LITERARY FICTION  | Daily Mail Online

HOLLOW IN THE LAND

by James Clarke (Serpent’s Tail £12.99, 272 pp)

Lancashire: a neglected space caught between the twin poles of tourist magnets the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales — two places, incidentally, that are also richly imagined in literature.

Now comes James Clarke’s collection of loosely interlinked stories set in an overlooked Lancashire valley that determinedly refuses to romanticise a landscape blasted by foot and mouth, lack of opportunity and widespread economic deprivation.

There’s Harry, whose wife is drinking herself into oblivion following an ectopic pregnancy. There’s ‘Molly’, a sadistic tree surgeon who gets his kicks from tormenting his young apprentice. There’s Nessa, who works at a care home for vulnerable (for which read ferociously damaged and delinquent) children.

These are largely unpretty lives and Clarke’s prose is appropriately unvarnished, able to get to the truth of things without fanfare but with plenty of compassion. A promising debut.

WHAT’S LEFT OF ME IS YOURS

by Stephanie Scott (Orion £14.99, 352 pp)

Sumiko has been mourning her mother for 20 years, following her death in a car crash, when she receives an inconclusive phone call from the Ministry of Justice, mentioning her mother’s name.

A newly qualified lawyer brought up by her protective grandfather, Sumiko is determined to discover more and before long has unearthed a paper trail that leads to the truth: her mother was in fact murdered by her lover, an undercover wakaresaseya agent, initially hired by Sumiko’s father as part of a seduction scam to allow him to sue her for divorce.

Inspired by a real murder in Tokyo in 2010, this hotly tipped debut examines the hidden human dramas behind Japan’s murky marriage break-up industry, with the dead woman reclaimed as a vivacious, loving mother trapped in an unhappy marriage.

But it’s a slow-burn read, and while much of the writing, particularly on memory, is lovely, Scott’s extensive research keeps jarringly poking through.

BARN 8 

by Deb Olin Unferth (And Other Stories £9.99, 304 pp)

If Easter has left your stomach in revolt against chocolate eggs, this oddball heist novel may well leave you feeling equally revolted by the real thing.

Set against an ominously flat Iowa landscape, it’s the story of a botched attempt to rescue nearly a million wretched battery hens by a group of mismatched animal activists. They pitch up at Happy Green Family Farm armed with trucks and good intentions but not enough of a plan.

If this sounds like a madcap eco-caper, then it’s a weirdly unexciting one: Unferth’s deadpan prose, which plays with linear time, is an acquired taste and her story is crammed with far too many misfit characters to properly care about any of them.

Her novel is, though, a slyly effective absurdist comment on a country that consumes a staggering 75 billion eggs a year, with the real heroes of the hour the hens themselves.

Who knew these creatures can recognise not only up to 100 fellow chooks but also the face of the enemy?