Ellah Allfrey

Caitlin Moran's semi-autobiographical novel is an earnestly written look at a young woman's self-reinvention. How to Build a Girl tackles class, gender and sexuality with both humor and sincerity.

In his episodic memoir, Will Boast meets the siblings he never knew while navigating family deaths and secrets. Critic Ellah Allfrey finds Epilogue conceptually ambitious, but lacking in execution.

Daniel Kehlmann's F, about three brothers abandoned by their father, examines the detail of lives lived without integrity. It is brilliantly translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway.

Stephanie Feldman's debut novel is about Jewish folk tales and family history. It's also an exploration of the inheritance of loss and the guilt of survival as it is passed down through generations.

California tells the story of a couple who, when they learn they are having a baby, leave their solitary refuge in a forest for a Utopian community in post-apocalyptic America.

The Unwitting by Ellen Feldman is part love story, part mystery and part political thriller set during the Cold War.

Ellah Allfrey reviews Kinder Than Solitude, by Yiyun Li.

Roughly three-quarters of South Africa's Jewish population are descendants of Lithuanian immigrants. Of these peasants, townspeople, tradesmen, shopkeepers and intellectuals who fled centuries of persecution and embarked on a passage to Africa, many dreamed of a new land and the promise of new beginnings. Kenneth Bonert's ancestors were part of ...

For readers new to Daniel Woodrell's work, The Maid's Version is a perfect introduction and an invitation to read more. It's a short book — almost a novella at a mere 164 pages — but there are lifetimes captured here. Woodrell sets the story in his beloved Missouri Ozarks, and ...

At the time of his death from cancer in June, Iain Banks had written 27 books. He was the rarest of creatures, a writer acclaimed (by critics and fans alike) not just for his literary fiction, but also for the science fiction novels he wrote as Iain M. Banks. It ...

In 2011, NoViolet Bulawayo was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story "Hitting Budapest." In this raw, fierce tale of a gang of near-feral children on the hunt for guavas, the young writer delivered one of the most powerful works of fiction to come out of ...

For readers in search of tales that step outside familiar viewpoints, there is an abundance of fiction by women unraveling the big themes of conflict, religion, race and love — from new and different angles. The five novels I'm recommending offer up-close-and-personal engagement with characters who are often at odds ...