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The Essex Serpent – Short-listed for the Costa Book Awards 2016

Love and a battle of beliefs in Victorian England

There’s something alluring about Victorian England as a setting for novels, a society full of contrasts and contradictions: extreme poverty and unfathomable wealth, a prim public life and a seedy underworld, modern factories and rural communities. Sarah Perry’s sensual love story with an intellectual twist, delivered in a style that transports you back to the time, sits perfectly within this world.

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Venice, An Interior

A Sliver of Venice

A heavenly combination of one of my favourite authors writing about one of my favourite cities: Javier Marías’ little essay on Venice. For reasons unknown (a failed love affair?), Marías spent a great deal of time in Venice in the 1980s. His reflections on how history and geography have shaped Venice and Venetians are captivating. ‘Venetians see life from “the view point of eternity” ‘, not surprising perhaps when you grow up in place that’s hardly changed for 500 years? The decay, the dark back alleys, the smells, the sense of doom, the colours of the water (‘blood red, yellow, white’ by day, ‘like ink’ by night) combined with dazzling beauty, Marías perfectly evokes the city’s atmosphere and hands you a delicious sliver of Venice.

Venice, An Interior is translated by Margaret Juul Costa and published by Hamish Hamilton, 64 pages.

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The Tobacconist

A lukewarm follow-up to A Whole Life

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A Heart So White

Taking a thought for a walk

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All That Man Is

Nine disparate yet intertwined lives. Nine different ages of man.

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Eileen

Literary ‘misery’ featuring a misanthropic anti-heroine

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Grief is the Thing with Feathers

Glorious on grief

I have no idea why I haven’t picked up this gorgeous little book sooner. It’s the story of a young dad with two boys who loses their wife and mother in a freak accident. As they struggle to digest the loss, enter Crow, a giant black eyed, yes, crow, who stirs up everything, who pecks and shits and who refuses to leave or to be ignored, just like grief itself. Crow, a potent symbol in Ted Hughes’s poems (the dad is a Hughes scholar), is here to stay – ‘I won’t leave until you don’t need me any more’ – but as time moves on, straight-talking Crow becomes less of a nuisance, more of a therapist, helping them overcome their loss. Rarely have I seen grief been described more lyrically.

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Nutshell

Gripping literary thriller with a narrator like no other

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His Bloody Project

A bloody good literary crime novel set in Victorian Scotland