First thoughts
A new Ian McEwan novel is always the cause of much fevered anticipation — and here he has turned his attention to the dual arts of reading and writing.
Choosing the setting of MI5 in the early ’70s allows him scope for layers of subterfuge and mistrust, placing the reader in a precarious position of doubting the words set in front of them, with a concluding twist that changes everything that went before.
Serena Frome, a beautiful Cambridge graduate with a fierce love of books, is recruited by her older lover, an English tutor at the university with secrets lurking in his past. She is granted an assignment that takes her to up-and-coming author Tony Hale — and into his bed. However, like a young McEwan, Hale works at Sussex University. And his short stories are similar to the author’s early works, us seeing them through Serena’s eyes as she studies the text. The blurring of the character and creator is one that has an unsettling effect — but McEwan has a way of making this largely successful.
An eye-opening read.
This is the debut novel by Kim Fay, a former bookseller and author of Communion: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam.
In 1925, an American museum curator receives bad news about a potential promotion, which spurs her on a treasure hunt to find alleged copper scrolls containing the written history of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer civilisation.
If she could find them, she could establish her reputation and set up her own museum. However, the Orient is a dangerous place, and she must gather new allies in Shanghai to make the expedition possible — but her new friendships and experiences make her question her motivations.
Fay has written an evocative and compelling story, creating a rich environment from which the characters come to life, whether it is in Shanghai streets or the Cambodian jungles.
Though he’s perhaps best known and appreciated as a wry, angular TV personality and journalist, this is Will Self’s ninth novel and his first to be longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
In 1918, Audrey Death, a feminist, socialist and munitions worker, falls ill and becomes catatonic. More than 50 years later Dr Zack Busner gives her a drug which wakes her from her condition.
In 2010, the same, now retired, doctor journeys across London to the institution where it all took place, in search of answers.
A work of modernist fiction, Umbrella can be hard work for the reader as the narrative voice shifts from character to character and from era to era with no warning and at times mid-sentence.
With no chapters to stem the flow, the text reads like a vivid account of a brilliantly poetic lucid dream. All the more rewarding for being so structurally challenging, it’s an exhilarating experience.
Copenhagen-born Sydney resident Mette Jakobsen draws inspiration from her philosophy degree in her debut novel, The Vanishing Act.
Jakobsen transports the reader to an unnamed icy island, population six — if you include No Name the dog.
The narrator is Minou, a young girl who is trying to find her missing mother. While the rest of the island, including Minou’s father, believes her dead, Minou is determined that, by using reason, she can prove that she still lives.
Fans of philosophic fables will find The Vanishing Act a real treat. There is a sense of magical realism — a dead boy who smells of Minou’s mother’s orange cake to name but one example. Not much happens and many questions are left unanswered, but it is abundant in terms of atmosphere and the beautiful innocence of childhood.
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