The best Literary Fiction to read this autumn: A Splintering by Dur e Aziz Amna, We Love
A SPLINTERING by Dur e Aziz Amna (Duckworth £16.99, 288pp)
Literary fiction over the past decade has seen an upsurge of disaffected female protagonists giving free rein to insatiable appetites by way of pushback against patriarchal oppression.
Here’s a novel that offers an especially high-stakes – and spoiler- sensitive – version of the scenario.
Set in Rawalpindi in Pakistan, it introduces us to Tara, a married teacher and mother whose hard-won financial security is earned via a risky double life in danger of growing ever more extreme amid the volatile regional politics of the early 2000s.
The coy prologue teases us about her dark deeds, revealed only after the story has rewound back to Tara’s harsh rural upbringing under the tyranny of a violent older brother and unsatisfying arranged marriage.
A bleak and gritty shock of a novel, gripping to the end.
WE LOVE YOU, BUNNY by Mona Awad (Scribner £16.99, 512pp)
Canadian writer Awad became a viral TikTok sensation in 2019 with her genre-bending, ultra-violent comedy Bunny, narrated by Samantha, a lonely creative writing student in a fretful relationship with four classmates (the Bunnies) at an elite New England college.
In this follow-up, Samantha is now a successful novelist who has been kidnapped by her frenemies, who each force her to listen to their contradictory version of the events that she portrayed in her debut novel.
Cue a round-robin relay of jostling narratives, each buttonholing the reader with hectic storytelling in which rivalries and jealousies boil over with eye-popping consequences. Layered with wild twists, it’s akin to Stephen King’s Misery crossed with Yellowface and The Secret History.
WILL THERE EVER BE ANOTHER YOU by Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury £16.99, 256pp)
Will There Ever Be Another You is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Lockwood made the Booker shortlist in 2021 with her autofictional debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, which spliced witty musing about social media with a story of family tragedy.
Her new book, again playing with elements of her own life, further explores grief, as well as the experience of becoming a celebrated author – to say nothing of her breakdown during a bout of long Covid.
Yo-yoing between heartfelt emotion and zany humour, the memoiristic rambling is electrified by endlessly inventive phrasing, offbeat humour and omnivorous cultural reference.
For fans, the spectacle of Lockwood’s mind in overdrive will be incredibly compelling, but this isn’t where to start if you’re not already onside – she looks too much like a writer in search of a subject.