TEN NOT TO MISS Ten titles not to miss Highlights of the Season
scheme in New York and the shattering effect this event has on the lives and fortunes of a disparate cast of characters. An early US review in Publishers Weekly called it an “ingenious, enthralling” novel that probes the “tenuous yet unbreakable bonds between people and the lasting effects of momentary carelessness”.
can hurt him three times in order to save their marriage. He will not know when the hurt is coming, nor what form it will take. “A dark, staggering fairytale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary,” says Picador. I can’t wait.
Sebastian Barry A Thousand Moons Faber & Faber, 19 March, hb, £18.99, 9780571333370
Kiran Millwood Hargrave The Mercies Picador, 6 February, hb, £14.99, 9781529005103
Sagas, romance & historical
The award- winning chil- dren’s writer
pens her first adult novel, based on the real-life witch trials of 1621 and set on the remote Norwegian island of Vardø. The novel opens on Christmas Eve 1617, when a violent storm takes the lives of all the fisher- man, leaving the women of Vardø to fend for themselves. The arrival of dour Scotsman Absalom Cornet and his naïve new wife into this world of women changes everything, as he comes to believe that evil has taken hold of the island, and that he must root it out. Beautifully written and immer- sive historical fiction.
General fiction His previous novel, Days
Jenny Offill Weather Granta Books, 13 February, hb, £12.99, 9781783784769
General fiction A dazzling novel about
modern life right now, this minute, with all its attendant anxieties about climate change and the increasingly deranged politics. It is narrated by New York librarian Lizzie Benson— who emotionally supports her wayward brother, a former drug addict, and her religious-nut mother—who agrees, as a favour to her mentor Sylvia, to answer emails from listeners to Sylvia’s doomy podcast “Hell and High Water”. The novel unfolds in fragments, mirroring Lizzie’s internal thoughts as her mind skitters from one problem to the next. Offill is such a surprising writer and this is expertly crafted—and so, so funny.
Emily St John Mandel The Glass Hotel Picador, 30 April, hb, £14.99, 9781509882809
General fiction Her previous novel, Station
Eleven, was a huge hit criti- cally—“glorious, unexpected, superbly written; just try putting it down,” said the Times—and with readers, so this is eagerly awaited. It is billed as a “capti- vating” novel of money, beauty, crime and moral compromise, and I was gripped. It tells of the collapse of a massive Ponzi
Megan Hunter The Harpy Picador, 11 June, hb, £14.99, 9781529010213
General fiction Her first novel, The End We
Start From, about a new mother and her baby escaping rising floodwater in a near-future England, was one of my favou- rite débuts of the past five years. Her second novel is, I’m told, the story of a marriage, an affair and a very particular sort of revenge. When Lucy discovers her husband Jake has been cheating, they agree that she
Without End, won the 2016 Costa Book of the Year, and this works as a sequel or a stand- alone, picking up the story of Winona, the young Lakota orphan adopted by former soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole. She now lives peace- fully with them on a tobacco farm in 1870s Tennessee, having recovered from the trauma of her past. But peace is fragile in the aftermath of the Civil War, and violence comes in many forms, as Winona will discover. But there is hope, too. As she says: “Even when you come out of bloodshed and disaster in the end you have got to learn to live.” Another masterpiece from this peerless Irish writer.
Anne Enright Actress Jonathan Cape, 20 February, hb, £16.99, 9781787332065
General fiction Latest from the Booker-winning
author is the story of Irish theatre legend, and one-time Hollywood star, Katherine O’Dell, as told by her only child Norah. Norah is now a mother of two, and a novelist, and Katherine is many years dead. But much is still hidden about her life. Why, in her later years, did she shoot a “movie impresa- rio” in the foot? And who is Norah’s father? Moving from rural Ireland during the Second World War to 1970s Dublin, Enright explores sexual power, the weight of fame and a daughter’s quest to understand her mother.
Hilary Mantel The Mirror and the Light Fourth Estate, 5 March, hb, £25, 9780007480999
Sagas, romance & historical
Quite possibly the literary event of 2020,
this is the heavily embargoed conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s
trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell. Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies both scooped the Booker Prize, and this final part will surely be in the running for a third. This novel picks up imme- diately from Bring Up the Bodies, with Anne Boleyn’s blood seeping across the scaf- fold and Cromwell turning from the grisly scene in search of breakfast. Cromwell is a man without a great family to back him, and he must rely only on his wits to climb the heights of power. But for how long?
David Mitchell Utopia Avenue Sceptre, 2 June, hb, £20, 9781444799422
General fiction In his first “major” novel
for six years, “one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any other country” (Independent) turns to the dark end of the 1960s and the emer- gence of the British band Utopia Avenue. Fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet and blues bassist Dean Moss, the band released only two LPs during their brief trajectory from the clubs of Soho to “Top of the Pops” and recognition. A story of music and art, drugs and madness, love and sex, stardom’s wobbly ladder and fame’s Faustian pact, says Sceptre, which plans plan a “huge” publicity and marketing campaign.
Maggie O’Farrell Hamnet Tinder Press, 31 March, hb, £20, 9781472223791
General fiction O’Farrell’s first historical novel
is set in 1596 and re-imagines the story of Shakespeare’s lost son, Hamnet, who died aged 11. Shakespeare, away in London, is at the edge of this story; at its heart is Hamnet, his sisters Judith and Susanna, and his free-spirited mother Agnes. Nobody writes more movingly about intimate family relation- ships, especially children, than O’Farrell, who is that rarest of writers; a genuine literary/ commercial crossover. I can hardly believe it, but 2020 marks 20 years since her début, After You’d Gone, and Tinder Press will celebrate by repack- aging her entire backlist.
Evie Wyld The Bass Rock
February 2020–July 2020 09
Jonathan Cape, 26 March, hb, £16.99, 9781911214397
General fiction The stunning third novel from
the author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice and All the Birds, Singing follows three women across four centuries, their lives lived—in part—under the shadow of the Bass Rock. It weaves the three tales together to tell a story about the control exerted by men over women’s lives. Moving from the present day, to repressive 1950s Scotland, and further back to the 17th century, these women’s stories unfold in beautifully crafted prose and the reader becomes increasingly aware of the violence levelled against women by men through the ages. Written with blistering force, this outstanding novel will stay with me for a long time.
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