Fiction
Erosion of the Will: A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk
‘The critical cliché about Pamuk is that he is preoccupied with the cultural tensions between East and West. The cliché is true, up to a point. In subtle and complex ways, Pamuk’s novels depict a Turkish society caught between the conflicting imperatives of tradition and modernity. A Strangeness in My Mind weaves an examination of the social and political forces that have shaped modern Turkey around a sympathetic portrayal of a decisively ordinary central character, a humble street vendor named Mevlut Karataş.’ James Ley on Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel
The Power of Roses: Waiting for the Electricity by Christina Nichol
‘Platters of eggplant rolled in garlic and nuts sit on dishes of roasted wild turkey; on top of them are plates of goose pâté, sweet carrots, roasted red peppers, stuffed grape leaves, and nettles leaves boiled with ground walnuts. “In our country,” explains the narrator, “the buildings are always falling down [so] we pile plates on top of each other, like a last hope”. Further piles include potato and beef stew, chicken and tomato soup, mutton pilaf, beet salad layered with cream, fried forest mushrooms, crêpes flavoured with pepper, a trout slit open for the eggs, and knucklebone soup.’
She Thinks She Is The Boss: The Story of the Lost Child
It’s worth wondering why readers respond to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels the way they do. Which is to say that these four books haven’t just been read, enjoyed and praised: they have been devoured, adored, rhapsodised about, eagerly awaited – and now there will be no more of them, mourned. Well might we talk of ‘Ferrante Fever’, for there has hardened a core set of symptoms: neglect of responsibilities, reduced productivity, sleep disturbance, difficulty rising from a seated position. The condition is more common in women than in men but, curiously (well, at least for those people who believe that Jennifer Weiner’s ‘goldfinching’ theory holds merit), as common in critics as in readers.
What To Leave Out
Two memoirs, one fiction? Or one family history, two fictions entwined into a single narrative, and a ‘reflection on the arc of a life’? All three of these books show women writing themselves into being, as they construct narrative from the raw materials of unwieldy lives, whether imagined or real. Each writes and rewrites sensation, tactile detail, exchange or confrontation, revising and rediscovering through the process. Sophia Barnes on new work by Drusilla Modjeska, Debra Adelaide and Beth Yahp
In the Swash Zone: Harriet Chandler by Moya Costello
Taking the means of production and dissemination into your own hands through self-publication throws a spanner into the established system of book marketing and promotional recognition. Is that why Moya Costello’s brilliant, beautiful book, Harriet Chandler, slipped through the net?
Rewriting the American Myth: Failed Frontiersmen
‘As the mythic space of the American imagination, the frontier has never closed. It remains the place where America conceives its identity, its values, and its destiny.’ Chris Conti on a new book about the enduring impact of frontier mythology on American fiction.
The Rings of Saturn: A Lasting Chronicle of Mourning
‘Rings of Saturn is not a novel in the standard form; it is part travelogue, part memoir, part essay-meditation and part fiction. It’s a riff and an improvisation on found and obsessed-over material, and a close reading of place, territories, time, texts and history.’ Shannon Burns on reading W.G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn – twenty years on.
A Diva and Her Readers
‘Already a substantial Eliot arts industry exists, ranging from academe to television, and now appear yet more books on this fascinating Victorian subject, both acts of hommage. Two very different women, journalist Rebecca Mead and academic/novelist Patricia Duncker, united by their enthusiasm for Eliot’s writing, engage with the giantess of Victorian letters. They follow in a tradition of Eliot readers, whose involvement in the texts created a broad church of worshipping fandom, something apparent in her lifetime.’