The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking by Han Smith (JM Originals)

This one had looked intriguing and I had it on the Listopia

I sampled this one and found the style off-putting so think I'll wait and see what others make of it.

Bit of a Milkman vibe

The main character thinks of herself as ‘the almost daughter’ but to another key character, ‘the woman with the gape-cave inside her’, she is instead ‘the lazy ghost of the ghost of the ghost of the atrocious ghost’.

There's a 2 star pan of this in the Telegraph but one where I think they've got the wrong reviewer to read it.

It begins by saying "the style is typical of an emerging genre of literary fiction: at an unspecified time, an unnamed female protagonist is in an unnamed place, which is burdened with an unclear historical trauma that the reader is never allowed to fully access" (yes you've guessed correctly, the reviewer is male), which then forms the basis for the criticism.

In terms of examples of that genre - as if anything I'd like to read more! - there is Study for Obedience (indeed a hyperlink under the emerging genre takes us to a review of that) and obviously Milkman (think the Telegraph wasn't a fan), two of my favourite novels of the last 10 years.

Any others (I feel I have some at back of my mind)?

There are also books like The Colony, various of Waidner's works that are somewhat allegorical but don't quite fit the mould.

Lauren Aimee Curtis and Sophie Macintosh might be two others.

Of course both with Bernstein on the Granta list - it’s definitely a sub-genre.

Anna Metcalfe (albeit more in the Han Kang tradition) and Camilla Grudova (some of her short stories) are probably genre-adjacent and again on that Granta list.

With this, I think we have a winner for me (about a third into the 6th book, My Precious Madness, and it won’t beat this one).

Clear winner for me - it’s brilliant. I really liked Spent Light too but this is possibly my favourite book of the year.

Clear winner for me too, though I haven't read (or seen my copy of) the Bowles yet.

My copy of this arrived and I'm looking forward to it.

Hugh wrote: "Clear winner for me too, though I haven't read (or seen my copy of) the Bowles yet."

Same here - clear winner - and it would be nice to get my copy of the Bowles (although they did send an ecopy when I asked)

Sitting on my coffee table for a couple of days while I finish other in process.