The two Kate Atkinson books we should talk about much more

There are books that arrive with a chorus of approval already attached to them. You can hear the noise before you even turn the first page: prize longlists, ecstatic reviews, the familiar phrases about brilliance and urgency and importance. 

Then there are books that are quietly absorbed into the background of contemporary fiction, admired, recommended now and then, occasionally pressed into a friend’s hands, but rarely given the full, sustained conversation they deserve.

Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and A God in Ruins belong to the second category, which feels faintly absurd when you consider what they actually do, and how good they are. 

Where to start with Martin Amis: The style, satire and the savage beauty of language

With writers you grew up reading, their departure leaves a space in your life that is as close to an ache as books and literature can get. That’s how I feel about Martin Amis.

Amis, who died in 2023 at the age of 73 from cancer, was one of Britain’s most distinctive and dazzling literary voices. The son of Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky Jim, he forged his own reputation as a bold stylist and razor-sharp satirist, chronicling the absurdities and moral disintegration of late 20th-century life with wit, intellect and a signature swagger.