June’s second batch of paperbacks kicks off with three novels I read and enjoyed last year beginning with Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin which opens in 2020 with 
a renowned British artist and his wife holed up on a wealthy collector’s New York country estate under lockdown. When Jay delivers groceries to a palatial house, he’s astonished to see the woman he once loved who walked out on him for his best friend when they were art students in London. Shifting between the present and the ‘90s, Kunzru’s novel is a witty, absorbing exploration of the Britart phenomenon which also vividly captures the paranoia of the early pandemic days. There’s no neat ending; it’s almost as if the whole experience has been a covid fever dream including the slightly implausible coincidence which begins the novel. An enjoyable read, packed with erudite knowledge of the art world.
Evie Wyld’s The Echoes unfolds Hannah’s story, revealing what lies behind her reluctance to talk to her late partner, Max, about her Australian family. Hannah came to London to escape, obsessed with a photograph of her grandmother outside a house just two streets away from where she and Max bought an apartment. They’d been together for six years when Max dies suddenly. Wyld alternates between Max’s observations of Hannah’s grief, their life together before he died and Hannah’s Australian childhood. If, like me, the idea of a dead narrator feels a step too far, don’t be put off. It’s a risky device, but it works, perhaps because Wyld laces Max’s strand with a light humour in contrast with Hannah’s much darker narrative through which themes of colonialism and abuse are woven.
Scarlett Thomas’s The Sleepwalkers follows a newly married couple who’ve been booked into a hotel on a small Greek Island as a wedding present, the only guests at the end of the season. A revelation made at their wedding has made them both feel their relationship is doomed, worsened by the discovery that another couple drowned recently, one attempting to save the other who slept walked into the sea. When two other guests turn up, interested in turning the sleepwalkers’ story into a movie, things take a decidedly odd turn. Evie is a particularly pleasing unreliable narrator. Her letters make up the bulk of the story, small bombshells let off as she tries to piece what happened to the sleepwalkers and why, while telling us her own story. I thoroughly enjoyed this clever smartly constructed novel, its tension kept taut right up to the end.
I loved both Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop so I’m eager to read Hiromi Kawakami’s The Third Love in which, having married her childhood sweetheart, Riko finds herself trapped with an unfaithful husband. An old friend teaches her to escape by living inside her dreams where she creates a series of lives for herself, from seventeenth-century courtesan to a medieval servant, prompting her to reflect on her own life as a twenty-first-century woman and wondering if she’s ready for change.
The setting of Rowan Beaird’s The Divorcees brought to mind Jane Rule’s 1960s lesbian classic Desert of the Heart, although that’s where the resemblance ends. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, women went to Reno, Nevada to put an end to their marriages, fulfilling the state’s six-week residency requirement on ‘divorce ranches’. Lois Saunders finds herself falling under the spell of Greer Lange, spending their days riding in the desert and their nights flirting with cowboys. Greer, however, might not be as trustworthy as she seems. ‘Set in the glamourous, dizzying world of 1950s Reno, The Divorcees is a dark, riveting page-turner and a dazzling exploration of female friendship, desire, and freedom’ say the publishers. Not entirely sure about this one but I’ve been seduced by that cover. Kate had slightly mixed feelings as you’ll see from her review.
Neil D. A. Stewart’s Test Kitchen sounds right up my street despite that eyeball on the cover. Much praised by the likes of Paul
Murray and Marina O’Loughlin, it’s set over a single night in a London restaurant where everyone has an agenda, from the anonymous influential food critic to the patisserie chef stalked by an ex-lover, not to mention the maître d’ caught up in a conspiracy, all watched by the restaurant’s newest recruit as mayhem unfolds. ‘Tense and moreish, Test Kitchen is a darkly funny and often macabre story about the culture of food, of dining and eating, about feeding and nourishing, about mothers, mortality and magic’ says the blurb which sounds irresistible. Fellow foodie fiction fan, Rebecca is very reassuring about the off-putting eyeball. You can read her review here.
Tawseef Khan’s Determination follows a young immigration solicitor trying to do the best for her clients in the government’s ‘hostile environment’. Pushed to the limit, Jamila suffers a breakdown which forces her to reassess her life while still committing herself to a career helping others. ‘In this polyphonic, assured and character-driven debut, we meet the staff of Shah & Co Solicitors, who themselves arrived in the UK not too long ago, and their clients, more recent arrivals who are made to jump through hoops to create a life for themselves whilst trying to achieve some semblance of normality’ says the blurb whetting my appetite.
That’s it for June. A click on a title will take you either to my review or 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. New fiction is here and here.
