The Watchers by Neil Spring (Quercus, £7.99)
Like a modern gothic horror, Spring’s fast-paced but often deliciously creepy novel has an orphaned hero, a spooky, isolated farmhouse and things that go bump in the night. His work may not have the depth of Andrew Michael Hurley’s excellent The Loney, which also celebrates a modern gothic ethos, but it’s highly readable nonetheless.
Digging Up Milton by Jennifer Wallace (Cillian Press, £9.99)
This is a slight tale likely to attract limited interest, but it’s quietly absorbing. At the end of the 18th century, Lizzie Grant’s husband has helped locate the bones of the dead poet, and Lizzie herself helps sell off bits of him for profit, once the discovery becomes known. Wallace captures her voice effectively, as well as her moral downfall.
The Age Of Magic by Ben Okri (Head of Zeus, £7.99)
Okri’s tale of eight filmmakers at a lakeside hotel feels rather like a philosophical enquiry, in which the cast of characters operate really as mouthpieces, there primarily to speculate on the notion of Arcadia. Okri informs us about their quirks, their habits, their dreams, but it’s hardly enough to bring them to life.
So This Is Permanence: Joy Division Lyrics And Notebooks by Ian Curtis, edited by Deborah Curtis and Jon Savage (Faber, £20)
This collection of notes and songs asks if Curtis’s lyrics are fiction or autobiography, the work of experience or imagination. It’s a question that might be asked of any writer, but there’s a welcome political aspect to his always personal writing, an aspect that has been out of fashion but may have found its time now.
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