Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty
Jacqueline Rose
Faber & Faber, £12.99, pp256
In her introduction to this wide-ranging and incisive book, Jacqueline Rose writes that motherhood is the scapegoat “for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world”. Incorporating psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, literature and sociology, she traces the roles of women through history. “There will always be a limit to what mothers can do for their child,” she writes, “and therefore… to what we can ask of a mother.”
The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder
Sarah J Harris
HarperCollins, £12.99, pp448
Jasper is 13 years old and lives with his father following his mother’s death from cancer. He has synaesthesia – he interprets sounds as colours – and face-blindness, able to recognise people only by their voices. When his neighbour, Bee, goes missing, Jasper is convinced he has murdered her and that his father has helped conceal the crime. Harris produces a rich tapestry of secondary characters and engaging plot lines involving predatory sexual behaviour, social ostracism and bullying. But it is in her meticulously researched and visceral portrayal of Jasper’s synaesthetic world that the novel is at its most distinctive and compelling.
The Sparsholt Affair
Alan Hollinghurst
Picador, £8.99, pp464 (paperback)
From wartime Oxford to London in the 2010s, Hollinghurst’s sixth novel is a dazzling and deftly constructed story about art, identity and relationships. David Sparsholt is the elusive protagonist, but it is those around him – the friends who try to seduce him, and his son, Johnny, coming to terms with his own homosexuality – who drive the narrative. British gay history is familiar territory for Booker prize-winning Hollinghurst, but there is an elliptical quality here that contributes to the novel’s intrigue: key pieces of information are only loosely alluded to, and some plot lines remain unsolved. That these only add to the pleasure of reading the novel is testament to Hollinghurst’s structural dexterity and narrative confidence.
• To order Mothers for £8.99, The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder for £11.04, or The Sparsholt Affair for £7.64 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
