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Mary Costello’s new collection shows her innate understanding of loss as the foundation of the short story
To say too much about the plot would risk the immense reading pleasure to be found within the carefully constructed story
The Lodgers marks Pester out as a writer to watch and should feature on many awards shortlists this year
Madcap enthusiasm of author’s writing will win over many readers
At the heart of the novel is the question of satisfaction: what will it take, or how much will it take, for the protagonist to be happy?
An engaging, symphonic novel of overlapping lives and loyalties
Portrait of Bowen emerges in the anecdotes, letters and quotations from her fiction and non-fiction
Judi Dench’s instincts as an actor, her knowledge and experience give the book its depth
A historical novel about John Mitchel fails to give the flawed protagonist psychological depth
Intelligent and complex novel, Absolution, gives a fresh perspective on the Vietnam War through a wonderfully immersive story
Difficult reading about how the culture treated famous women that is critically engaged, well-researched and colourful but not exploitative
The world of Big Brother and the Party is boldly reimagined, as impressively rendered as the original but with a feminist slant
The best of these stories ask pertinent questions of our modern world
This grim and clever take on George Orwell for our modern times offers us a sliver of hope
Smith has gone big with her first historical novel, a 500-page saga centred on a real-life cause célèbre of Victorian England