Tag Archives: Fiction

The Dumas Club – Arturo Perez-Reverte

First published in English in 1996, translated from the Spanish by Sonia Soto, The Dumas Club is Arturo Perez-Reverte’s third novel. Though narrated by Boris Balkan, Madrilenian editor, writer and Alexandre Dumas obsessive, its protagonist is one Lucas Corso, a ‘mercenary of the book world’ who approaches Balkan to verify the authenticity of a supposed Dumas manuscript. Finding himself subsequently dispatched by a different client to seek out a rare book on demonology he’s soon caught up in a bizarre trail of events bearing striking similarities to the story of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, much to Corso’s scorn.

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A Spool of Blue Thread – Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler’s 20th novel, A Spool of Blue Thread was published back in 2015 and subsequently nominated for both the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize the same year. Following the Whitshank family through three generations of life in Baltimore, it’s a sort of (largely) plot-free, rambling look at American familial life that bounces back and forth in time in a free-flowing, relaxed story of everyday life. It centers around the middle generation of Red and Abby, branching off to take closer looks at their children and at Red’s parents but always coming back to the pair of them.
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Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All – Jonas Jonasson

Jonas Jonasson, author of The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden, continues his trend of long book titles with his third novel – Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All. Beautifully translated into English by Rachel Wilson-Broyles, it deals with the trials and tribulations of a misanthropic hotel receptionist who finds himself in an unconventional business relationship with an equally embittered, atheist ex-priest and the titular Hitman Anders. Generally befuddled but still intimidatingly dangerous, the hitman proves to be both a lucrative cash-cow and an unpredictable liability.
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The Shipping News – Annie Proulx

Despite boasting a Pulitzer Prize and a big-name Hollywood adaptation, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is an unhurried and unconventional novel, a simple story which nonetheless requires a fair amount of thought to get the best out of. It follows the life of a man referred to only as Quoyle, one of life’s permanent losers, burdened with crippling self doubt and never quite able to succeed at anything he does. When his painful marriage comes to a harrowing end, he takes his daughters and joins his aunt in returning to the home of his ancestors in the wilderness of Newfoundland, where he tries to start his life over again.

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Q&A – Vikas Swarup

Published in 2005, Q&A was Vikas Swarup’s debut novel, and went on to be adapted into the hit movie Slumdog Millionaire. Hopping between Delhi and Mumbai, it features Ram, a young orphan who finds himself the unexpected winner of Who Will Win a Billion? – India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Arrested on suspicion of cheating by the show’s organisers, Ram finds himself telling much of his life story in order to explain how a poor, uneducated orphan could know the answers to the quiz show’s questions. Keep reading…

I, Lucifer – Glen Duncan

Ever wondered what it would be like if the devil could tell his side of the story? Well look no further than I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan, a darkly comic novel in which the Fallen Angel is offered one last chance at redemption. Justifiably suspicious of the offer, he agrees to a month’s trial period, which he spends inhabiting the body of one Declan Gunn, a down-at-heel writer whose last acts before Lucifer’s introduction were to purchase a pack of razor blades and run a hot bath. With Gunn’s body at his disposal, Lucifer proceeds to make the most of his time on the corporeal plane, with varying results, and sets out to tell his side of the story while he’s at it.

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The Orphan Master’s Son – Adam Johnson

North Korea and the day to day lives of its citizens is a subject matter that isn’t touched upon often in fiction, for good reason. Adam Johnson puts it eloquently in the afterword to his book The Orphan Master’s Son – “we’ll know the true way to write a novel set in North Korea when North Korean novelists become free to tell their own stories.” That being said, with this book Johnson has created a powerful, emotional tale which feels honest, true to life, and – in keeping with the image most of us have of North Korea – painfully bleak.

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The Circle – Dave Eggers

Imagine if Google could provide all of your online needs – social media, communication, banking, entertainment, all in one place. No need for multiple passwords and user names, no need in fact to log in at all – your identity is linked indelibly with Google. Doesn’t that sound so much simpler and more convenient than what we have at the moment? Scale that up – think about global tracking to keep track of where your children are, or permanently-on video cameras keeping an eye on your house, your family, the things most previous to you. Sounds ideal, right?

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The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden – Jonas Jonasson

Like the ‘difficult second album’ effect that plagues so many successful bands, some authors face a tricky decision when writing their second novel – do they branch out and try something totally different from their successful first novel, or try to recapture what worked so well and stick to formula? In his follow up to the hugely successful ‘The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared’, Swedish author Jonas Jonasson has stuck pretty close to the formula that resulted in the delightfully absurd ‘Hundred Year Old Man…’ but just about manages not to simply repeat himself.

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The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

While some authors churn books out in quick succession, releasing one or two a year, others make us wait longer for our fix. When it comes to Donna Tartt, we have to wait so long between books that the only feasible approach when she releases a new novel is to savour it, to resist the urge to fly through and finish it as quickly as possible. The Goldfinch is her third book in 22 years, coming 11 years after 2002’s The Little Friend, and after such a long wait it comes with a heavy weight of expectation attached.

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