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TIME. Part of me wanted to reply to
Never Let Me Go (Faber, 2005), which is a very sad book. It s not pessimistic exactly, but it s very sad. I wanted to reply to that vision . With a story similarly examining the hypothetical, and not wholly unrealistic, future rounded out by artificial intelligence, both novels approach and ultimately deal with the subject in their own ways. If you are anything resembling this reviewer, please do not conceive any notions based on the insipid film adaptations of
Never Let Me Go (2010) and the thoroughly fine, if unremarkable,
Remains of the Day (1993).
Don t be dissuaded, either, by the platitudes surrounding this novel s release. What does it mean to love? is a quote you ll find tied around its marketing. The back of the first edition pulls out the quote, Do you believe in the human heart? , which sounds more like a Cher song than the circumstances in which the question is asked in the novel in the middle of a taut, confused conversation
2021 reading list: 20 anticipated books to look out for this year
The search for voice and identity as well as social and climate issues rule in this list of reads My First and Only Love by Sahar Khalifeh; translated by Aida Bamia. Published by Hoopoe. Courtesy American University in Cairo Press Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri. Courtesy Bloomsbury Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic. Courtesy Bloomsbury The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Case of the Foreigner in the English Village by Shrabani Basu. Courtesy Bloomsbury A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. Courtesy Bloomsbury
World literature In 2021, we will hopefully see theatres back open again. One of last year’s anticipated happenings that didn’t happen was the premiere of Zadie Smith’s first play, The Wife of Willesden, an adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath. If it doesn’t get to the stage anytime soon, never fear, Hamish Hamilton are publishing the manuscript in June. It will be interesting to see what Smith does with the bawdy poetry of Chaucer. Jonathan Franzen isn’t known for breaking the fourth wall, but his new novel sounds faintly metafictional. Crossroads (4th Estate, October) is the first in a trilogy called The Key to All Mythologies. That name, of course, is taken from a book the insufferable Casaubon never finishes in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Crossroads spans three generations of the Hildebrandt family during the second half of the 20th century. Franzen is often called America’s greatest living novelist, which he’s not, because there isn’t one,
Books to look out for in 2021
Irish fiction
New work that has been a long time coming generates a particular shiver of anticipation.
Small Things Like These (Faber, October) will be Claire Keegan’s first new work since her novella Foster, still a bestseller 10 years on. Her publisher says: “An exquisite wintery parable, Claire Keegan’s long-awaited return tells the story of a simple act of courage and tenderness, in the face of conformity, fear and judgment.” Small Things Like These (Faber, October) will be Claire Keegan’s first new work since her novella Foster, still a bestseller 10 years on. Photograph: Alan Betson