As a novelist, I get a lot of praise for my immersive recreation of time and place – even though I have complete aphantasia. That’s a condition affecting about 0.8% of the population, and it means I can’t form visual mental images. Ask me to close my eyes and visualise an apple, and I will see… darkness. Nothing. I suppose it’s why I’ve always loved novelists who create a picture with words. But truly great descriptive writing is about so much more than just what you can ‘see.’ These writers give you the sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of their worlds too. And they’re all wonderful storytellers.
I’ve described this elsewhere as the sort of novel that makes other writers want to give up the job. It’s a beautifully crafted reconstruction of mid-to-late 20th century New York, as seen through the eyes of flawed, selfish Danny, perpetually in awe of his magnificent sister Maeve. The real ‘other time, other place’ here though, is the Dutch House of the title: a home, a history, and a battleground over which family rivalries are fought out for five decades.
Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime - the unforgettable Sunday Times bestseller
'Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature' Guardian
Nominated for the Women's Prize 2020
A STORY OF TWO SIBLINGS, THEIR CHILDHOOD HOME, AND A PAST THAT THEY CAN'T LET GO.
Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside.
In the…
The first time I read this masterpiece, I was blown away by Hollinghurst’s marvellous prose, by the vicious political satire, and by the vividness of his recreation of gay life in 1980s London as the AIDS crisis hit. All that was so distractingly brilliant that it took me a second reading to see the book’s emotional power. Most of the characters have barely any redeeming features and yet Hollinghurst still makes their lives tragic and affecting. It’s a stunning achievement.
In the summer of 1983, 20-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: Tory MP Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby - whom Nick had idolized at Oxford - and Catherine, always standing at a critical angle to the family and its assumptions and ambitions.
As the Thatcher boom-years unfold, Nick, an innocent in the worlds of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of the glamorous family he is entangled with. Two vividly contrasting love-affairs, with a young black clerk and a Lebanese…
I’ve just finished writing a novel set in Victorian England and Michel Faber’s novel has been a touchstone for me. I’ll be delighted if I can get anywhere near this book’s characterful visualisation of the era, its playful connections with our own time, and the absolute reality of Sugar, Faber’s terrific protagonist.
'Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them . . .'
So begins this irresistible voyage into the dark side of Victorian London. Amongst an unforgettable cast of low-lifes, physicians, businessmen and prostitutes, meet our heroine Sugar, a young woman trying to drag herself up from the gutter any way she can. Be prepared for a mesmerising tale of passion, intrigue, ambition and revenge.
This is such a clever book. The central premise, of a character who keeps dying and having to start her life again from scratch, is ingenious, but it wouldn’t work if Atkinson weren’t so marvellous at creating the atmosphere of early-mid 20th Century England. I was especially taken by her accounts of the Blitz – they were in my mind when I described the still-unrebuilt bomb sites of 1960s London in my own first novel.
What if you could live again and again, until you got it right?
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.
This is another modern venture into Victoriana, with a love affair straight out of Thomas Hardy, ruined by mutual misunderstanding. Its characters are heartbreakingly real and utterly original, and it closes with one of the most memorable set-piece scenes I’ve ever read. I won’t spoil the surprise because it occurs about 400 pages into this long, seductive novel, but it’s a stunningly sensory and dramatic moment.
Peter Carey's novel of the undeclared love between clergyman Oscar Hopkins and the heiress Lucinda Leplastrier is both a moving and beautiful love story and a historical tour de force set in Victorian times. Made for each other, the two are gamblers - one obsessive, the other compulsive - incapable of winning at the game of love.
Oscar and Lucinda is now available as a Faber Modern Classics edition.
"Bursting with the unexpected… art school bohemia meets the gangster underworld." - Catherine Simpson.
It’s 1963 and the sixties haven’t quite started to swing. Delia’s a professional shoplifter from the East End, desperate to disentangle herself from her dangerous lifestyle. Yorkshire girl Tess is disappointed and isolated at her elite London art school. Her only friend, Jimmy is a gifted painter, but his world is full of complications. A chance meeting of these three outsiders at a seedy Soho club sets them all off in unexpected directions – possibly to disaster, possibly to redemption.
My book is fantastical historical fiction about two characters who're wrestling with the monstrosity of their grief.
It takes you into London high society, where Ambrose tries to forget about how much he misses Bennett and how much he dreads becoming as cold as their Grandfather. It takes you to the family's country manor house, where Mattie isolates and old ghosts start to come out of the woodwork.
It's a story about loss and depression; it's a story about friends who don't let you walk through the valley of death alone.
Ambrose Bancroft returns to London society with his younger sister, hoping they'll leave ghosts of memory behind. They have only each other left. While Ambrose attempts to draw Mattie out, dragging her to balls and threatening to seek suitors for her, his sister recoils from his meddling. Finally, when Ambrose compels her to attend art class before she's ready, Mattie paints something horrific enough to banish them from society in public disgrace.
At Linwood Manor, Mattie and Ambrose aren't as alone as they think. Taking advantage of Mattie's desperate need to find freedom, a vanishing room lures Ambrose's sister into…
