Young Mungo

"Looking ahead, April offers an embarrassment of riches. Douglas Stuart is due to release his second novel, the breathlessly anticipated follow up to his Booker Prize-winning, million-copy-selling debut Shuggie Bain ; Young Mungo has been described as a working class Romeo and Juliet , in which two men from either side of Glasgow’s sectarian divide fall in love for the first time. The first review just dropped (Kirkus says it’s “romantic, terrifying, brutal, tender, and, in the end, sneakily hopeful”) so get your pre-orders in pronto. I’m also very excited about Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House , which is a ‘sibling novel’ for her remarkable novel-in-stories A Visit From the Goon Squad , which must be one of my favourite-ever books. Emily St John Mandel (author of that most beautiful of post-apocalyptic novels Station Eleven , another from my all-time top ten) will publish Sea of Tranquility , a time travel book that leaps from the Canadian wilderness to a colony on the moon—a perfect book for people like me, who love those books that fall into the science fiction–literary fiction intersection on the publishing Venn diagram. There’s also Companion Piece by the great Ali Smith to look forward to, her follow-up to her beloved Seasonal Quartet, and Julian Barnes ‘ Elizabeth Finch , a portrait of an intellectual crush."