy with the Blond Hair, The La…

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan is about family and community and how the monstrosities of the Sri Lankan civil war both fracture old ties and creates new ones in ways unimaginable before the conflict. The novel’s protagonist, Shashi, a Tamil, is…

Jennifer Belle takes you back to the summer of 1982, as fourteen-year-old Swanna is the only kid waiting to be picked up from camp. When her mother eventually arrives, she’s with a new boyfriend and they’re headed to an artist colony instead of home to Ne…

It’s 1990 and the body of a three-year-old girl has been found in a London housing estate. Immediately, the finger is pointed at the Greens, an Irish family that has never belonged since immigrating ten years before. While the family lives out their worst…

The excellent debut novel from August Thompson begins with a death and an arresting sentence: “It took three car crashes to kill Jake.” Alongside Jake for the first two car crashes was Theron, and Theron is in Fort Worth in Texas for Jake’s funeral. We le…

At the turn of the century, the not-yet-celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain wrote what would become one of the defining memoirs about cooking and kitchen life. Combining a cheeky sense of humour with lip-smacking food writing, the book became ground zero for …

I don’t know enough about Miranda July’s life to say how autobiographical ‘All Fours’ is, but I think it’s fair to say that the unnamed narrator of ‘All Fours’ has plenty in common with July, as, just like July, she has several fingers in several arty pie…

Librarian Martha thought she was destined to remain single all her life (she had a “love curse” put on her when she was at school), but when she meets Alan the pair hit it off and get married. She’s not exactly head-over-heels, but Alan is solid; a good c…

In a recent interview for The Big Issue Paul Weller said that, “This country is run by idiots and fools”, and if you thought that was a typical Weller exaggeration reading Rory Stewart’s Politics On the Edge proves his point on every single page. Apparent…

Rose Boyt’s memoir, Naked Portrait, is the story of childhood trauma, her father, her mum and, to my mind, how a couple of challenging years in Boyt’s early thirties proved to be a kind of hinge to her future life. Based on diary entries she looks back an…

The Man in all ‘his’ various incarnations: government, council, police force, et al, doesn’t like freedom. Particularly the freedom to dance, have fun and cross pollinate with other groups of people who like doing the same. Freedom can lead to all kinds o…

Pig Tales follows an unnamed narrator who becomes employed as a sex worker. A dazzling beauty, she’s both desired by men and envied by women – until she starts to transform into a pig. As a woman, the narrator’s ability to earn a living is completely reli…

This novel doesn’t have chapters, it has “fragments” – 100 of them – which may give you some idea of the kind of book it is: impressionistic and, yes, fragmentary. The setting is modern day Paris, and Clara is doing research for a biography she’s writing …

Rosie Andrews grabbed herself a ‘Bestseller’ rosette for her debut novel ‘The Leviathan’, a dark and atmospheric 17th century mystery where ancient myths rubbed up against enlightened thinking. ‘The Puzzle Wood’ sees her shifting focus to the mid-1800s an…

This superb selection of short stories from Sara Maitland all feel fresh. They span a whole host of eras and genres, running the gamut from women fighting for the vote to Moss Witches protecting their lands. The connection and enjoyment I found in the sto…

In her latest essay slash memoir slash fanfiction, Gevinson’s subject is someone who focusses on youth and nostalgia: Taylor Swift. (She’s a singer by all accounts…) Whether you’re sick of hearing about her or not, Swift is the perfect case study for this…

The title of this fine novel is taken from a speech purportedly given by Tariq ibn Ziyad, an Umayyad commander who initiated the conquest of what is now present day Spain back in the 8th century. He burned his men’s ships in the harbour, so they couldn’t …

One would often see nerds, geeks, or in modern parlance, NPCs (non-playable characters), train-spotting or lurking around the transport or local history sections of a Waterstones. Maybe very occasionally see them on an early evening television programme f…

“Amber traced the silver lines across her groin, which marked her first severing from her daughter, the first sign of their physical distance.” Amber's faith has brought her to a new marriage and a small town - a home where she and her children can flouri…