Garth Risk Hallberg’s The Second Coming: Bigger isn’t always better
Creaking under its own weight, at half the size this could have been twice as powerful
Books Quiz
Rebecca Watson: ‘There’s a simpler way to tell the story. But it would feel less honest to me’
The author’s new book continues to play with layout to convey consciousness but spans a longer stretch of time than her debut
I Love You I Love You I Love You by Laura Dockrill: A ‘will they, won’t they, tale’, tinged with noughties nostalgia
The legacy of Dockrill’s young adult writing career is evident in chirpy proses that brims with exclamation marks, superlatives and capitalisations
Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel: Remakes emigration and its impact on relationships in an invigorating shape
The novel sets out to dismantle the gender binary while also dissecting it, all the time riffing with energy and insight on nostalgia
Chris Whitaker: ‘I sometimes wonder if the road I went down was linked to this violent act that happened when I was a kid’
A chance discovery in a library helped Whitaker overcome the trauma of a brutal stabbing and set him on the path to becoming a writer
Summer reading: 21 great books for the holidays
This list has something for everyone with books covering dystopian realities, historical settings, criminal capers and familiar places
The End of Everything by Victor Davis Hanson: Splendid and compulsively readable despite one weakness
Magisterial accounts of four cataclysmic case studies make this a must for anyone with an interest in ancient and premodern history
Mouthing by Orla Mackey: An engrossing and adept work of fiction about a rural Irish community like any other
In her debut novel, Mackey keeps moving the goalposts in delightfully wicked fashion for readers to catch up
The Táin retold: ‘Maeve and Ailill’s spat could be out of a soap opera’
Alan Titley is bringing out a new version of the epic story which ‘has gripped the attention of Ireland for centuries long’
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton: A big, brash cerebral snapshot of the modern world
Eleanor Catton blends literary and commercial fiction in her latest masterful display of character set in New Zealand
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry: A dark but warm book of memory, lyricism and death
Sebastian Barry uses a cocoon of language to magical effect in a tale full of the warnings of mortality
Eleanor Catton on Jacinda Ardern’s ‘pretty huge betrayal of young people’ in New Zealand
New Zealand author Eleanor Catton on her country’s former prime minister, social media and her new novel Birnam Wood
Love Me Fierce in Danger, The Life of James Ellroy review: Biography’s best bits are on writer’s younger years
Steven Powell’s account of the crime novelist lacks insightful critical analysis
The Books Quiz: What was BookTok sensation and bestselling author Colleen Hoover’s first novel?
10 multiple-choice questions to test your literary knowledge
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