Books + Reviews
-
The bond between schoolchildren and their teachers is lovingly explored in this story of a boy who loses the class bear
-
Daniel Swift’s account of the disgraced poet’s years in a mental hospital is enthralling but leaves us little wiser as to his state of mind
-
Patricia Highsmith is involved with a married woman in this fascinating fictional biography of the late writer
-
Andrew Martin’s witty and informative guide to past and present overnight rail services is a treat
-
This roving study of our fascination with time travel covers well trodden ground but finds the concept constantly evolving
-
A biography of the prime minister reveals a politician of steely self-control with a taste for vengeance
-
A promising poet’s second collection delivers work full of subtle music that wears its heart on its sleeve
-
A shoplifter falls for a Romanian immigrant in a beautiful collaboration from Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan
-
Casaubon’s unfinished Key to All Mythologies was not, by the lights of his time, out of touch or deluded
-
A picaresque odyssey tracks changing attitudes towards sexual freedoms over the last 70 years and rages against the church
-
What the critics thought of A Woman’s Work by Harriet Harman; Bad Dreams by Tessa Hadley; Moonglow by Michael Chabon
-
An accomplished first novel that imagines the life, in 17th-century Amsterdam, of young servant Helena Jans van der Strom and her relationship with the philosopher
-
A fascinating and very readable study suggesting that we should redefine the doctor-patient relationship
-
A portrait of a fictional Airdrie rock group morphs into a haunting, hallucinatory vision of the early 80s
-
A teenager struggles to come of age in a world of religious zealots and predatory teachers in this stark debut
-
A professional gambler’s journey from board games to the operating table dazzles then loses its way
-
A journalist’s memoir that is also an argument about politics, sex and how society has gone wrong fails to convince
-
There is not much that’s intriguing about the determined May, apart from her class-based reaction against her predecessor’s gilded clique
-
Past lovers Nina Hoss and Stellan Skarsgård border on the unlovable in this slow-paced drama, but Volker Schlöndorff’s film rewards patience for its final twist
-
The historian and biographer has written an unsentimental, surprising account of Nicholas II from his abdication in March 1917 to his execution
-
The Holocaust, religion and the EU’s future are all central issues in the biography of a celebrated, combative thinker
-
Feminism used to mean a transformed society, a challenge to romance, a new way to live. Now, Crispin argues, it has been rebranded into banality
-
Nicholas Lezard’s paperback of the week: wince-inducing stories of amputations without anaesthesia and sinister policies to withhold drugs from sections of society
Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak review – a rich journey into romance and religion