The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits review – a triumphant twist on the great American road novel

Fleeing a failing marriage and culture war battles, a man drives away from the wreckage of his past

Book clinic: can you recommend middle-class American authors?

Yes, but go further… there are richly rewarding literary tales from Africa and South America too

The sequel to A Weekend in New York gets inside the Essinger clan’s heads for an enforced family gathering

Christmas with the Essinger clan proves a pleasure and a chore in this ambitious sequel to A Weekend in New York

A journeyman player competes in his last US Open, bringing the tensions in his Upper West Side family to the surface

This hymn to his complicated home state by the author of The Looming Tower is a pleasing blend of memoir, reportage and history

A truly vintage year for fiction with a strong Booker, dazzling debuts and a real masterpiece from an old hand

Benjamin Markovits leads us through a series of dazzling narrative hoops in the triumphant end to his Byron trilogy, writes Kirsty Gunn

This meditation on Englishness echoes but ultimately fails to match Swift's Booker-winning Last Orders, writes Benjamin Markovits