First Love, by Gwendoline Riley
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén The New York Times Book Review runs a regular feature called ‘By the Book’, a kind of questionnaire for celebrated authors about their reading habits. Recently,…
The Pledge, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Translated by Joel Agee Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén In a mountainous Swiss canton not far from Zurich, a little girl’s body is found. She is only seven or eight, with…
The Promised Land: An American Reading List
Compiled by Eleanor Franzén So, the presidential election of 2016. As with the elections of 2012 and 2008, I will be telling my children exactly where I was when I…
Maresi by Mari Turtschaninoff
Translated by Annie Prime Reviewed by Eleanor Franzen Maresi is thirteen or so. She lives in a fantastical realm on an island called Menos, under the protection of the Sisters…
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén Are there ghosts at either end of life? It’s not uncommon, from time to time, to feel as though everything about your life is being orchestrated…
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén Forgiveness is a word like tiger–there’s footage of it and verifiably it exists but few of us have seen it close and wild or known it…
The Honours by Tim Clare
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén It’s rare for any book, let alone a book marketed as literary fiction for adults, to open with a thirteen-year-old girl lying flat on her stomach…
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén Caitlin Doughty was a twenty-three-year-old with a degree in medieval history when she decided to become a mortician. The decision wasn’t spontaneous; she had been obsessed…
The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader
Review by Eleanor Franzén Imagine: you’re a woman in England in 1255. With a little bit of flexibility, depending on your father’s annual income, you have two life choices. One is…
The Well by Catherine Chanter
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén Speculative fiction often works best when it takes one element of our everyday lives and tweaks it, showing us how much we rely on a certain…