What I've Been Reading Recently

As We Descended*
Robin Talley
Rating: ***
A diverse cast - including disabled, Latinx, Black, gay & lesbian characters - is one of the highlights of this clever re-telling of Macbeth set in a Southern boarding school. The setting, too, is well drawn: a venerable school on an old plantation, complete with misty & sinister lake, dusty locked rooms and abandoned passageways, and the terrible echoes of slavery and exploitation casting a Southern Gothic shadow over the place. There are some genuinely scary moments, too, most notably the opening chapter séance, which takes the place of the encounter with the three weird sisters and their predictions to Macbeth, and the later chapters in which Maria - our Macbeth - begins to unravel. As a Shakespeare geek, I thoroughly enjoyed the nods to the original play, both explicit - such as in the name of the prestigious school prize, Cawdor, for which Maria is fighting - or more subtle plot points.

The Last One*

Alexandra Oliva

Rating: ****

A group of people are sent off into the wilderness, cameras following discretely, to compete against each other in a Survivor-like reality TV show. Zoo, off on a solo challenge and starving and exhausted, is horrified at the lengths the TV production team have gone to scare her - fake rotting corpses, mechanised rabid animals - unaware that a cataclysmic virus has hit the east coast of America and that not only are these things not fake, but there are no cameras anymore, no production team. Instead, she's stuck in a race to survive that may never end. It's a brilliant premise, well executed, and while it doesn't maintain its initial promise right up to the end, it's a solid 3.5 stars from me, bumped up to 4 thanks to the ingenious idea behind it.

The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free
Alex Perry
Rating: ***
I was immediately interested in reading this, by the former Time Magazine correspondent to Africa, as it seemed to offer a wide-ranging and Africa-focused look at the recent challenge and opportunities that the continent faces. However, despite an introduction in which Perry promised to offer Africans a voice in their own narrative, this is - largely - still a white Western man's view of Africa. There are exceptions - the chapters on China in Africa offer an interesting and enervating post-colonial view on investment in the continent, as too do his discussions with tech start-up entrepreneurs in Kenya and Nigeria - but I found this still too much about Western views of Africa rather than African views thereof.

American Housewife

Helen Ellis

Rating: ****

Short stories with enough bite to take your hand off, Ellis's collection is bleakly, bitterly funny. Particular highlights are a story about a failed novelist taking part in Dumpster Diving With The Stars, a reality TV pastiche that's all too familiar, and the surreal, insidiously sinister tale of a young woman's introduction to her - initially innocent-seeming - new book group.

The Trespasser*

Tana French

Rating: *
It breaks my heart to say this, because I have - to varying degrees - either very much liked or loved all of the previous books in the Dublin Murder Squad series, but my gosh The Trespasser was a terrible read. Where previous instalments have had real tension, great characterisation and brilliant scene-setting, this had a paper-thin plot which was easy to guess, and generally unlikeable characters. All in the series have been somewhat over-long and under-edited, but this read more like a novella or Kindle short padded out to 480 pages.

* I received a digital copy of this book from the publishers via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review