Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob: an epic that sinks under the weight of facts
The Nobel winner’s novel about a religious cult in 18th-century eastern Europe suffers from an addiction to digression and a desire to leave nothing out.
By
Johanna Thomas-Corr
Johanna Thomas-Corr is a contributing writer to the New Statesman.
Latest articles
All Articles
Deborah Levy and the domestic
In the final instalment in her of “living autobiography” trilogy, Levy asks: how does a woman construct a life…
By
Rachel Cusk and the art of the midlife crisis
How the 54-year-old novelist has made a career out of destruction and reinvention.
By
Edward St Aubyn’s Double Blind is a clumsy critique of modern science
The novel veers between jet-setting farce and musings on recent issues of Current Biology.
By
Jordan Peterson: Agent of chaos
The infamous Canadian psychologist returns with more lofty self-help sermons. But his quest for order is thwarted by the…
By
Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This is the first great internet novel
The oddball American writer’s debut novel is a witty and true depiction of the experience of living online.
By
Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual: shame and redemption in postwar Britain
Spufford’s new novel is a quiet, contemplative book about the imagined future lives of children killed in a German…
By
Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts is an exercise in snark
The debut novel of a celebrated millennial critic is scornful, cold and – even worse – boring.
By
Max Porter’s The Death of Francis Bacon: a novelist takes on the painter’s final days
Porter’s tribute to Bacon is a short work, dense with allusions, somewhere between a prose-poem and a play script.
By