There’s a coming-of-age theme running through the first few titles in April’s second fiction preview beginning with Seán Hewitt’s Open, Heaven which sees a deep bond form between two teenage boys. James is eager to begin his life away from the expectations of his family and the small village in which he lives. Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm, his reputation for danger masking his anxieties and hopes. ‘James falls deeply for Luke, yet he is never sure of Luke’s true feelings. And as the end of summer nears, he has a choice to make – will he risk everything for the possibility of love?’ asks the blurb. Very much like the sound of that particularly as Hewitt is both a poet and Irish.
Set in the summer of 2009, John Patrick McHugh’s Fun and Games is another Irish male coming-of-age novel which follows seventeen-year-old John and his footballing mates, all determined to play for their club in the Championship while waiting for the exam results that will decide their future. John spends much of his time consumed with a self-absorbed social anxiety, oblivious to the troubles of those around him not least his parents who are splitting up. I wasn’t sure if I would stick with McHugh’s novel at first – there are some lengthy football passages, not something I’m interested in – but John’s character drew me in to this funny, poignant story which smartly nails late adolescence with all its excruciating discomforts, and the ending is a masterstroke. Review shortly…
We’re moving on to Oslo with Oliver Lovrenski’s Back in the Day about four boys growing up in a rough part of the city. Ivor and Marco have been involved with drugs since they were thirteen, carrying knives by the time they’re fifteen and careening from one fight to the next at sixteen. Ivor dreams of a settled future but has taken too many wrong turnings in the opposite direction. ‘In flashes of firecracker prose, shot through with rare empathy, irrepressible wit and gut-punch pathos, Oliver Lovrenski gives voice to young men growing up in a brutal and chaotic world’ according to the blurb which sounds tough but well worth reading to me.
I took a punt on Jenny Mustard’s Okay Days back in 2023 and thoroughly enjoyed it, snapping up What a Time to Be Alive 
as soon as it popped up on NetGalley. The child of benign neglect, Sickan is eighteen months into her course, still friendless and living in spartan student accommodation, constantly anxious that her peers are laughing at her. With her cultivated slovenliness, Hanna’s seemingly impervious to what others think of her and unaware of her wealth. An odd sort of friendship begins between these two until Sickan begins a relationship pushing Hanna to the fringes of her life. Mustard uses the same understated, gently witty style that worked so well in Okay Days, conveying Sickan’s painful awareness of her social ineptitude with a tenderness that made me want to cheer her small triumphs and ache for her setbacks. Review to come…
I loved both The End We Start From and The Harpy making me keen to read Megan Hunter’s Days of Light. It tells the story of Ivy, the daughter of a bohemian family, through six pivotal days in her life beginning with Easter Sunday in 1938 which ends in tragedy. On the sixth day, decades later, Ivy remembers the many Easters she’s lived through and the course her life has taken. Throughout it all, she’s haunted by the tragedy of 1938, unsure to the end if she might have played a part in it. Hunter’s writing is luminously beautiful at times and there’s an elegiac quality to the early part of the novel which lends it a gentle melancholy. Review to follow…
In KatIe Kitamura’s Audition two people meet for lunch at a Manhattan restaurant, one an accomplished actress, the other young enough to be her son. The question is what are these two to each other? ‘In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately’ according to the blurb, whetting my appetite. I read A Separation some time ago and found it quite unsettling but it’s stayed with me which is more than I can say for many novels.
That’s it for April’s new fiction. As ever, a click on a title will take you to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with part one it’s here. Paperbacks soon…
