Sisters by Daisy Johnson, review: a lithe, dizzyingly good Gothic thriller

In 2018, Daisy Johnson became the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize – she was 27 – with her mesmerising debut Everything Under, about a difficult mother-daughter relationship. In her second novel – a lithe, dizzyingly good Gothic thriller – she mines another seam of complicated familial love: the bond between siblings. Click here to read […]

Act of Grace by Anna Krien review – a hugely impressive first novel

Gerry brings a snake skin home to his mother one day, hoping to scare her. Instead she stares at it wistfully. “It must be an incredible feeling,” she says. “Imagine being new again.” Almost everyone in Australian journalist and poet Anna Krien’s hugely impressive first novel, which connects an Iraqi brothel, a Melbourne street piano […]

‘Rachel Long’s My Darling from the Lions, nominated for the Forward first collection prize, is alive with a breathless energy.’

Rachel Long’s My Darling from the Lions (Picador, £10.99), nominated for the Forward first collection prize, is alive with a breathless energy. The founder of the Octavia Poetry Collective for Womxn of Colour, Long writes with keen wit and delight in rendering the world new; an estate is described as “built like Tetris”, afros become orbs, dolls become a […]

Sisters by Daisy Johnson review: a haunting, page-turning Gothic fantasy

The sisters have been involved in an unspeakable thing. Daisy Johnson, whose debut novel, Everything Under, was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, opens her new psychological drama with July and September (named after their birth months, having arrived just 10 months apart) being uprooted and taken to start a new life somewhere seemingly unknown. […]