Scarlet review – Mamoru Hosoda turns Hamlet into tale of prowling knights and deep ‘nothingness’
The normally great director misses the mark with a wonderfully animated but narratively clunky retelling of the Shakespearean staple
Love Magic Power Danger Bliss by Paul Morley review – Yoko Ono before the Beatles
A vivid celebration of the artist covers her childhood and breakthrough in New York – while sidelining ‘that other business’
Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester review – a battle between millennials and boomers
There are sharply observed pleasures to be found in this black comedy of infidelity, revenge and intergenerational tension – but the plot is both implausible and predictable
A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello review – a profound exploration of the inner life
How are we to account for things that lie outside ordinary language? A woman’s emotions are precisely observed in a novel that brilliantly captures what it means to be human
The best recent poetry – review roundup
Gravity Archives by Andrew Motion; Rabbitbox by Wayne Holloway-Smith; Strange Architectures by JL Williams; I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken
The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski review – a delicious comfort read
A decaying gothic mansion tells the story of the family who once lived there, in this pitch-perfect debut of disappearances, betrayal and despair
The Manningtree Witches review – Ava Pickett’s gripping follow-up to Tudor hit 1536
The targets of the infamous 17th-century ‘witchfinder general’ narrate a powerful play based on AK Blakemore’s novel
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley audiobook review – a topical time-hopping romance
Actor Katie Leung narrates this genre-bending debut in which an Victorian Arctic explorer is catapulted into our brave new world
Department of the Vanishing by Johanna Bell review – brilliantly, terrifyingly plausible
In this wild little miracle of a book, an Australian government office is tasked with cataloguing the casualties of the Anthropocene
Gloria Don’t Speak by Lucy Apps review – tender portrait of a woman with a learning disability
Longlisted for the Women’s prize, this ambitious debut journeys into the inner world of a vulnerable teenager who is left traumatised by a toxic friendship
Tales of the Suburbs by John Grindrod review – queer goings on behind the curtains
From ‘gaybours’ to treasure hunts in Tunbridge Wells, a tragicomic history of LGBTQ life outside the big city
The Bride! review – Jessie Buckley is electrifying as frizzy-haired, black-tongued monster’s wife
The actor has a blast as bride to Christian Bale’s lonely creature in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s darkly comic and gleefully bizarre reimagining of the 1935 film
Chasing Freedom by Simukai Chigudu review – a powerful memoir of postcolonial unease
A historian and exponent of ‘Rhodes must fall’ explores how political liberation doesn’t always bring personal freedom
The Quantity Theory of Morality by Will Self review – raucously inventive state-of-the-nation satire
Thirty-five years on from his debut collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Self takes aim at London’s chattering classes in an excoriating vision of moral decline
They by Helle Helle review – a novel to make the reader slow down and take notice
Minimalist but never austere, this mother-daughter portrait from the Danish author finds its power in everyday detail