Kath O'Connor’s debut novel, Inheritance, follows two women – an IVF hopeful and her grandmother – who carry the BRCA1 gene and contract ovarian cancer. It’s very close to being memoir.
In the shadow of the climate crisis, a wave of speculative stories ask what it means to live in a world where everything is not an extractable resource — and where humans are not in control.
Ian McEwan has forged his own genre – crisply realist surfaces mixed with sudden excursions into the darkest corridors of the mind. In Lessons, the central character reveals a writerly consciousness.
Nights of Plague is set on a fictional island in the early 20th century. Is it an allegory of empire’s fall; a contemplation on corruption and East-West tension or a reflection on pandemic life?
Elizabeth Strout’s novel Oh William! has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her follow up book takes us inside the head of a small, loving, anxious, slightly neurotic person during lockdown.
This Book Week, don’t stress about the costume and don’t worry about what the other mums or dads are sewing or buying. Costumes are fun but what matters is to let your kid read what they enjoy.
Jay Carmichael’s novel explores how Australian same-sex attracted men lived during the repressive period after the end of the second world war. But does it impose present concerns on the past?