the uninvited guests BY sadie jones

This is an extraordinary departure for the author of The Outcast which won the Costa First Novel Award.  Set in 1912, it at first reads like a pastiche of a country house melodrama but soon turns into something far more disquieting.  There are echoes of An Inspector Calls as the third class carriage survivors from a mysterious train crash take refuge at Sterne, the country house in question.  Mock turtle soup, and worse, is spilt.  It is Jones’ ability to mesmerise, however, even by describing port which ‘quivered, swollen’ as it is poured, that will stick in the memory.

ex-wives by sandra howard

Sandra Howard’s fourth novel is, once again, in the vein of Joanna Trollope.  There is a lack of subtlety, however, as the tastefully dressed moneyed classes who inhabit her fiction get themselves into complicated, painfully topical scrapes.  In this instance, Kate Nichols, a thirty-something advertising executive who has been widowed, embarks on a relationship with an intriguing older man.  MI6, cocaine smuggling and a bi-polar ex-wife all intervene to disrupt the course of true love but Howard never seems wholly engaged by the ensuing drama.  Although reassuringly enjoyable, Ex-Wives never truly comes to life and is weighed down by issues.

under the same stars by tim lott

The journalist Tim Lott’s sixth work of fiction began life as a memoir, exploring his relationship with his elder brother and the impact of it on his own, well-documented, depression. His instinct to fictionalise the experience has paid off. Carson and Salinger Nash, the fictional brothers, journey across America as the Lott brothers did. The Nash men, however, are trying to find their estranged father. Lott’s weakness is to crudely emulate the butch American writers he so obviously admires – the descriptions of minor female characters are particularly unpleasant. For all this, it is an uncomfortable yet rewarding novel.

These reviews first appeared in the Mail on Sunday