PREVIEWS
The hottest summer fiction – you heard it here first
As summer brings the promise of sunshine and long days, there’s an intimidating mountain of new books to choose from to fill our holiday time. Never fear – our books editor has selflessly sat in a darkened room going through them so you don’t have to. Here’s a goldplated collection of Big Issue favourites and sparkling debuts (so your future selves can say you read the new literary superstars first)
After the Funeral by Tessa Hadley
Out on 13 July (Jonathan Cape, £18.99)
This collection of short stories from the consistent Hadley is as good as any of its imaginative, insightful predecessors. Hadley has mastered the art of illuminating those brief, commonplace domestic moments which pass without fanfare but create ripples which never subside. Like Alice Munro and Raymond Carver, she uses everyday language and plain, metaphor-free sentences to match the everyday experiences she is chronicling. It’s an effective style, with the understated prose, like the events themselves, slipping by almost unnoticed, but marking seismic emotional changes. Just a list of the subjects tackled in this collection makes the mouth water – estranged sisters pretend not to recognise each other, a teenage girl is made to see her parents
