The latest literary offerings bring campus intrigue, French crime, and artistic ambition to the shelves. Here are three standout titles.
The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams
Williams made waves with her debut, The Doloriad, a post-apocalyptic novel that won the Republic of Consciousness prize. Now, with The Vivisectors (4th Estate, £16.99), she moves to a major imprint, but don't expect a sell-out. Set in a city overrun by plants, this off-kilter campus novel follows an academic assistant caught in a row over overseas students. Themes like cancel culture, plagiarism, and university funding are woven into a dreamlike narrative that avoids journalistic specificity. The prose buzzes with dread and dark humour, offering a uniquely strange and gripping experience.
Offenses by Constance Debré
French author Debré, a former criminal barrister, gained fame with her autofictional trilogy about leaving her husband and job. Her new book, Offenses (Tuskar Rock, £10.99), translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, shifts to a third-person voice. It explores a murder on a Paris housing estate: a teenager robs an old woman to settle a drug debt but bungles the job. The narrative, blending coroner's report and sermon tones, delves into the killer's upbringing—poverty, violence, abuse, and drugs—and the lives of others on the estate. A bracing dose of reality, though not without a hint of smugness.
Give Me Everything You've Got by Imogen Crimp
Following her debut A Very Nice Girl, Crimp returns with Give Me Everything You've Got (Bloomsbury, £14.99), a summer-hazed tale of artistic ambition and same-sex desire. Ruby, a fledgling film director, struggles with a script until she is mentored by a feminist auteur she idolises. But when Ruby lives alone for a week with the director's 20-year-old daughter, an uneasy triangle develops. Satirising the culture industry's demand for autobiographical stories of women's lives, the plot echoes Zoë Heller's Notes On A Scandal and Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep. Tense, intelligent, with an excruciating climax.
