Literary fiction of the highest order: BOG QUEEN by Anna North, HEAP EARTH UPON IT by
Bog Queen is available now from the Mail Bookshop
BOG QUEEN by Anna North (W&N £18.99, 288pp)
North’s previous novel, Outlawed, was an alternate-reality Western imagining an American flu pandemic during the 19th century.
Her new book offers another slantwise take on historical fiction.
It follows Agnes, a forensic scientist investigating the death of a woman discovered in a Shropshire bog – not a murder victim from the 1960s, as colleagues say, but an Iron Age druid from more than 2,000 years ago.
As Agnes finds her work at the bog obstructed by big business and green activism, the novel cuts to the fateful life of the long-dead woman, leaving us to detect parallels.
North cleverly splices the on-trend genre of eco-fiction with the timeless appeal of whodunnit to dish up a prehistoric murder mystery meditating on the condition of women through the ages.
Heap Earth Upon It is available now from the Mail Bookshop
HEAP EARTH UPON IT by Chloe Michelle Howarth (Verve £16.99, 288pp)
Howarth made the shortlist for the Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction with her first novel, Sunburn, celebrated for its nail-biting depiction of girl-on-girl desire in small-town Ireland in the 1990s.
Simmering secrecy is likewise the order of the day in her new book, a slow-burn rural Gothic perfect for chilly autumn nights.
At the centre of the story are four orphaned siblings who attract gossip about their hidden past when they pitch up at a village in rural Ireland in search of a new life.
While a mysterious prologue keeps us guessing why exactly they’re staying quiet, we watch a dangerously hot attachment develop between one of the siblings, Anna, and a local farmer’s wife Betty.
Name-tagged chapters alternate between everyone’s point of view – not always reliable – as the novel rattles to its powder-keg finale.
The Four Spent the Day Together is available now from the Mail Bookshop
THE FOUR SPENT THE DAY TOGETHER by Chris Kraus (Scribe £16.99, 320pp)
AMERICAN writer Kraus achieved cult status with her 1997 autofictional novel I Love Dick, later screened on TV with Kevin Bacon and the comedian Kathryn Hahn.
Her latest book, also drawn on her own life, follows a writer named Catt, although she’s barely distinguishable from Kraus herself.
We see her as a delinquent schoolgirl in the 1960s, then as a celebrated author blighted by the alcoholism of her second husband.
Then there’s a breakneck swerve in emphasis, once Catt grows fixated on a real-life murder committed by three teenagers in Minnesota.
Reminiscent of Edoardo Albinati’s 2019 novel The Catholic School, which also mixed memoir and true crime, it’s an intriguing experiment – yet the degree to which Kraus’s left turn brings the novel to life can’t help but cast doubt on the need for the rest of the book.