At the Table
Claire Powell
Fleet, £14.99, pp336
When Linda and Gerry Maguire announce their separation after decades of marriage, their thirtysomething children find the news difficult to digest. Nicole is a successful commercial director for a technology company but also a functioning alcoholic. Her brother, Jamie, is having second thoughts about his impending marriage and becomes obsessive about diet and exercise. Filled with razor-sharp dialogue and psychological acuity, At the Table is an astute debut novel about dysfunctional family life.
The Joy of Science
Jim al-Khalili
Princeton University Press, £12.99, pp224
The quantum physicist and BBC presenter invites readers to adopt a scientific approach to modern living. Asking how we might navigate our way through misinformation and conflicting statistics, he proposes that thinking more scientifically can aid our ability to steer a course through truth and uncertainty, doubt, bias and decision-making. Engaging and illuminating, al-Khalili argues that a scientific approach is “one of humankind’s great riches and the birthright of everyone”.
Listening Still
Anne Griffin
Sceptre, £8.99, pp345 (paperback)
Jeanie Masterson works at the family undertakers in a small town in Ireland. Like her father, she can hear the thoughts of the recently deceased and give voice to their final wishes and desires. But Jeanie is torn by the many obligations in her life, both to the dead and to the living. Her marriage is characterised by emotional compromise and she is full of regrets about the risks she dared not take in life. Griffin sensitively explores Jeanie’s struggle for self-fulfilment in an assured second novel.
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