Finely-turned tales of mothers, murder and love
IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE I KNOW, but not all books are as good as publishers say they are. We can’t expect otherwise — that’s their job — though I recall warmly the publicist who once sent me a bundle of books, with a note attached to the third: “Don’t bother with this one.” We need a system where books that publishers really love, where it’s not mere puff, get a special sticker on the front. This month’s selection of novels would wear such a label with pride.
Admirers of Gwendoline Riley know what to expect: a new novel every few years, an austere two-word title (, ), a first-person narrator’s intensive examination of her life with others, in prose that returns your stare. Riley () was a prodigy, publishing three novels in her twenties (like Jeanette Winterson, Zadie Smith, ), and now gives us her sixth, . It might
