Once Upon a River
Diane Setterfield
Doubleday, £12.99, pp432
On a stormy night at the end of the 19th century, a stranger brings a girl’s corpse to a village on the banks of the Thames. Hours later, she miraculously comes back to life. But she does not speak and nobody knows her identity. Gradually, she becomes the repository for other people’s losses, griefs and fantasies as Setterfield skilfully peels back layers of narrative about the locals. Exploring themes of storytelling, parenthood, science and society on the cusp of change, this is a richly evocative novel that combines magical realism, gothic fiction and a vivid sense of history.
Letters of Intent: Selected Essays
Cynthia Ozick
Atlantic Books, £14.99, pp592
In a wide-ranging collection selected from her last six volumes of essays, the “Emily Dickinson of the Bronx” tackles both the political and personal. Included are essays on a range of writers, from Kafka, Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Bellow. There are discourses on the purpose of keeping a diary, on aural culture and on cinematic interpretations of Henry James’s novels, plus more personal musings on her development as a writer, her first job and being in love. Ozick is razor sharp as she dissects art, religion and the distinction between literary and popular fiction in this comprehensive compendium.
Whistle in the Dark
Emma Healey
Viking, £8.99, pp336
Healey’s second novel, like her award-winning debut, Elizabeth Is Missing, deals with absence and its effects on a family. The tale opens with the safe return of 15-year-old Lana after a four-day disappearance. But, to the increasing frustration of her mother, Jen, Lana refuses to say where she has been or with whom, leaving Jen to fill the gaps with her own paranoid maternal fantasies. Part satire about middle-class parenthood, part detective novel, Healey’s narrative skilfully interweaves Lana’s depression with her mother’s anxiety until the reader is unsure which of the two is the least mentally stable.
To order Once Upon a River for £11.43, Letters of Intent for £13.19, or Whistle in the Dark for £7.91, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
