The next time someone says to me that funny books are always disappointing because they're funny-dumb, I'll be pointing them to this novel: it's funny-smart. Brindle and Glass, 2011 Happiness Economics opens with Will Thorne struggling with the idea of being a poet in a world which does
I am fond of specific Alice Munro collections: A Friend of My Youth because it was my first, Open Secrets because it was the impetus for a particularly good book club discussion some years ago, and Runaway. McClelland & Stewart, 2004 Runaway because I have a memory of reading it
As an only child, my fascination with large families in fiction stretches back to the Marches, the Moffats and the All-of-a-Kinds. More recently, Jennifer Close's The Smart One and Jami Attenberg's The Middlesteins catapulted me into chaotic family-soaked gatherings (the latter was one of my favourite reads in 2013). Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group,
Nothing like a good mystery. Some serial fun, with Giles Blunt, Ian Hamilton, Louise Penny, or my most recent discovery, the Nina Borg series by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis. But one can find a good page-turner in the standalone novels on the fiction shelves too. Take Claire Cameron's freshly published The Bear, longlisted
Girl Cave Rose. Prince Dark Mirror. Crow Cellar Ring. One has the sense that Helen Oyeyemi thinks in threes. Also that she views the world through a slightly skewed lens. Hamish Hamilton - Penguin, 2014 But Boy, Snow, Bird is not simply a random collection of resonant images
