September contemporary fiction round-up
The best and the brightest new fiction from the Bookhugger publishers in September.
John the Revelator, by Peter Murphy
A universal story of love, family and betrayal, John the Revelator is narrated in the compelling voice of an introverted, watchful adolescent, John Devine. Stuck in a small town, worried over by his single mother – the chain-smoking, bible-quoting Lily – and the gregarious but sinister Mrs Nagle, he yearns for escape. When Jamey Corboy, a self-styled Rimbaudian boy-wonder, arrives in town, John’s life suddenly fills with possibilities – welcome and otherwise – and as he hides from the reality of his mother’s ever-worsening health, he is faced with a terrible dilemma.
Brilliantly evoking all the frustrations and pent-up energy of a parochial adolescence, John the Revelator also gradually becomes the story of Lily herself, and the secrets of her past. Suffused with eerie imagery, black humour and told in hypnotic prose, John the Revelator is a novel to fall in love with.
The Death of Bunny Munro, by Nick Cave
The Death of Bunny Munro recounts the last journey of a salesman in search of a soul. Following the suicide of his wife, Bunny, a door-to-door salesman and lothario, takes his son on a trip along the south coast of England. He is about to discover that his days are numbered. With a daring hellride of a plot The Death of Bunny Munro is also a modern morality tale of sorts, a stylish, furious, funny, truthful and tender account of one man’s descent and judgement. The novel is full of the linguistic verve that has made Cave one of the world’s most respected lyricists. It is his first novel since the publication of his critically acclaimed debut And the Ass Saw the Angel twenty years ago.
The People’s Train, by Thomas Keneally
Artem Samsurov, a protégé of Lenin, makes an extraordinary escape from Tsarist Russia to reach sanctuary in Australia, but soon discovers that repression and injustice exist there too. Though distracted by an infatuation with a beautiful female lawyer, he throws himself back into the socialist cause, only to be imprisoned, then accused of murdering an informer. But he never loses his belief that the revolution will come – and in 1917, he returns to Russia alongside an Australian journalist to fight for it.
Based on a true story, Keneally’s enthralling novel takes us to the heart of the Russian Revolution through the dramatic exploits of one inspiring man. Once again, he illuminates a seismic period of history from an intimate, unusual perspective as he captures the ideals and passions behind a movement that changed the world.
Walking in Pimlico, by Ann Featherstone
To ‘walk in Pimlico’ colloq. to be handsomely dressed
Murray’s Dictionary of Slang, Cant and Flash Words and Phrases (1857, 3rd ed.).
Stumbling across Bessie Spooner’s murdered body, comedian Corney Sage is caught in a tangle of deception and lies. He flees from his concert-room job in London’s Whitechapel to a comfortable spa town, and then to a circus and music hall. But try as he might, he cannot elude the killer. And in Corney’s world of theatricals, clowns and showmen, where appearances are surface deep and secrets are deadly, any one of them might be the murderer . . .
From the drawing rooms of polite society to dingy lodging houses, through shabby pump-room pavilions, fairgrounds and freak shows, Ann Featherstone brilliantly reconstructs nineteenth-century England in this gripping psychological thriller.
The Bradshaw Variations, by Rachel Cusk
Since leaving his job to look after Alexa, his eight-year-old daughter, Thomas Bradshaw has found the structure of his daily piano practice and the study of musical form bring a nourishment to these difficult middle years. His pursuit of a more artistic way of life shocks and irritates his parents and his in-laws. Why has he swapped roles with Tonie Swann, his intense, intellectual wife who has accepted a demanding full-time university job? How can this be good for Alexa and for the family as a whole?
Tonie tunes herself out of domestic life, into the harder, headier world of work where long-since forgotten memories of herself are awakened. She soon finds herself outside their tight family circle and alive to previously unimaginable possibilities.
Over the course of a year full of crisis and revelation, we follow the fortunes of Thomas, Tonie, his brothers and their families: Howard, the older, more successful brother and his gregarious wife, Claudia; and Leo, lacking confidence, propped up by Susie, his sharp-tongued, heavy-drinking wife. At the head of the family, the ageing Bradshaw parents continue their marital dynamic of bickering and petty undermining.
The Bradshaw Variations is a powerful novel about how our choices and our loves and the family life we build will always be an echo – a variation – of a theme played out in our own childhood. The novel, Cusk’s seventh, shows a prize-winning writer at the height of her powers.
The Gourmet, by Muriel Barbery
France’s greatest food critic is dying, after a lifetime in single-minded pursuit of sensual delights. But as Pierre Arthens lies on his death bed, he is tormented by an inability to recall the most delicious food to ever pass his lips, which he ate long before becoming a critic. Desperate to taste it one more time, he looks back over the years to see if he can pin down the elusive dish.Revealing far more than his love of great food, the narration by this larger-than-life individual alternates with the voices of those closest to him and their own experiences of the man.
Muriel Barbery’s gifts as an evocative storyteller are put to mouth-watering use in this voluptuous and poignant meditation on food and its deeper significance in our lives.
Trust Me, by Peter Leonard
When Bobby and Lloyd decide to rob local restaurant owner Lou Starr’s home in the night, they don’t reckon on being propositioned about an even bigger scam by Lou’s so-called girlfriend Karen. But after yet another bad decision in her life Karen has been looking for a way out and, more specifically, a way to recover her life savings, stolen from her by the treacherous Samir. And so set in motion is a plan that sounds all too simple.
Following his much-loved debut novel Quiver, Peter Leonard returns to the mean streets of Detroit with a high octane novel of money, guns and some serious double crossing. Featuring a virtuoso cast of bad guys, a disgraced ex-cop who finds himself in more trouble than he bargained for, and an anti-heroine to die for, Trust Me is the superb sophomore novel from one of the emergent voices in crime writing today.
