Jhumpa Lahiri Bloomsbury £14.99
A 46-year-old academic in a southern Italian city reviews her life in a series of 46 vignettes. A trip to buy theatre tickets reminds her of her father’s death; a cash register brings to mind her first boyfriend; walking a friend’s dog dissuades her from starting an affair.
There’s no plot to speak of, and each episode is just a few pages in length, but Lahiri’s elegant style and eye for detail make this a delightful and absorbing read nonetheless.
Anthony Gardner
Katherine Heiny’s 2017 novel
Standard Deviation – about an ill-matched married couple – was “to my mind one of the best, and funniest” of recent years, said India Knight in The Sunday Times. Her new one may be “even better”. It tells the story of Jane, a primary school teacher who moves to a small town in Michigan and begins dating “an exceptionally handsome woodworker”. He is perfect for her in just about every respect, except, as Jane discovers, for one: he has “slept with every sleepable-with woman in the county”. As someone whose “expectations are traditional”, Jane finds this increasingly troubling (though for the reader its effect is “cumulatively hilarious”). Weighty and tender – and at times “profoundly sad” – this is a book that “takes the tiny stuff of everyday life and makes it big and meaningful”.
Jessie Greengrass Swift Press £14.99
In a house by the sea live three survivors of a climate-change apocalypse. In turn, Caro, her half-brother Pauly and their friend Sal look back on the long litany of extreme weather events that have devastated the planet and left them isolated.
Fortunately, the house was carefully prepared for the catastrophe – but now supplies are dwindling. Greengrass’s lyrical evocation of the coastal landscape and her grim vision of the future prove a potent, deeply disturbing combination.
Anthony Gardner