The Castle by Jon Ronson: A great attempt to unpick modern masculinity in the digital age
This insightful exploration of how masculinity is being shaped by current trends will linger long after you’ve closed the final chapter
Book Reviews
A Thought without Collision by Adrian Duncan: A sublime and fascinating exploration of how people teach and learn
This is the most playful and spellbinding of the author’s seven books
New poetry: Frank Ormsby’s tremendous poems loom out of darkness, shot with stars, lit with sound
Plus collections by Nessa O’Mahony, Lily Blacksell and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch reviewed
The Salt King by Natasha Pulley: Overwhelming darkness leavened by shining dialogue
The author seals her reputation as one of the most magically imaginative writers at work today
Reds: A Global History of Communism by Paul Mason – the problem of revisionism and working-class awareness
A book to provoke discussion, but some of the author’s potential audience may also be inured to his opinions
Books in brief: The Princess of Connemara, The Judges of Ireland 1866-1921 and Alone in Japan: A Journey to the Future
New books from Alan Esslemont, Daire Hogan and Tom Feiling
The Fate of the World: A History and Future of the Climate Crisis: A sobering narrative
For those new to the science of global warming, this book is a solid, if sometimes blunt, introduction
Sunrise by Téa Obreht: Timelines converge successfully in absorbing novel
Rewarding denouement confirms author’s unusual genre-blending as a success
If This Be Magic by Daniel Hahn: The perils of translating Shakespeare
A charming and comprehensive examination of the many challenges of ‘turning gold into gold’
Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction – elegant, ambitious and very smart
Laura McGrath’s brilliant eye-opener on the role of literary agents is a delight
I Give You My Silence by Mario Vargas Llosa: A poignant farewell
In his protagonist, there are echoes of the novelist reconciled to the limits of artistic endeavour as a force for change
The World’s Reformation: A story combining academic authority with gripping readability
The Reformation history scholar’s judicious account of missionary endeavour combines academic authority with gripping readability
The son of AA Gill and disciple of Anthony Bourdain is both sweet and irritating in his tender memoir
The author, a son of AA Gill and protege of Anthony Bourdain, balances struggles with addiction with a tender memoir about family
Sky City by Jacqueline Crooks: The perfect second novel
As in Crooks’s debut, Fire Rush, her expression of music here is spellbinding. There is a hypnotic lyricism to her prose that vibrates on its own frequency
Bytes and Bullets: Study of AI arms race is meticulously researched and deeply disturbing
Steve Feldstein charts global technological-military rivalry whose implications are not fully understood
Where Are the Kings: Donal Ryan’s wrenching, gorgeous new novel
Story of an orphaned boy connects the tectonic emotions of adolescence to the stormy tempers of the natural world
Fiction in translation: How trauma interrupts the flow of a life, to devastating effect
Sara Baume reviews novels by Marie Darrieussecq; Joanna Elmy; Clyo Mendoza; Ana Paula Maia; and Ibtisam Azem
Captain’s Dinner by Adam Cohen: An act of cannibalism that ‘changed the world’
A thought-provoking and lively account of scandalous survivalism and the murder trial that followed in 1884
Stealing Hitler’s Rocket: Thoroughly engaging story of frantic race to smuggle out a V-2
Guy Walters does highly efficient job of reconstructing little-known episode from every side’s perspective
Reviews in brief: The Smiths, Offseason and Sail Away Land
New books from Michael Bracewell, Avigayl Sharp and Ben Pester
John Berger: From Life. Biographer Tom Overton, like his subject, breaks the vessel he is writing within
Revealing book is the record of an encounter with a life that was important for many around the world
A Little Bit Bad: One for the bath with a glass of wine, in the best possible way
Cassandra Neyenesch’s novel is so funny and brutal it might make you get in a fight with your husband or start looking up roofers
Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot: A startling feminist classic and so much more
Few novels of the 1970s were prepared to imagine a woman stepping outside the prescribed roles with such uncompromising seriousness
Seamus Heaney and Catholicism: An astute account of religion’s afterlife in poet’s work
Chapters in Gary Wade’s book study clusters of collections by Heaney, with Station Island the pivot around which the whole turns
In Claudia Rankine’s Triage, the reader bears witness to an intense and unresolved debate
The work expands on Rankine’s American trilogy to consider a collapsing world beset by genocide and destruction
The Life Swap by Jeananne Craig: Even the most minor characters get a satisfying arc as they face their flaws
A debut novel full of heart with places and people that feel alive
Shapechangers: Essays from Irish women quietly challenging how literary history is written
The anthology is a radical account of how Irish literature, and Ireland itself, was changed
Nightjar by Emily Ruskovich: Borderline psychotic in its trippy mystery
Ruskovich grapples with truth, memory, love, loneliness, grief and the fragility of long-held beliefs
The History of the World in 12 Soccer Matches: Players become spectators of the social upheavals surrounding them
Stefano Bizzotto adds emotional heft to tales previously told with judicious selections of archival writings and interviews
What If Reform Wins by Peter Chappell: an enjoyable but horrifying read
The author, a London Times reporter, imagines a chilling future for the UK under a Farage premiership
Crime fiction: Asteroids, serial killers and a Hitchcock flight of fantasy
There is plenty of gore and retribution in new works by Joanna Wallace, K T Nguyen, Robert J Harris, Thao Thai and Akane Araki
New books for August – Alan Opts Out, Small Town Girls: A Writer’s Memoir and Four Terrible Parents
Three great reads from Courtney Maum, Jayne Anne Phillips and Calla Henkel
Fed Up by Daniel Lieberman: Exploring fad diets claiming to solve the riddle of the human body
Lieberman points out that losing weight is not simply the opposite process of gaining weight
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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Weddings, Births, Deaths and other family notices