Herald Checklist: Books for the weekend, including The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter is published in hardback by Faber & Faber, priced £10 (ebook £6.65). Available September 17

Like love, it's hard to describe grief without having really known it. And even when someone describes their experiences with gusto, the sense that they don't really 'gets it' remains. In contrast Max Porter is a rare wonder whose poetic characterisations in his debut novel show a deep understanding of human emotion.

Porter's Grief Is A Thing With Feathers tells one family's journey through grief in three first-person narratives; that of Dad, of The Boys, and of grief anthropomorphised as a crow who lives with them as they struggle to take stock of their new lives.

Through lyrical prose, the parties grapple with the idea of grief, as Crow visits the individuals in very different ways. The boys express confusion as they discover the black calling-card feathers of Crow on their pillows. By contrast, their father feels his spiteful, incessant clawing and despairs as the bird heartlessly mocks his sorrow.

Having worked as a Commissioning Editor at Portobello Books, taking care of Man Booker prize-winner Eleanor Catton, Porter sure has a lot to live up to with his first foray into novels. However he takes his influences - including Ted Hughes' poetry collection Crow - and background and runs with it, creating a wonderfully rich scene throughout that feels as though you are peering through a neighbour's window.

Porter adeptly examines the way we understand grief and deal with loss over time in a beautifully bittersweet manner through writing so natural that Dad's grief feels startlingly personal - I cried throughout. However it is in Crow's omniscience that his writing really succeeds, and though you often hate the unwanted visitor, his twisted support is understandable and strangely desired.

A stunning examination of mourning, this is a difficult yet compelling read that I am recommending to everyone.

9/10

(Review by Holly McKenzie)

FICTION

The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves is published in hardback by Macmillan, priced £16.99 (ebook £6.59). Available now

Fat, middle-aged detective Vera Stanhope seems an unlikely heroine. But the dishevelled sleuth has won millions of fans through Ann Cleeves' gritty crime thrillers, and the TV adaptation starring Brenda Blethyn. In the seventh and latest book, Vera is investigating a double murder in a sleepy Northumberland village. The victims make an unlikely pair, with one a fresh-faced graduate and the other an older 'grey man' - and no obvious connection between the two. There are no gimmicky plot devices here, as Cleeves, also author of the popular Shetland series which has been adapted for television too, shows she is the master of innuendo, smooth prose and deeply drawn characters. Equally enjoyable is the sub-plot, poking fun at 'retired hedonists' in their 60s who party harder than their children. If there is a successor to Ruth Rendell's alter-ego Barbara Vine, it must surely be Ann Cleeves; she certainly proves it with this humorous, meaty read.

9/10

(Review by Gill Oliver)

Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg is published in hardback by Jonathan Cape, priced £12.99 (ebook £8.02). Available now

Bill Clegg was a powerhouse literary agent whose crack addiction became both his downfall and the source of his personal renaissance. Having hit rock bottom, his celebrated memoirs on substance abuse, Portrait Of An Addict As A Young Man and Ninety Days, pulled him back to the literary top. Judging by his debut novel, Did You Ever Have A Family, the top is where Clegg plans to stay. The story opens with the fatal explosion at a town house the evening before a wedding - four are killed. It is not the cause of the freak accident that proves to be the spine of this tale though. Instead, the elaborate, eventful and unconventional lives of the survivors form the focus. The short chapters, all written from the perspective of individual characters, elegantly detail the storylines as they start intersecting. Through distinctive and instantly recognisable characters, this novel finds beauty in pain, grief and regret.

8/10

(Review by Alexander Santema)

Stories From Other Places by Nicholas Shakespeare is published in hardback by Harvill Secker, priced £16.99 (ebook £6.99). Available now

Diplomat's son Nicholas Shakespeare is well-travelled, and his collection of short fiction does exactly what it says on the tin: it transports the reader to different places around the globe, and frequently back in time as well. The first story, more of a novella really, is the most important. 'Oddfellows' is a tale constructed around a real but half-forgotten incident - The Battle Of Broken Hill in 1915. Astonishingly, two Afghan camel herders actually did launch their own do-it-yourself jihad in the middle of the Australian Outback. The historical significance, and tragedy, of the episode might lead one to suppose the book is a difficult read. But Shakespeare writes sympathetically and convincingly about women, and he also believes in the power of love. If the literary integrity of his stories is sometimes undermined by a romantic sensibility that would do credit to a Mills & Boons novel, we can forgive him that, can't we?

8/10

(Review by Liz Ryan)

The First Thing You See by Gregoire Delacourt is published in hardback by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, priced £12.99 (ebook £6.99). Available now

Gregoire Delacourt's The First Thing You See (translated by Anthea Bell) sets you off on a "What if" story, about that person who changes your life in a special way. Arthur Dreyfuss, a mechanic, living alone in a village in France, is settling down one evening when there is a knock on the door. Standing in front of him is Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson, or so it would seem. You see Arthur had never thought himself special, but when he sees the beautiful actress standing there, he's on cloud nine. Unfortunately, although possessing a striking resemblance to the actress, Jeanine Foucamprez is not she... and her story is very different from the actress's. The story centres around Arthur and Jeanine as they enter a relationship that exposes both of their pasts and reveals that, although they have a dark side, love can appear anywhere. A very easy and at times comical read, if the real-life Scarlett Johansson had had her way, the book would not have published in English.

