Category: Fiction

(by Olivia Laing) At the start of this novel we meet Nicholas, a 22-year-old art-school grad who is leaving London in a hurry for reasons that become clear only later. He goes to Venice thinking of beauty and anonymity: “He can look at churches and paintings, dip himself into the blue and gold waters of…

(by N.K. Jemisin) I like the premise of this one a lot: at a certain point in their development, cities in our world become living entities, but a creepy af Lovecraftian city from another dimension would prefer for that not to happen, because those living cities in our world get in the way of that…

(by Rainbow Rowell) I was totally charmed by the first 100 pages or so of this book, and I ultimately didn’t hate it, but it turned out to be a different kind of second chance romance than I was expecting, which somewhat lessened my enjoyment of it. When the book opens we meet Cherry, who’s…

(by Solvej Balle, translated by Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell) When this book opens, Tara Selter has been stuck in the eighteenth of November for more than three years, and she feels like she might always be stuck in it. But something’s different: at the end of the last volume, she met someone else…

(by Ian McEwan) For much of Part One of What We Can Know, I wondered if maybe I would rather be re-reading Possession by A.S. Byatt instead—my memories of that one are dim but I remember it having a similar set-up, in that both this book and that one are novels whose protagonists are academics…

(by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara Haveland) In the first volume of this book, Tara Selter, who’s stuck in a time loop where she keeps waking up on November 18, suggested to her husband that maybe they should go to Paris together, since that’s where the time loop started for her and maybe if she…

(by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara Haveland) When this book opens, Tara Selter is experiencing the same day—November 18th—for the 121st time. She tells us about her day—this 121st iteration of it— and a bit about who she is in normal life: she lives in a small town in France with her husband; they are…

(by Jo Hamya) Sophia, who’s in her late twenties, is a playwright whose play is being performed in a theater in London. Her father, who’s a novelist in his early sixties who hasn’t published a book in a while, is at the theater for a matinee performance; he knows nothing of what the play is…

(by Rachel Reid) OK, this one was more my speed than Game Changer was. And I mean, I liked Game Changer, but I feel like Scott and Kip both have such golden retriever energy. Like, so earnest and eager and wholesome. And that’s fun and all, but the Shane/Ilya dynamic of rivals who hook up…