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★★★☆☆ Translated from the Danish, Dorthe Nors’ Mirror, Shoulder, Signal is a slight, anxious novel about self-improvement and self-acceptance. Centered around middle-aged Sonja’s decision to enroll in a driving school and finally get her...
★★★★☆ Novels that feature writers have become a tired trope in contemporary literature: like Chekhov’s gun, the first sign of Microsoft Office booting up in a book will invariably result in the delivery of...
★★☆☆☆ Julián Herbert’s kaleidoscopic, autobiographical novel Tomb Song is a paean to his dying mother, written in what feels like a real-time bedside scrawl. “I’ve endeavored to draw a freehand portrait of my mother,”...
★★★★☆ Spanning fifty years and three generations, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair tracks a network of artistic acquaintances through high-society London. Opening in Oxford during World War II, the novel loosely revolves around David Sparsholt, an...
★★★☆☆ U.S. Representative-turned-novelist Steve Israel delivers his second novel Big Guns, which carries the torch of the 2005 comedy film Thank You for Smoking—it’s the satirical tale of an industry that revels in its...
★★★★★ Debut novelists disproportionately tend to write about aspiring writers. This often indicates the author’s mere desire to write, rather than actually having something of value to express. But this need not always be...
★★★☆☆ Chronicling the 1895 fall of the Gaza Empire in Mozambique, Mia Couto’s Woman of the Ashes is a finely-researched work of epic potential. The first of a trilogy, this novel follows the lives...
★★★★☆ Adam and Anita feel as if they don’t belong. In fact, it was over that mutual feeling that they first met, at a New Year’s party in their late 20s. He’s from the...
★★★☆☆ Channeling Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, Ned Beauman’s novels are sprawling and hilarious works that tumble into realms of inspired, lost-in-time exotica. 2012’s The Teleportation Accident (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize)...
