Five of the best new novels of 2021
From buzzy must-read debuts to an edge-of-your-seat thriller
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
Filthy, funny and surprisingly moving, this novel follows a calorie-obsessed, self-loathing 20-something woman in Los Angeles, whose life transforms when she cuts off her fat-phobic mother and meets frozen-yogurt server Miriam. An astute observation of denial vs excess.
Melissa Twigg, acting fashion editor
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
I adored Ishiguro’s previous novels (Remains of the Day is an all-time favourite) and his latest more than measures up. Set in a dystopian world where children have artificial friends (AFs), it tells the story of an unwell young girl Josie and her AF Klara, exploring compassion, love and what it means to be human.
Credit: Sarah Brown
It’s official: make-up is back. Hooray! After a year that saw sales for skincare surge as we became more interested in the lotions and potions in our bathroom cabinets than the cosmetics in our make-up bags, the time has come for us to dust off our lipsticks and collectively get our game faces on for our slow re-emergence back into society. I, for one, can’t wait to start dressing up again.
How fitting that, 100 years on from the roaring twenties, we’re seeing a return of the fun and creativity associated with make-up. Val Garland, the leading British make-up artist behind the looks on these pages, agrees: ‘After the year we’ve had, people are desperate to dress up. It’s time to get that lip on, the blush on and even more eye make-up. This period is reminiscent of the 1920s, but also the 1980s, when you wanted to be an individual.’
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