Best new books: March 2022
Portrait of an Unknown Lady by Maria Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead
How do we judge and value authenticity? Is forgery just another art form? And isn’t the overinflated art market begging to be exploited? The new novel from Argentinian writer Maria Gainza – following her excellent debut, Optic Nerve – explores such questions, taking us behind the scenes in Buenos Aires’s art world. In this playful, layered mystery, the art critic narrator investigates the missing link between three women: her late employer, Enriqueta Macedo, a fine art expert who drew her into counterfeiting; Mariette Lydis (1887–1970), Viennese émigré portraitist; and Renée, bohemian artist and forger of Lydis’s work. But how far are the narrator’s findings truth or fabrication, and does it matter? In transcendental prose rich with allusion, reminiscent of Deborah Levy and Roberto Bolaño, this elusive tale of art and obsession exhibits dazzling literary sleight of hand.
(Harvill Secker, 3 March)
Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004-2020 by Margaret Atwood
Trailblazing feminist author Margaret Atwood is a cultural icon, and with a clutch of ‘prophetic’ speculative novels under her belt, she’s come to seem increasingly like a tech-savvy Sibyl presiding over us all with hawk-eyed benevolence. Her fierce intellect, boundless curiosity and mischievous humour have won her fans the world over. Now you can see these qualities in action in over 50 essays written over a turbulent period that witnessed a financial crash, the rise of Trump, the #MeToo movement and a global pandemic, exploring subjects as diverse as debt, tech, the climate crisis, freedom, beauty and storytelling. There are also personal reflections on the death of her husband, Graeme Gibson, in 2019, and the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. An invigorating window into one of our sharpest minds.
(Chatto & Windus, 1 March)
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
Author of the acclaimed short story collection salt slow, Julia Armfield won the Pushcart Prize 2020 and White Review Short Story Prize 2018 and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2019. Her surprising, tender debut novel is a love story with a mystery at its heart: why has Miri’s marine biologist wife Leah returned from a trip on a sunken submarine changed – withdrawn, bleeding, unfathomable? Whatever happened on the seabed hasn’t left her, and seeps into their flat, into the widening gulf between them. As in Armfield’s stories, otherworldliness infuses the everyday with a haunting lucidity. This gorgeously written tale confirms Armfield as a master of the domestic uncanny, and of observing human relationships.
(Picador, 3 March)
The Instant by Amy Liptrot
Amy Liptrot is the author of The Outrun, a bestselling memoir about moving back home to Orkney from London to recover from alcohol addiction. In 2014, single and untethered, disconsolate in the wake of the Scottish referendum, she decided to move to Berlin, where she explored the city on foot or bike and searched for love online. The result is this memoir, a vivid, searching account of what it means to be a ‘digital nomad’ living a life where the internet is your most stable home; of being alone in a foreign city navigating new friendships and romances; of feeling ‘disconnected, superfluous, weightless’ without the anchors of familiarity. Known for her lyrical nature writing, Liptrot articulates her experience beautifully, training an attentive eye on everything from moon phases and migratory birds to tech culture and obsessive love.
(Canongate, 3 March)
Homesickness by Colin Barrett
Colin Barrett’s debut, Young Skins, won the 2014 Guardian First Book Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature – not bad for a first short story collection. The eight stories in his new book also unfold on his home turf of County Mayo, by way of Toronto, and chronicle the unremarkable exchanges and untoward incidents of life: police are called to a rural shooting; an evening at the pub takes a surreal turn when a fugitive shows up with a sword; orphaned siblings muddle through adolescence with the aid of vodka, video games and a conscientious older brother. What marks Barrett out is his flair for capturing characters in a few deft strokes; his sharp dialogue, eye for absurdity and arresting use of language.
(Jonathan Cape, 10 March)
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer
In her debut novel, 26-year-old filmmaker Maddie Mortimer draws on her experience of losing her mother to cancer aged 14. Reflecting on motherhood, desire, illness and the act of letting go, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies immerses us in the tumultuous, kaleidoscopic world of a woman preparing for a premature death. Lia’s diagnosis irrevocably shatters her, her husband’s and their 12-year-old daughter’s normality, and as the disease maps itself onto her body, Lia feels her past rushing towards her, the borders between now and then, interior and exterior selves dissolving. Yet even as the end draws near in all its magnitude, ordinary life grinds on. In this piercing portrait of what it is to live with death hanging over you, Mortimer weaves a symphony of language and perspectives.
(Picador, 31 March)