Intervals is an exceptional book, for which every deserved superlative seems cliched, in part because the language of illness, death and bereavement often feels too hollowed out by use to accommodate the... Read more »
At one point in Fiona Williams’s accomplished debut novel, an elderly lady tells 10-year-old Max Hembry that the broken bricks employed to build his family’s cottage were also used as ballast at... Read more »
Indonesia: the world’s largest island nation, 17,000 pieces of land projecting from the waves where Indian and Pacific oceans meet, ranging in scale from the giants of Sumatra, Java and Borneo, to... Read more »
Dutch author Lucas Rijneveld (formerly Marieke Lucas Rijneveld) won the International Booker prize with his debut, The Discomfort of Evening, narrated by a farmer’s daughter coaxed into sex games with her siblings... Read more »
In 2014, the bodies of nearly 800 babies and small children were found in the septic tank of a former mother and baby home in Tuam, Galway. They had been deposited over... Read more »
Missing Persons must have been a very difficult book to write, for certainly it is difficult to read. This is not due to any defects of style or execution – it is... Read more »
At the start of Good Material, we meet Andy, a 35-year-old standup comic who is trying to get over a breakup and listing the reasons why he is better off without his... Read more »
An independent review of libraries in England has found a “lack of recognition” across government and a “lack of awareness” among the general public of what libraries have to offer. The review... Read more »
The premise is this. Piglet is in her early 30s and engaged to the ostensibly perfect Kit. The couple have recently moved into a new-build in Oxford, not far from Kit’s parents.... Read more »