The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin I can’t remember seeing a more perfect cover for a book in a while. Everything you need to know about The Water Cure is there. The obscure water…
Happiness by Aminatta Forna
Review by Lucy Unwin “You know how it is with white people. You say it’s race, they tell you you are mistaken. Then they say it’s because of your race…
We that are Young by Preti Taneja
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin We That Are Young is ambitious. So very ambitious, and so very good. Most strikingly it’s a thorough and impressive academic exercise, but it’s also a great…
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin This is the most grittily realistic book I’ve read in a while — it just happens to be a ghost story. Somehow, despite its fantastical content, Sing,…
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Paperback review by Lucy Unwin There is no question, this book is stunning: in its scope, its ambition, in what it can teach us and in the skill on display….
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Paperback review by Lucy Unwin This is not a historical novel. Not just because the facts of slavery in pre-Civil War America are strained through the wonderful, allegorical, imagination of…
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize winning debut The God Of Small Things was a sensuous, atmospheric, emotionally powerful book. India’s caste system was the motivator of the plot, and…
A conversation with Sally Rooney, author of Conversations With Friends
Interview by Lucy Unwin We caught up with Sally at the Hay Festival 2017 where she told us: The foursome at the centre of the novel: Frances and Bobbi, the…
Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin That the Bechdel Test for movies even exists has to be one of the more depressing minor details of modern times. If you’ve never come across…
Interview with Megan Hunter about The End We Start From
Interview by Lucy Unwin Lucy: This is a very unusual book: it may be a novel, but it has the sensibility of poetry. People won’t have had a chance to…
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin The first thing to say about The End We Start From is it’s not a standard book of fictional prose. The story is told through beautifully-crafted sentences, isolated…
The Nix by Nathan Hill
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin No book could be simultaneously more timely and more timeless than this future classic. The Nix is fun, joyous, exciting and tender; full of both the…