Upward Bound is a dismal adult daycare centre in the Los Angeles suburbs, with “poop-coloured” walls and a small swimming pool out the back. The name on the sign is cruelly misleading... Read more »
This gothic-inflected saga has received much attention in Europe for its quirky and confident take on 20th-century Hungarian history. It is sobering to reflect that its author not only has no personal memory... Read more »
‘Serve, smile, procreate’: Yesteryear author Caro Claire Burke on the rise of the tradwife | Fiction
Gingham dresses, linen aprons; toddlers smiling toothily out from their perch on a perfectly cocked hip. And the mothers holding these babies? They’re beautiful, obviously. They speak in a whisper. Their skin... Read more »
Towards the end of Love Lane, elderly protagonist Harry Cane becomes a figure of twinkly-eyed mischief. Gossiping with his granddaughter Pip, he advises her that “people without secrets … are like people... Read more »
‘May I say that I’m very glad to meet you,” Woody Brown taps on his word board. Brown is formal, funny and strikingly eloquent. He has a formidable ability to tell stories that reach into the... Read more »
Two experimental novels have jointly won the Queen Mary small press fiction prize, formerly known as the Republic of Consciousness prize. Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group by Rebecca Gransden, published... Read more »
Sophie Mackintosh has established a reputation for speculative literary fiction about young women’s desires and suffering at the hands of men. Her new novel, Permanence, is less plainly political than earlier work,... Read more »
Anna Dempsey has been named the winner of the inaugural Hilary Mantel prize for fiction, taking home £7,500 for her unpublished novel This Is About an Alligator and Nothing Else. The newly... Read more »
Brandon Taylor’s third novel, following the Booker-shortlisted Real Life and 2023’s The Late Americans, is full of hands. It’s set in the years after a pandemic that made many people desperate “to... Read more »