Wednesday 28 December 2022

I reviewed Aidan Cottrell-Boyce's ambitious and provocative novel of ideas, The End of Nightwork, in the Guardian



Friday 18 November 2022

Here's my review of Guy Ware's funny, clever, politically engaged novel The Peckham Experiment in the Spectator




Thursday 8 September 2022

Barney Norris's novels have never been afraid of the Big Stuff. His fourth book, Undercurrent, focuses on chance, agency and grief. Here's my review in the Guardian



Monday 5 September 2022

I wrote about Sonia Overall's terrific Hemingway/ campus novel, Eden, in the Literary Review








Saturday 3 September 2022

My review of Olivier Guez's chilling 'factual' novel, The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, translated by Georgia de Chamberet in the TLS



Wednesday 3 August 2022

I reviewed The Long Knives, the second book in Irvine Welsh's Lennox Trilogy, in the Literary Review



Wednesday 1 June 2022

I will be at the Margate Bookie Literary Festival on Sunday 5th June in conversation with novelist and publisher Sam Mills, talking about the pleasures and pains of writing fiction and non-fiction. More info & tickets here










Thursday 19 May 2022

Paddy Crewe's debut novel My Name is Yip is a rollicking wild west adventure. Set during Georgia's Gold Rush, and bursting with linguistic invention, it brings to mind Melville, Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy. Here's my review in the Guardian



I reviewed Sara Baume's third novel, Seven Steeples, a beautifully wrought paean to living off-grid, in the TLS 



Monday 7 March 2022

Here's my review of These Days, Lucy Caldwell's novel set during the Belfast Blitz of 1941, in the Literary Review



Monday 21 February 2022

I reviewed Run and Hide, Pankaj Mishra's head-spinning chronicle of three graduates negotiating late capitalism and the New India, in the Spectator






Saturday 19 February 2022

One of the best recent novels about twins is Renée Branum's debut, Defenestrate. Here's my review in the Guardian






Tuesday 1 February 2022

Alex Preston's fourth novel is an enormously enjoyable slice of 18th-century historical fiction set among the smugglers' coves of England's South Coast. Read my review of Winchelsea in the Literary Review



Thursday 13 January 2022

I wrote about twins in literature and popular culture, from The Comedy of Errors to contemporary fiction, in the TLS