The weather might not agree but we are fully launched into autumn now and that means a whole roster of new books by some of the biggest hitters in fiction - from Barbara Kingsolver to Elif Shafak. If you're in the mood for a meaty, immersive read, you're in for a treat. Here's the novels not to miss this month...
Partita by Barbara Kingsolver
After winning both the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver returns with another triumphant novel set in the same Appalachian landscape. Partita is the story of Livia Cable, a piano teacher living on a small Tennessee dairy farm near to where she grew up. One day, she receives a call from a man she hasn’t seen in 20 years and it tips her quiet life off-balance. He wants to see her and gives her a week to decide.
During those seven days, Livia revisits memories from her younger years: her brother’s early death, her time as a scholarship student at a prestigious music conservatory, the life- changing impact of meeting her first love and a later incident that derails her planned future.
The writing is gorgeous – simple but lyrical – and every sentence feels carefully crafted. Like the beautiful compositions Livia plays, there are layers upon layers of detail, all adding to the emotional weight of the story.
There are references to music throughout the book, many of which went over my head, but Kingsolver has included a music list at the front of the novel, naming all the pieces mentioned, from Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude to JS Bach’s Partita in C Minor that gives the book its title.
Partita is a quieter, less hard-hitting novel than Demon Copperhead but no less emotional. When Livia’s dream of being a concert pianist is cut short, we feel her devastating loss. The way Kingsolver describes how Livia has to find a way to go on when the future she’d worked for is no longer possible will be deeply relatable to many readers. What the novel lacks in electricity, it makes up for in intimacy and reflection. Truly, this is a stunning story about love, ambition, loss and the enduring importance of art. Like Demon Copperhead, it deserves to win all the awards.
Bad Words by Ríoghnach Robinson
A novel about a book reviewer was always going to pique my interest and this witty romance is a delight. Author Parker Navarro and critic Selina Chan ignite a viral feud after she writes a crushing review of his latest novel. But when the rivals keep crossing paths, their opinions start to thaw.
Hollywood, Ending by John Green
Two young actors meet and fall in love while filming an Andy Warhol biopic in this brilliant, buzzy adult debut from the author of YA mega-hit The Fault In Our Stars. It’s been nine years since Green last published fiction, but this story about what fame does to the people inside it is well worth the wait.
Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus
It’s hard to follow up a debut as beloved as Lessons In Chemistry but Garmus’s second novel has buckets of charm. Batter Gray is a young graduate who gets a job on a poetry magazine only to get caught up in a secret war between the twins who own it.
MANILLA PRESS Peck & Peck: The irresistible new novel from the author of global bestseller LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
MANILLA PRESS Peck & Peck: The irresistible new novel from the author of global bestseller LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak
This beautiful novel is the fictional biography of the Madame Bovary author Gustave Flaubert, told through the women who knew him. As always, Shafak’s writing is mesmerising and vivid, bringing 19th-century France alive and weaving in thoughts on who has the right to tell a story.
In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak
Revenge Plot by Stephanie Wrobel
This Christmas-set thriller is the perfect book for a cold winter’s day. Literary agent Claudia Conley is settling down to a feast in a remote house in the mountains when a writer and his young son crash nearby. Reluctantly, she takes them in, only to discover the crash is not quite the accident it seems…
Bitter Melon by Liv Little
When Delroy is diagnosed with a terminal neurological condition, he decides to take one last trip back to his homeland of Jamaica and invites his thirtysomething estranged daughter, Jalissa, to come with him. A moving read about identity, fatherhood and family reconciliation.
