FICTION REVIEWS
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis Hutchinson HB/AB/EB Out now Embark on a turbulent journey with Hattie Shepherd, a black woman
who migrates from the Deep South with her husband in the 1920s in the hope of a better life in Philadelphia. She goes on to give birth to 11 children, and it is through their experiences that Hattie’s own story is revealed. Don’t expect a comfortable family saga – Hattie’s stoic seething can make her a hard character to love, yet this debut novel offers much to enjoy in its thoughtfully structured, well-written exploration of the complexity of motherhood.
HR
The World Was All Before Them by Matthew Reynolds Bloomsbury PB/EB Out February Philip and Sue are a young couple. Philip is a locum doctor who becomes involved with
two of his patients: a young boy with ADHD, and an older patient whose approach to death makes Philip realise his medical training hasn’t prepared him for real life. Meanwhile, Sue finds her job in an art gallery leaves no place for imagination, and even her fledgling friendship with a colleague isn’t what she believes it to be. Matthew Reynolds has captured a young couple’s life, written in stream-of-consciousness flow as he mixes science, nature and emotion.
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Marry Me by Dan Rhodes Canongate HB/EB Out now Give Dan Rhodes ten words and he will tell you a story. It will be witty, insightful,
probably a bit weird, but definitely funny. Marry Me, his new collection of short fiction, shows his storytelling skill: in just 80 stories (and 158 pages) he captures what it is like to be engaged, married, separated, divorced and anything in between. Marry Me is the sequel to Rhodes’ Anthropology, which contained 101 stories about love. Thirteen years on, Rhodes has conjured an unmissable treat for fans of microfiction, beautiful books and quirky writing.
AL IN DEPTH
as unsettling a location as there is anywhere in modern Nordic noir. His latest book, The Asylum, is
The Asylum by Johan Theorin Doubleday PB/EB Out March
There are several writers in the current all-conquering Scandinavian wave who write in a similar fashion. The tough police procedural, with its vision of the cracks in the social fabric, seemingly has plenty of mileage left. But if you’ve acquired a taste for
something more subtle and allusive, there is one writer who deserves to be on your reading list: the Swede Johan Theorin. His books are poetic, atmospheric pieces with a precise attention to the dark psychological state of the characters. His novels are leavened with a certain fey, non- naturalistic quality, and the island of Öland which he repeatedly invokes is
more direct and visceral than his other novels. Teacher Jan Hauger has a new job at an isolated nursery, but this is no ordinary kindergarten. There are subterranean passages leading from the nursery to an adjoining asylum, Saint Patricia’s (known locally as Saint Psycho’s as a result of its highly dangerous inmates). Part of the therapy for the inmates is to allow supervised visits from children living in the nursery – visits that are undertaken via the gloomy tunnels. Jan, however, is not all that he
appears to be: an incident from his teenage years traumatised him and
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“Teorin’s novels are leavened with a certain fey, non- naturalistic quality”
led to a suicide attempt, and he also harbours an unhealthy obsession with a girl named Alice Rami. But most worrying of all is Jan’s kidnapping of a child. There are few more disturbing passages in modern crime fiction than the one in which we see Jan preparing an underground cell for the child he is planning to abduct. There may be those who do not welcome this striking change of
pace from the more nuanced territory of his customary work, but The Asylum is every bit as authoritative a piece of writing as anything that Theorin has given us to date.
Barry Forshaw’s latest book, British Crime Film (Palgrave Macmillan), is out now
Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather by Pierre Szalowski Canongate PB/EB Out now This joyous, heartwarming book tells the story of an 11-year-old boy who begs the
sky to reunite his newly separated parents. What ensues is an ice storm of incredible severity. A vast array of neighbours who have lived in anonymity for years are forced together: Julie, an exotic dancer, uses the opportunity to get to know reclusive Russian Boris; Michel and Simon, living as ‘brothers’, welcome in Alex and his boorish father Alexis. Our narrator watches as lives are changed – and hopes for a happy ending of his own. VB
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