Fiction

It's not everyday a critically acclaimed and popular novel covers the subject matter in Russell Banks' latest book Lost Memory of Skin. The protagonist is simply referred to as 'The Kid' – a convicted sex offender released from prison with a tracking device attached to his ankle. This device will monitor his movements for a ten year parole period, and should he venture to within 2500ft of a school or a playground, or any place where children congregate, he will be busted back to jail.

Lewis Crofts' fictionalised narrative biography of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele provides a detailed account of the life of the tortured painter, misunderstood for large parts of his life, yet ultimately successful only to succumb to Spanish Flu at an early age. The soubriquet The Pornographer of Vienna was attached to Schiele by a Viennese judge during an obscenity trial since many of his works, provocative and clearly showing female genitals, outraged society and caused Schiele to be incarcerated.

Being the dreadful literary snob that I am, I have never felt moved to read any of populist author's Stephen King's work. When I saw a synopsis for his most recent publication, 11.22.63, I realised it was high time to bury that irrational prejudice. However, the book is daunting – a very hefty 730 pages - which needs to be factored into the decision-making process. I only have time to read during my daily commute which of course meant I would be lugging around the tome for a protracted period of time.

Erin Morgenstern's debut novel "The Night Circus" has been somewhat unfairly called the natural successor to the Harry Potter series of books. There will certainly be some overlap of the target readership, but with a fleeting sex scene (more of this later) Morgenstern has deliberately narrowed the demographic so it is unlikely it could be considered ideal toddler bedtime reading.

Michel Houellebecq is the enfant terrible of French fiction despite this sounding vaguely ridiculous for a man firmly entrenched in his fifth decade. His award-winning and hard-hitting novels tend to polarise opinion; there are familiar themes that span his oeurve - graphic sex and prostitution, ageing, genetics and cryogenics, tourism and consumerism.

George and Weedon Grossmith's seminal classic The Diary of a Nobody is as pertinent today as it was when written in the 1880s in Victorian London. Like many great Victorian works, such as Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures, and Dickens' Mr Pickwick, The Diary of a Nobody was published in magazine serial form, and in its case, the fledgeling Punch periodical.

Michael Byers has crafted a fictionalised account of the discovery of the planet Pluto in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. Like many other recent works of fiction, including my reviewed Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, Byers has woven a tale of fiction around living characters. Also like Spufford's work, the characters are a long while deceased, enabling greater freedoms and literary license. Unlike Spufford however, Byers doesn't take the trouble to signpost to the reader where fact ends and fiction begins.

Red Plenty is not a work of fiction according to its author Francis Spufford. His very first words make that abundantly clear. The book charts the progress of the Soviet Union from the late 50s to the late 60s during a period of huge economic, political, ideological, sociological and technical change. Spufford has, like many of his contemporaries since it is the vogue thing to do, woven historically accurate figures from this period with figures invented from scratch, and some who are a synthesis of prominent contemporaneous individuals.