Books, Reviews, Mark Edmundson

Rob Scott - 15 Miles

(Gollancz) In this highly-strung debut, Virginian author Rob Scott takes the customary jaded-cop-with-a-drink-problem, and cranks him up a few notches. Samuel ‘Sailor’ Doyle has a supplementary mistress and dependency on powerful prescription drugs…

Louise Stern - Chattering: Stories

(Granta) Those of us in the hearing world ponder rarely on the everyday lives of our neighbours in the deaf community, where an ease in communication that we take for granted has a profound, stunting effect in its absence on the social lives of the…

Blake Morrison - The Last Weekend

(Chatto & Windus) Blake Morrison is not one to shy away from the dark places, the unspoken or acutely personal, as his study of the James Bulger trial or bestselling confessional And When Did You Last See Your Father? will testify. In this, his third…

Damon Galgut - The Imposter

LITERARY TALE (Atlantic) Damon Galgut is in possession of an astute grasp of human nature and a poetically brusque prose that affords him bleak leanings, coaxing the reader on, almost against their will. There is an underlying malice and tangible…

Rodge Glass - Hope For Newborns

SOCIAL DRAMA (Faber) After the success of debut No Fireworks, Rodge Glass returns to themes of lapsing Judaism, focusing on what it means to be British in an age where homeland pride is a misty-eyed memory, and an anomaly to third generation…

Mary Ann Winkowski - When Ghosts Speak

SPIRITUAL MEMOIR (Hodder Mobius) Mary Ann Winkowski has spent the last 50 years assisting earthbound spirits in their passing into The Light, and has more recently acted as a paranormal consultant for popular TV show Ghost Whisperer. In this book she…

Andrew Crumey - Sputnik Caledonia

SCIENCE FICTION (Picador) Andrew Crumey has been putting a literary editorship at Scotland on Sunday and a PhD in theoretical physics to good use, juggling astral and quantum theory alongside plain, unfussy storytelling. Here, he throws some bygone…

Stephen King - Duma Key

SUPERNATURAL DRAMA (Hodder & Stoughton) Pseudonyms and non-fiction works all-in, Stephen King raises his bat for the half-century with this long-winded Florida ghost story. He is, of course, infamous for the filmic adaptations of his sinister novels…

Denis Johnson - review

War drama

It’s a popular assertion that education is less a means to an end and more an end in itself, and it might be helpful to consider such sentiments in the reading of Denis Johnson’s latest, resolutely bleak and weighty novel. Johnson is in no immediate…

Spook Country

William Gibson

POLITICAL THRILLER Two-thirds into William Gibson’s latest novel, a most contemporary of thrillers, a character declares that, ‘sometimes the closer to a truth one gets, the more complicated things become’. By this stage in proceedings, that…

The Lying Tongue

LITERARY DRAMA After his biography of Patricia Highsmith, Andrew Wilson’s first foray into fiction emulates his idol, brimming as it is with sexual ambiguity and dark intent. His protagonist Adam Woods is a thinly sketched aspiring novelist who finds…

A Model American

Elsie Burch Donald

POLITICAL DRAMA In Elsie Burch Donald’s study of US foreign policy in 1970s Cambodia, there is little doubt the author is inviting parallels with the current crusade for democracy in the Middle East. To this end she has conjured a gaggle of debating…

Two Caravans

Marina Lewycka

COMIC TALE Newcomers will quickly appreciate the talent for voice, character, humour and honesty that earned Marina Lewycka such plaudits for her debut novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. The two caravans of the title make up the male and…

Lynsey Hanley

Estates: An Intimate History (Granta)

SOCIAL HISTORY Through a blend of anthropological musing and booksmart social history, Lynsey Hanley offers a comprehensive account of the hows, whys and wherefores of council housing in Britain with her examination of ‘the one great failure of the…

Cormac McCarthy

The Road (Picador)

PHILOSOPHICAL DRAMA Cormac McCarthy has spent over 40 years examining human frailty, from the cowboy myths of his acclaimed Border Trilogy through the more contemporary concerns of last year’s No Country for Old Men. In his latest novel McCarthy…