Stephen King meets The Office in the best Literary Fiction out now: THE EXPANSION PROJECT by Ben Pester, WATCHING OVER HER by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, BLOODY AWFUL IN DIFFERENT WAYS by Andrev Walden
Pester's first novel follows his standout 2021 short story collection, Am I In the Right Place?, in which a series of oddball scenarios rendered corporate work life dystopianly strange.
He follows suit here with the story of a communications officer who loses his eight-year-old daughter in his office after taking her to a Bring Your Child To Work event. It turns out not to be happening and may never even have been scheduled in the first place.
Then colleagues say his daughter was never there . . . but their various testimonies don't fit together either.
This funny, inventive and unsettling debut has elements of J.G. Ballard as well as Stephen King, plus cringeworthy workplace comedy made familiar by The Office.
WATCHING OVER HER by Jean-Baptiste Andrea (Atlantic £14.99, 544pp)
In Frank Wynne's translation from the original French, readers have a chance to enjoy this smash-hit historical epic ahead of the forthcoming film adaptation.
Set in Italy, it centres on the undying love between a downtrodden sculptor, Mimo, and a wealthy aristocrat, Viola. We join Mimo on his deathbed at a monastery before winding back to his birth at the turn of the 20th century to see how he and Viola re-encounter one another over the decades after a romance buffeted by two world wars.
When, in 2023, the novel was awarded the Prix Goncourt – the equivalent of the Booker – there were grumbles it wasn't literary enough. My guess is the judges were swept along by its timeless narrative gimmicks – who can blame them?
BLOODY AWFUL IN DIFFERENT WAYS by Andrev Walden (Fig Tree £14.99, 352pp)
Translated by Ian Giles, this coming-of-age debut was a big seller in Sweden, but it's a bit of a mixed bag.
Set in the 1980s, it's about a boy whose put-upon mother pairs up with a succession of terrible partners over seven years.
Each of the seven men gets their own chapter, each named for the quality that strikes the young narrator most: The Thief, The Artist, and so on.
Walden grips your attention with darkly comic verve, and there's a truly ugly undertow to his portrait of toxic masculinity, rendered all the more shocking by the narrator's partial understanding.
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- The Guardian
My 11-year-old son and I like a lot of the same films and songs. Am I doing parenthood wrong?
Some things you know without being told. Kids reached peak summer holiday boredom last week – on 12 August to be precise – according to a survey. If you're a parent you may have laughed hollowly there, in the unlikely event you still have enough energy. Exhausted and bankrupt after standing in endless queues for more wholesome activities, we've started Cinema Club, which is totally different from just watching a film on the sofa, in ways I'll explain, er, later. I was excited to share a particular childhood favourite of mine with my son, who turned 11 a fortnight ago, although this can be a risky business (ooh, is he too young to watch Risky Business?). Showing your offspring movies you remember fondly but haven't seen in decades is often disappointing. Sometimes, they are so slow to get going that everyone loses interest, and many have aged astonishingly badly and are now problematic, to put it lightly. Luckily, the 1988 body-swap comedy Big was a hit straight away – fast paced, funny and poignant. The giant piano dance routine completely holds up. The only issue? A sex scene I'd forgotten. The protagonist has an adult form but is really 13 years old, and that wasn't even why it was awful. I recall the excruciating experience of enduring these kind of TV moments with my mum and dad all too well. How two onscreen minutes could feel as if they lasted roughly nine millennia. Cheeks burning, buttocks clenched, dying inside. I'd never considered if it was as embarrassing for them as for me, which I now presume it must have been because boy-oh-boy did that part of Big go on for ever. Oddly, it felt exactly the same as it did back then, despite being on the other side, the grownup. Being a parent is different now; 40 is the new 30, so we feel younger than our parents did at this age. The only involvement my parents had in the music I was listening to was yelling, 'Turn it down!' up the stairs. However, my son and I share a love of the pop star Lola Young. I'm not sure if that's OK, for a few reasons. There are clean mixes of her songs, but you have to ask Spotify, or whatever you're using, for them specifically, or you're treated to lyrics that make you long for the comparatively tame lovemaking of Tom Hanks. But worse than the awkward conversations some of the spicy versions have provoked is the uncomfortable feeling all is not right with the world. The title of Young's second album, released last year, is a bit too on the nose: This Wasn't Meant For You Anyway. Maybe she has a point. I'm not sure if my kid and I are allowed to like the same things, if I should be disapproving rather than singing along. Have the times a-changed or am I doing parenthood wrong? The traditional role of the parent here is to be terminally uncool and not get it. To suspect that the Beatles are bad influences because of their hairstyles, to get outraged over Madonna's antics. Not to be vogueing around the kitchen in a conical bra, like the 'I'm not a regular mom, I'm a cool mom' from Mean Girls. It isn't just Young, I am also a huge fan of YouTuber Ryan Trahan. My kid and I learned the viral Charli xcx Apple dance together (not to post on social media, I hasten to add). My husband is a dab hand at Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch and they race regularly. These are not pastimes we grin and bear, like watching Frozen again, or the lengthy train obsession that meant we spent most weekends standing on cold platforms, waving our blue hands at drivers as they passed by. This is all of us genuinely enjoying what we're doing, nobody faking it or making any kind of sacrifice. It goes the other way too – our boy's first proper late nights were due to the wait for the next episode of The Traitors being unbearable. He accidentally overheard a podcast I love, Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert, and now listens every week with me on purpose. And recently he joined us down a Sean Hayes wormhole that culminated in a Will & Grace marathon in which he demonstrated admirable stamina. Maybe the secret is not to question it. Perhaps this is actually the sweet spot. The teenage years are fast approaching, in about five minutes, us thinking that anything is good will probably be the kiss of death. I can only pray, when that dark day comes, I get custody of Lola Young.
The Guardian
an hour ago
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Mary, Queen of Scots review – bold ballet brings the royal courts bang up to date
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The Guardian
an hour ago
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Channel 5 revives BBC's Play for Today to ‘help shape future of British drama'
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