Culture
December 1, 2021‘Crossroads’ by Jonathan Franzen
The acclaimed US author’s latest novel is a 1971 church drama modelled on ‘Middlemarch’
Helen Elliott
Helen Elliott WRITERS & CONTRIBUTORS
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Culture
November 1, 2021‘The Magician’ by Colm Tóibín
The Irish novelist’s latest ponders creativity and the unacknowledged life of Thomas Mann
Culture
October 1, 2021‘Scary Monsters’ by Michelle de Kretser
Two satirical stories about fitting in, from the two-time Miles Franklin winner
Culture
September 1, 2021‘Beirut 2020’ by Charif Majdalani
The Lebanese writer’s elegiac journal captures the city’s devastating port explosion
Culture
August 1, 2021Breathless spaces: ‘The House of Fragile Things’
James McAuley’s examination of four great art-collecting families and the French anti-Semitism that brought their downfall
Culture
July 1, 2021‘The Five Wounds’ by Kirstin Valdez Quade
A young down-and-out man in a New Mexico village seeks transcendence in a ceremonial role as Jesus, in this debut novel
Culture
June 1, 2021‘Secrets of Happiness’ by Joan Silber
The American author’s Austenesque latest novel, a collage of short stories, traces the common pursuit of happiness through love and money
Culture
May 1, 2021‘Fury’ by Kathryn Heyman
With stripped-down eloquence, the Australian novelist delivers a raging memoir about her rape as a teenager
Culture
April 1, 2021The lightness of unbearable being: ‘Double Blind’
Edward St Aubyn tackles familiar themes – desire, drug use, psychoanalysis – via a fresh suite of characters
Culture
March 1, 2021‘The Committed’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The philosophical thriller sequel to ‘The Sympathizer’ sends its Vietnamese protagonists to the Paris underworld
Culture
February 1, 2021‘Fragile Monsters’ by Catherine Menon
Memories of the Malayan Emergency resurface when a mathematician returns to her home country, in the British author’s debut novel
Culture
December 1, 2020‘Jack’ by Marilynne Robinson
History and suffering matter in the latest instalment of the American author’s Gilead novels
Culture
November 1, 2020‘The Living Sea of Waking Dreams’ by Richard Flanagan
The Booker Prize winner’s allegorical new novel about the permanence of loss
Culture
October 1, 2020‘The Time of Our Lives’ by Robert Dessaix
The memoirist’s latest, surprisingly unsettling instalment
Culture
September 1, 2020‘Little Eyes’ by Samanta Schweblin (trans. Megan McDowell)
Intimacy and privacy blur as people adopt cybernetic pets inhabited remotely by others, in this disturbing speculative fiction