6/10

(Review by Phil Robinson)

NON-FICTION

Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will by Geoff Colvin is published in hardback by Nicolas Brealey, priced £18 (ebook £11.15). Available now

Despite the reassuring title, the first few chapters of Humans Are Underrated present a bleak picture of the future for humans in the world of work. Geoff Colvin, a senior editor at Fortune magazine and author of Talent Is Overrated, demonstrates that the impressive and quickening pace of technological progress means workers who thought their jobs could never be replaced by machines, could find in the not-too-distant future that they too have reason to feel threatened by the rapid advance of infotech - he refers to gardeners and lawyers, cooks and managers. Stick with Colvin though, and what follows is an insightful exploration of the uniquely human qualities that should ensure there's always a place for humanity in business. Inspirational case studies show how to get the best out of people by tapping into particularly human skills, and highlight that much more can be made of these skills now; why wait for an uprising of the machines?

9/10

(Review by Steph Williams)

Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning by Timothy Snyder is published in hardback by The Bodley Head, priced £25 (ebook £13.99). Available September 17

Timothy Snyder has fashioned a very cautionary book warning that the kind of crimes that happened in the Holocaust can reoccur in our time given the troubles we face, such as climate change and racial conflict. His case is convincing, especially when he reminds us of the Rwandan massacres of 1994. The exhaustion of Rwanda's arable land and an absolute decline in crop yields began a chain of events ending in the country's government turning the nation's people against each other, encouraging the Hutus to kill Tutsis, a policy most successful where there were land shortages. Snyder also rightly defends the idea of the nation state, pointing out that a country is most vulnerable to mass killings when the state is at its weakest. The vast majority of the book is given over to the Hitler years and it's odd and unfortunate that Snyder saves his warnings about our time and the future merely for the book's 24-page conclusion.

6/10

(Review by Chris Gibbings)

The WikiLeaks Files: The World According To US Empire is published in hardback by Verso Books, priced £20 (ebook £12.92). Available now

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may have been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the past three years, but the whistleblowing publication has continued to unearth secret cables which have caused huge controversy and embarrassment to the United States government. A new book, the WikiLeaks Files, analyses some of the revelations unearthed among the 2.3 million diplomatic cables and other US State Department records so far published. In a forward to the book, Assange - who is trying to avoid being extradited to Sweden to be questioned about a sex allegation because he fears being taken to the US - details the anatomy of the US empire. He describes how radio and satellite antennas "scrape the air" in scores of countries, disgorging diplomatic cables or "mass-intercepting" mobile phones. In one of the chapters, WikiLeaks investigations editor Sarah Harrison offers a guide to using the cables.

6/10

(Review by Alan Jones)

CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK

Asking For It by Louise O'Neill is published in hardback by Quercus Children's Books, priced £12.99 (ebook £6.49). Available now

Beautiful and popular Emma O'Donovan, possessing that typical teenage mix of vanity and insecurity, isn't initially the most likeable narrator, but when she is discovered unconscious on her doorstep the night after a party with no recollection of how she got there, everything changes. The follow up to multi award-winning Only Ever Yours - a haunting Hunger Games meets America's Next Top Model tale - is equally arresting, but whereas O'Neill's debut read like science fiction, Asking For It is all too realistic, the riveting narrative drawing from real life rape cases and the aftermath that is increasingly played out online. And while the inclusion of iPhones, Twitter and Snapchat in literature is often a dead give away for an adult trying desperately to grasp youth culture, that's never the case for O'Neill, whose refreshingly empathetic voice shines through in spite of the torrent of vitriolic abuse her protagonist receives. A timely, gripping and vital novel.

9/10

(Review by Katie Wright)

BESTSELLERS FOR WEEK ENDING SEPTEMBER 12

HARDBACKS

1. Make Me by Lee Child

2. Everyday Super Food by Jamie Oliver

3. Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz

4. Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett

5. The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz

6. Username: Evie by Joe Sugg

7. How To Fight A Dragon's Fury by Cressida Cowell

8. Secret War: Spies, Codes And Guerrillas 1939-1945 by Sir Max Hastings

9. The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins

10. Guinness World Records 2016

(Compiled by Waterstones)

PAPERBACKS

1. After The Crash by Michel Bussi

2. Gut:The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Under-Rated Organ by Giulia Enders

3. Listen To the Moon by Michael Morpurgo

4. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

5. A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

6. Revival by Stephen King

7. Gorsky by Vesna Goldsworthy

8. Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon

9. Heirs To Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell

10. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

(Compiled by Waterstones)

EBOOKS

1. My Sister's Secret by Tracy Buchanan

2. Make Me by Lee Child

3. As the Crow Flies by Damien Boyd

4. Just Me by Sheila Hancock

5. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

6. Head in the Sand by Damien Boyd

7. After Anna by Alex Lake

8. The Back Road by Rachel Abbott

9. Swansong by Damien Boyd

10. Kickback by Damien Boyd

(Compiled by amazon.co.uk)