Books, Fiction, Issue 627

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: State of Grace

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s voice reflects a life split between America and her home country, Nigeria. So while she’ll enunciate each of her words clearly and slowly, she’s also picked up that uniquely American habit of adding a questioning ‘right?’ at…

The Secret of the Black Moon Moth

John Fardell must be responsible for an awful lot of frustrated children at bedtime. Whether they’re being read to, or reading alone, when the end of a chapter signals lights out it’s almost unbearable. King of the cliff-hanger and a master of…

Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette & John Totleben - Saga of the Swamp Thing

COMICS/SUPERHERO There’s no point going over old ground: if you have even the vaguest interest in comics you’ll know of the genius of Alan Moore. Watchmen, V For Vendetta and From Hell are established classics of the medium, as of course is Saga of…

Ben Moor - More Trees to Climb

Comedy and theatre writer Ben Moor isn’t cool. He can’t be described as edgy, cutting or, even on the flipside, geek chic. Too wholesome to be indie, and too intellectual for personal whimsy, Moor’s seemingly fad-free short stories shun the fripperies…

Rebecca Gowers - The Twisted Heart

Kit is a gangly Oxford literature student, immersed in her thesis about the fictionalisation of real-life murders by Victorian authors. To let off steam, she goes to a dance class and meets a mysterious bloke called Joe, embarking on a relationship…

Gillian Philip - Crossing the Line

Fiction for teenagers often tries too hard to protect or lecture its readers, with sanitised characters and everything rounded off into a neat anti-drugs or anti-sex moral. It’s very rare, and exciting, to find a writer like Gillian Philip, who…

John Aberdein - Strip the Willow

The unnervingly familiar Scottish city of Uberdeen faces financial collapse, so multinational powerhouse LeopCorp swoops in to take control. Thus the scene is set for John Aberdein’s astonishing follow-up to award-winning debut Amande’s Bed. Often…

Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neil - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910

From one of Moore’s oldest stories to his latest opus, the first part of the third volume of his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s an unlikely ‘superhero’ team of literary characters; in this case, the likes of Raffles, Orlando and Carnaki the…