From a feminist page-turner by Marie Benedict to Shannon Pufahl’s On Swift Horses and The Cheffe by Marie NDiaye, this week’s best new fiction
The Only Woman In The Room
Marie Benedict Hodder £8.99
Vienna, 1933, and Hedwig Keisler, 19, is just beginning to make her name as an actress when she catches the eye of Friedrich Mandl, a dangerous arms manufacturer who’s determined to make her his.
Though she’ll go on to become Hedy Lamarr, this is a novel focused not on her beauty but on her Jewish heritage, her bravery, and above all her wildly inventive intelligence.
Her marriage to Mandl turns out to be a trap but Hedy flees to LA, where she puts her brain to brilliant use. It’s a feminist page-turner that reads like a thriller.
Hephzibah Anderson
On Swift Horses
Shannon Pufahl Fourth Estate £12.99
In 1956, Muriel arrives in San Diego with her new husband Lee and takes a job as a waitress. But she has two secrets: a knack for picking winning horses, and a crush on Lee’s brother Julius – a cunning card-player and petty thief whose own secret is that he’s gay.
While Muriel stashes away enough winnings to let her decide her own destiny, Julius cruises bars and casinos, embarking on an affair with a gambler. Will either find happiness?
Pufahl evokes the seamy side of West Coast life in unfailingly elegant prose, but don’t expect a neat resolution to her elaborate tale.
Anthony Gardner
The Cheffe
Marie NDiaye MacLehose Press £12.99
‘Cooking is sacred,’ declares the unnamed narrator of this rich, meandering novel. It is a tale of two obsessions: the narrator’s with his employer, the mysterious owner of a famous French restaurant, who’s known only as ‘the Cheffe’; and the Cheffe’s with her gastronomic art, which has taken her out of poverty and into culinary legend.
The narrator’s vision of her life story is both harsh and sensuous, though a subplot involving the Cheffe’s vengeful daughter fails to ring true. What NDiaye excels at are luscious, forensic descriptions of the ritualistic preparation of food.
Catherine Taylor