LATEST TITLES

THE WALL

by John Lanchester, Faber & Faber, £17.99 ★★★★★ JOHN LANCHESTER has written a grimly absorbing dystopian novel set in a future where the threats of global warming and antiimmigrant nationalism have been pushed to extremes. An environmental crisis has devastated the planet, making refugees of much of the global population and causing surviving territories like Britain to barricade themselves against intrusion. Our narrator Kavanagh is doing his tour of duty on The Wall, a forbidding rampart that runs the length of the British coast.

Lanchester details life on the Wall, where the cold and the stretches of waiting can be interrupted by an attack from The Others.

DREAM SEQUENCE

by Adam

Foulds, Jonathan Cape, £14.99. Available January 31

★★★★★

ACTOR Henry Banks is prepared to do all it takes to get the perfect next role, even if it means starving himself. But he doesn’t realise he is already starring as male lead in the life of a stranger, Kristin, a divorced American vulnerable to the thrall of celebrity obsession.

It was difficult to invest emotionally in the characters; neither are particularly likeable, but their inevitable meeting gives the narrative a strong forward thrust that keeps the reader committed.

MY CONEY ISLAND BABY

by Billy O’Callaghan, Jonathan Cape, £14.99 (ebook £9.99) ★★★★★ MY Coney Island Baby, tells the story of Michael and Caitlin, whose affair takes place in monthly trysts. The heavy-handed opening of the pair heading to a dingy hotel, amid a storm as they find out about threats to their relationship is typical of a book which tends to be overwritten. The main characters fail to generate much sympathy.

The description of losing a baby is one of the few sections which rings true, but if romance is what you’re after, it ticks the box.