Hood, by Emma Donoghue (Penguin, in UK)

Take one clever idea to trace a week in the life of a woman whose young lesbian lover has just been killed in a car crash - execute it with confidence and clarity, and you end up with Hood, an intimate and honest novel which, despite its courageously upfront treatment of lesbian sexuality, is not so much a novel about love between women as love between people. If that sounds irretrievably corny, well, it has its corny moments; but it is also startlingly funny and, with its wacky little asides on all sorts of topics, delightfully contemporary. Sometimes she overdoes the clever stuff - but when she gets it right, Donoghue's style is a joy.