Cook dinner with Robert Carrier and you’ll need butter, cream, wine and quite a lot of cognac
Great Dishes of the World was a fabulous book full of all the richest flavours. By Jay Rayner
My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley review – broken familial bonds
A mother and daughter’s tense relationship makes for a devastating, quietly brutal novel
Come Join Our Disease by Sam Byers review – busting taboos
Kale smoothie or a necklace of dead rats? A dissatisfied woman embarks on a fierce and filthy challenge to capitalism, big tech and wellness culture
The Musical Human by Michael Spitzer review – a wide-ranging global history of music
From the first rhythms and birdsong to Whitney Houston and Arvo Pärt – how music has evolved over 165m years
The best recent poetry – review roundup
A Blood Condition by Kayo Chingonyi; New Selected Poems by Frederick Seidel; Notes on the Sonnets by Luke Kennard; A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi; and Crossing Lines: An Anthology of Immigrant Poetry edited by Aaron Kent
First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami review – meditations on ageing and memory
In these underpowered short stories, the female characters are mere pretexts for male epiphany
Those Who Can, Teach by Andria Zafirakou review – a lesson in education
A prizewinning teacher makes clear how little government understands about what goes on in schools
He by Murray Bail review – a meditative memoir of life in postwar Australia
Considered by many to occupy the upper echelons of Australian letters, Bail has composed a poignant, if aloof, reflection on memory itself
Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu review – a search for home
Born in Tanzania, educated in Surrey: sudden displacements drive this author’s multifaceted memoir
My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley review – playing toxic families
The difficult relationship between a mother and daughter is mercilessly dissected in this astute, bitterly funny novel
Redder Days by Sue Rainsford review – waiting for the end of the world
This eerie tale of twins in an apocalyptic commune conjures a rich dystopian spell
Double Blind by Edward St Aubyn review – in pursuit of knowledge
This is a novel of ideas, crammed with scientific data, that suffers from too much itemising and cataloguing
Chaos Walking review – cursed YA adaptation stumbles into view
Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley are lost in a sea of dystopian cliches in a delayed and misjudged adventure about a future where men’s thoughts are visible
Esther’s Notebooks by Riad Sattouf review – fantastically daring
The French cartoonist’s funny, well-observed stories about the life of a young girl in Paris read like an illustrated version of the TV series Up
A World on the Wing by Scott Weidensaul review – incredible journeys taken by migratory species
The acclaimed natural history writer amply conveys his joy and amazement at the ability of birds to navigate the hemisphere