The Observer, March 2018 “Whatever destiny may be, it resides in the mountains that tower over us,” muses Pietro, the pensive 11-year-old narrator of The Eight Mountains, as he begins a long coming-of-age journey in […]
The Observer, May 2018 Is Mario Vargas Llosa the raciest Nobel laureate? For all the commitment to experimental, surreal, political, historical or plain comic writing that has characterised his fiction, he’s most consistently a chronicler […]
The Observer, July 2018 The set-up to Gerard Woodward’s unsettling new novel has all the creeping sense of unease one might find in a chilling horror movie. Breezing into Arnold’s comfortable, writerly and happy domestic […]
The Observer, July 2018 Close your eyes for a second and think of a loved one, a familiar place; even, say, a favourite Harry Kane goal. They all seem indelibly marked on the mind – […]
The Observer, August 2018 Early in Rebecca Makkai’s stylish and ambitious new novel, one of her protagonists, Fiona, is pondering life in her 50s. She feels tired, guilty. Everyone she loved has “died or left”. […]