LITERARY FICTION  | Daily Mail Online

THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK

by David Foenkinos (Pushkin £9.99, 288 pp)

A library for rejected manuscripts established by a book-loving loner in a sleepy Breton town becomes the talk of literary Paris, when an ambitious young editor publishes to overnight success a novel she found gathering dust on its shelves.

The novel bears the name of Henri Pick, a now deceased local pizzeria owner, and his secret writing life comes as a shock to his wife and daughter, who never remember him reading a book, let alone producing one.

So begins this charming literary caper, which combines a journalist’s quest to discover who Pick really was with a tender evocation of small town France, peopled by loners, dreamers and romantics who find their lives transformed by even the most tangential contact with the story of the manuscript.

A playfully droll satire of the French publishing scene and a completely delightful jeu d’esprit.

THE MOTION OF THE BODY THROUGH SPACE

by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins £16.99, 352 pp)

Lionel Shriver stares down some of the most contentious issues of the day with her latest novel, about a couple in their 60s whose marriage comes under strain when the husband, Remington, takes up running.

Remington has been recently fired from a life-long job in local government after Lucinda, a younger, black colleague promoted above him, accuses him of threatening her. The consequence both propels Remington into a farcically fanatical embrace of endurance fitness and provides Shriver with a platform from which to challenge the grip of our toxic culture wars on intellectual and artistic freedom.

It might have acquired greater focus as a short story, and Shriver’s decision to rail against the politicisation of literature by creating in Lucinda a character whose purpose is explicitly political feels like an own goal. But you’ve got to admire her for wrestling to the floor subjects many authors wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.

A REGISTRY OF MY PASSAGE UPON THE EARTH

by Daniel Mason (Mantle £14.99, 240 pp)

An outstanding collection of short stories from an American novelist best known for his historical fiction, this immerses the reader in various imaginatively realised moments from history while conducting a series of dazzling forays into style and form.

A fight between a humble dock worker and an infamous pugilist in 1820s Bristol, with each punch and lunge bloodily detailed, builds up an almost incantatory force. A mother goes on a desperate midnight journey through 19th-century London to seek relief from a botanist for her dangerously asthmatic son.

A budding scientist waits feverishly and in vain to hear from Darwin after sending him a letter detailing his own discoveries on natural selection. In the Edgar Allan Poe-esque The Second Doctor Service, a man is driven half mad by the belief his doppelganger is trying to take over his body and soul.

The language combines featherweight grace with immense muscle across a collection that contains not one dud.