From the ‘beautifully observed’ Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid to the latest from Isabel Allende and Eoin Colfer’s adult debut, this week’s new fiction
Such A Fun Age
Kiley Reid Bloomsbury Circus £12.99
Emira Tucker is a 25-year-old college grad living in Philadelphia, worried about her future as her friends begin to make their way in the world, but otherwise content working as a part-time child minder for a privileged white family.
But then a late-night, racially charged incident in an upmarket supermarket, filmed by a bystander and uploaded to social media, changes everything.
Smart, fast-paced and beautifully observed, Reid tackles timely themes around race and political correctness with wit and verve.
Simon Humphreys
Highfire
Eoin Colfer Jo Fletcher £16.99
In a sideways move from his hit Artemis Fowl children’s books, Colfer dishes up an all-action adult novel about a vodka-drinking wyvern who, gone to ground in the marshlands of Louisiana, finds himself protecting a delinquent teenager, Squib, against a corrupt cop with designs on his mother.
Told in crunchy prose, with lashings of earthy dialogue, it reads like an Elmore Leonard thriller, but with dragons.
I’ll admit I was sceptical, but Colfer clearly had a blast writing this, and his sheer storytelling panache brushes aside the quibbles of fantasy-genre agnostics with infectious glee.
Anthony Cummins
A Long Petal Of The Sea
Isabel Allende Bloomsbury £16.99
Victor Dalmau and Roser Bruguera – he a doctor, she a pianist – are refugees fleeing the violent aftermath of the Spanish Civil War to start a new life in Chile.
Their situation is complex; the couple marry following the death of Victor’s brother, who was Roser’s lover and the father of her child, and their personal dramas dominate a book dealing with political upheaval, conflict and its repercussions.
It’s an interesting story, stretching across generations all the way to the fall of Pinochet, but Allende’s episodic narrative sadly lacks emotional colour.
Eithne Farry