Highlights of the Season Alice’s
Highlights continue overleaf
s of the season General Fiction General Fiction
Barbara Kingsolver Partita Faber & Faber, 6 October, hb, £20, 9780571404711
Louise Kennedy Stations Bloomsbury Publishing, 29 September, hb, £16, 9781526664327
Kennedy’s dazzling first novel, Trespasses, was one of the finest first novels of recent years, winning Debut Book of the Year at The British Book Awards and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. In her follow-up, Róisín and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish town in 1982, and Ró is captivated by his intelligence and devil-may-care attitude. When this leads him into trouble with the law, Red leaves for London, where Ró eventually follows, to a Pimlico squat. Though she longs for more, her turbulent friendship with the charismatic, unpredictable Red is threatened by forces beyond their control. A clear-eyed and devastating novel of friendship, love and loss.
Autumn/Winter 2026
I await my proof at time of writing but the latest from the author of Demon Copperhead, winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize, will be one of the literary big hitters of the autumn. Kingsolver has said of the novel: “All my life, I’ve loved both language and music in a hungry, passionate way that happily entwines them in my brain. A novel about a classical musician never occurred to me, though, because of the sorts of people I write about. In the rural place where I grew up, folk-art traditions are strong, but so-called ‘high art’ seems to belong to fancier people, not us… Finally, now, it strikes me as a worthy project to ask who made these rules, that small-town fiddlers and country music fans don’t feel welcome in a symphony hall, and vice versa? Why is our culture of arts divided this way, and what are the costs to all of us? I found it rich territory for fiction, and I hope readers will agree.”
General Fiction
Min Jin Lee American Hagwon Fourth Estate, 29 September, hb, £22, 9780008823900
I am really looking forward to this 656- page epic from the author of Pachinko, which has sold more than five million copies worldwide, according to the publisher. A decade in the writing, it follows the Koh family – John, Helen and their three children, Bo, DH and Mido - from Korea to Australia and then to California, as the parents decide to do whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. But as the adults adjust to being strangers in a strange land, how much will they need to sacrifice and for how long? At the heart of the novel is the question: what are we willing to give up to secure the happiness of the ones we love?
General Fiction General Fiction
Deesha Philyaw The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman
Doubleday, 28 January, hb, £16.99, 9781529935912
Meg Mason Sophie, Standing There Bloomsbury, 27 August, hb, £20, 9781526664006
What are we willing to give up to secure the happiness of the ones we love?
Never meet your heroes, says the old adage, so what will happen when Sophie, an avid reader who works as a sound tech for a starry literary festival, encounters the novelist whose books and interviews with whom she has become increasingly obsessed? In her late 30s, tender- hearted Sophie, separated from her husband and estranged from her best friend, has turned to reading for solace, rediscovering one author in particular whose words seem written for her. The latest from the author of the brilliant Sorrow and Bliss is a beautifully observed portrait of loneliness in the modern age, a nuanced exploration of both parasocial relationships and our need for connection.
I loved Philyaw’s first book, the short-story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Pushkin ONE) so am very excited about this, her debut novel, acquired by Transworld in a five-way auction. It tells the story of Schar, the wife of a pastor of a megachurch, and her – sometimes misguided – search for acceptance. Philyaw has said of her first novel: “In writing True Confessions, I really wanted to explore the narratives that 40- and 50-something Black women sometimes tell ourselves – as well as the narratives told about us – regarding our desires and aspirations. I’m excited for readers to meet my main character Schar, whom I’ve had so much fun writing.”
General Fiction
Rose Tremain The Housekeeper Chatto & Windus, 17 September, hb, £20, 9781784745936
It tells the story of Schar, the wife of a pastor of a megachurch, and her search for acceptance
I very much enjoyed this homage to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. It began as a short story (published in Tremain’s 2014 collection, The American Lover), which the author then developed into a screenplay (a starry film is in production, directed by Richard Eyre) and now a novel. Mrs Danowski, aka “Danni”, is the housekeeper at Manderville Hall when the author Daphne du Maurier comes to lunch one afternoon in 1936. The two women embark on a passionate affair, shielded from the world, but when Daphne’s novel is published, Danni is devastated to find herself depicted as the malign Mrs Danvers. So she writes her side of the story. This year marks 50 years since the publication of Tremain’s debut novel; this is her 17th – the first one I read was Restoration (1989) and I have been reading her ever since.
09
IAN WEST
HAE RAN, CHANNEL YES
GRANT SPARKES-CARROLL
DAVID KIRKHAM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
