Kevin Powers’s fourth novel marks a return to the themes and subject matter of his acclaimed debut The Yellow Birds, winner of the 2012 Guardian first book award. Through the lives of its central characters, it explores the courage, folly, cruelty and absurdity involved in war, and the challenges of adjusting to civilian life afterwards….
Annie and Vernice (or Niecy, as Annie calls her) are “cradle friends”, brought up in their home town of Honeysuckle, Louisiana, in 1950s America. The protagonists are defined by their motherlessness and their diverging drives to escape their individual tragedies and pre-written destinies. In this haunting novel of motherhood and sisterhood, Tayari Jones writes into unknowability…
Bishop Robert Barron recently participated in the “Rededicate 250” celebration on the National Mall. It was an odd event. Barron took the occasion of his visit to Washington to give interviews, two of which showed signs of intelligent life and signs of ideological co-optation. “The roots of our country are deeply religious and I would argue…
On 26 August 1980, a huge metal box was delivered to Harvey’s Wagon Wheel casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, disguised as an IBM photocopier. An X-ray confirmed that the complex explosive inside contained 1,000lb (450kg) of dynamite. An attached ransom note demanded $3m (£1.3m) within the next 24 hours. An FBI scientist, Kirk Yeager, says…
Sitting stoned on a hill above his village, a young man muses on his place in the world. Connor is proud to have fenced pastures while his mates have been away at university. But it’s overwhelming to think of all their lives being equally real and urgent. Are they part of the same story or…
Kae Tempest’s new novel is dedicated to “you”, the reader. It also comes with a plea: “Be gentle though.” But to whom or what should we be gentle? The book or the writer? Having Spent Life Seeking is Tempest’s second novel, arriving a decade after his first and following a period of considerable personal change,…
A pirate radio station is a clever subject for a jukebox musical. And there’s none more famous than Radio Caroline, whose revolutionary broadcasts from a boat off the Essex coast launched a culture war with the British government. Writer Vikki Stone has partly fictionalised the story of that ship, with characters only tangentially based on…
