What to read in May – our choice of the best new books this month
From cold rural Ireland to the sun-drenched Adriatic, Miami and Mexico City, we select May’s finest new book releases.
From cold rural Ireland to the sun-drenched Adriatic, Miami and Mexico City, we select May’s finest new book releases.
(RRP £16.99, Viking)
Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper is at home now in Ardnakelty on the West Coast of Ireland – he knows the villagers with their grudges and loyalties, the invisible web of intrigue
entangled, fungus-like, below the surface of everyday life. No surprise, then, that rumour swirls when young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. A tragic accident or foul play?
Cal’s fiancée Lena warns him to steer clear, but he has other loyalties and soon he’s in deep. French’s characters are so vocal and lively that you feel they might go rogue on her at any minute.
Even the dogs are so real and barky that you can almost smell them. Here are 520 pages of humour and heartbreak, and not a word too many.
(RRP £20, Bloomsbury)
Growing up in a small Abruzzo town, Gino was a disappointment to his father. Now he puts his wild youth behind him to marry his childhood sweetheart, Franca, and life is suddenly sweeter.
But, with the birth of a preternaturally beautiful baby boy, and Gino’s obsession with a man in Franca’s past, their happiness is fragile.
A beautifully wrought, achingly sad exposition of flawed and frail humanity.
(RRP £18.99, Michael Joseph)
When her sister Katherine breaks a leg, divorcee Annie alone boards the cruise ship American Fantasy in Miami for a themed voyage with Nineties teen idols Boy Talk.
Alone, that is, apart from a throng of besotted middle-aged fans, for four boozy days. What was she thinking? She’s long outgrown all this.
And yet the cruise will prove transformative, and not just for Annie, as they party like it’s 1999. Comic gold.
(RRP £16.99, Chatto & Windus)
Savaged by the family dog and stuck in a Mexico City hospital, Flora befriends elderly Wilhelmina, unrepentant smoker, collector of magic lanterns, vintage slides, peep boxes, puppets and distorting mirrors.
Back in London on a mission, Flora seeks out Wilhelmina’s son, Max, and so begins a slow dance of romance.
A mesmerising work, infinitely subtle, elliptical, and spellbinding.
(RRP £22, Doubleday)
Skeins of geese and shooting stars. Meteors and moonshine. Cumulus and comets. Rainbows and roseate dawns…
Raise your eyes to the heavens, urges engineer and inventor Rogers, and witness constant theatre.
From storm-chasing in America’s Tornado Alley, to a bat cave in the Borneo jungle, kite-flying in Gujarat and condor-watching in Chile, she explores the great vault of heaven.
Exhilarating.
Hero image credit: GettyImages
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