‘A full throttle thrill’ in best Literary Fiction out now: Kate Folk, Solvej Balle,
SKY DADDY by Kate Folk (Sceptre £18.99, 368pp)
Set in California, this kinky debut spices up the flourishing genre of the Millennial early-midlife crisis novel.
It follows Linda, a Silicon Valley content moderator, who is led into a series of comic scrapes by her secret fetish for airplanes – she wants to marry one, then die (and yes, you read that right).
There’s an ill-fated attempt to meet a pilot on a dating app – she only wants him for his joystick – as well as a sticky work situation when she’s filmed in flagrante on one of the flights she obsessively takes. Above all, her unfulfilled desire imperils a dear friendship.
A little bit JG Ballard, a little bit Ottessa Moshfegh, the surreal premise grabs you from the first page, buoyed by bright, zingy prose.
Told with verve – and nerve – it’s a full-throttle thrill: strap in!
ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME I by Solvej Balle (Faber £12.99, 192pp)
On The Calculation of Volume I is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Balle, a Danish author, is on the longlist for the International Booker Prize for translated fiction with this metaphysical puzzler about a woman reliving the same ordinary day hundreds of times over.
Tara, an antiquarian bookseller in France, goes to an auction for work and meets a friend – again and again and again. Gradually, her solo predicament enacts an estrangement from her husband.
Humdrum as well as surreal, the action is inherently funny, but Balle’s poker-faced narration (translated by Barbara J Haveland) gives nothing away about how to interpret what’s happening.
Claustrophobic yet mind-expanding, the repetition encourages the protagonist – and us – to notice more closely how much a day contains.
This is the first novel in a series of seven, and I’ll be fascinated to see how the concept develops.
THE USUAL DESIRE TO KILL by Camilla Barnes (Scribner £16.99, 256pp)
Barnes (niece of the Booker-winning novelist Julian Barnes) makes her fiction debut with this bittersweet comedy about an elderly academic couple trying each other’s patience – and that of their exasperated daughter, a Shakespearean actor – as they grow old in rural France.
The author’s background as a playwright shines through in some tip-top dialogue as the creeping indignities of age – deafness, failing memory – fuel constant conjugal bickering.
Key to the everyday aggro in the here-and-now is a looming appointment for hip surgery in Paris, yet the core of the novel is a long-buried heartache glimpsed via a cache of old letters occasionally dropped into the action.
It’s almost two novels in one: come for the petty grievances of marital and filial strife; stay for the sadness slowly unspooling between the lines.
A gentle tale with a profoundly melancholy sting.