ReviewSaturday 15 May 2021 – Issue № 173 Mind the gap Reading offi ce novels from home — Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett ‘There’s an idea that segregation is ancient history. It never felt Review ancient to me.’ Saturday 15 May 2021 – Issue № 173 — Brit Bennett, page 18 Contents The week in books ................................................................................................04 The books that made me by Patrick Ness........................................................05 COVER STORY The future of offi ce novels by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett ....06 Book of the week: Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor ......................................10 Nonfi ction reviews Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe .......................................................................12 Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie .............................................13 Everybody: A Book About Freedom by Olivia Laing .......................................14 If You Were There: Missing People and the Marks They Leave Behind by Francisco Garcia ............................................................15 INTERVIEW Brit Bennett..................................................................................16 Fiction reviews The Rules of Revelation by Lisa McInerney ...................................................20 The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn ..........21 How to Kidnap the Rich by Rahul Raina ......................................................22 Last Days in Cleaver Square by Patrick McGrath .........................................22 Poetry of the month plus poem of the month ...............................................23 BOOKS ESSAY Leigh Bardugo on her hit fantasy series Shadow and Bone ................................................................................24 Kate Lister on the best books about sex, plus Tom Gauld ..........................26 COVER ILLUSTRATION Fabio Consoli Saturday 15 May 2021 The Guardian 3 ¶ Forewords the playwright Timothy The week in books Allen McDonald. The show follows 15 May several interconnected stories of people aff ected by the pan demic and scenes are named after Meghan’s TV show to moan symp toms – Fever, Bench press about his life.” Aches, Swelling and The Duchess of Sussex Royal author Angela Irritation, Fatigue and (right) has announced L evin was widely Shortness of Breath. The she is writing a children’s reported as saying that production was fi lmed in picture book, The Bench, she felt the cover was a New York concert hall about father and son “dull” and that children in March and will be relationships. “Meghan did not enjoy “being available on the US Markle’s fun-free child- lectured”. Similarly, streaming plat form raise money for Care ren’s book may put an royal expert Ann Overture+ . It may feel International, a charity entire generation off Gripper said she was too soon for some, but a working to vaccinate reading,” announced the “guessing” that The pandemic novel by the world against Telegraph in response. Bench would “probably” Picoult, Wish You Were coronavirus. “What would make the be “slightly sickly sweet”. Here, will follow in “ The situation in current shortlist for the Who knows what might November. SC India is particularly title of World’s Most happen when everyone heart breaking and the Ludicrously Inappro- can actually read the A new chapter inequality of the vaccine priate Book?” raged Piers book? Sian Cain in vaccination rollout is incredibly Morgan in the Daily Mail. A personal consultation unfair,” said publisher “While I haven’t read the Picoult’s pandemic with literary agent Jonny and thriller author book,” Karren Brady Jodi Picoult has become Geller, mentoring from Phoebe Morgan, who wrote in the Sun, some- famous for her will- leading novelists and launched the initiative. how not stopping there, ingness to take on big publishing fi gures, and “I’ve been delighted by “I do wonder if the last issues in her bestselling signed copies of books the way the publishing chapter consists of the novels: school shootings by authors including industry has responded father telling the son in Nineteen Minutes, Ian Ran kin, David Nich- – we have now raised that he’s old enough assisted suicide in Mercy, olls and Jessie Burton just shy of £15,000 , and to make his own money medical emancipation in are among 240 bookish bidding remains open and then the son having My Sister’s Keeper. Now lots on off er at Books for until 21 May so there’s a massive strop about she has created Breathe, Vaccines , an auction on still scope to raise much VERA SHESTAK/ALAMY; CHRIS JACKSON/PA WIRE JACKSON/PA CHRIS SHESTAK/ALAMY; VERA it and going on a global a Covid-19 musical, with airauctioneer.com to more.” Alison Flood Patent WORD OF THE WEEK Joe Biden recently supported the waiving of patents on Covid-19 vaccines so Steven Poole more could be made in the developing world, an idea that was not greeted with unalloyed joy by stockholders in pharmaceutical companies . But where do “patents” come from, linguistically speaking? As with so much, we owe them to France: patent was a medieval French deriva- tion from the Latin patens , meaning “open” or “obvious”. From early modern times in English law, “letters patent” were open letters (to enable inspection) from a monarch or government that conferred some right or title on the bearer. Inventions, too, could be protected by letters patent, giving the holder com- mercial exclusivity, from the 17th century onwards; in time they were called simply “patent” or “patented”. Lovers of 1980s fashion might be pleased to know that “patent leather” is originally recorded as the brainchild of a Mr Hand of Birmingham in 1793, and “patent medicines” were advertised in the Essex Gazette of 1770, though quacks’ cures of those days were less reliable than modern mRNA jabs. Meanwhile, given that “patent” still retains its original sense of “clear” or “evident”, it is patently obvious that “patently obvious” is a tautology. The books that made me ¶ genuinely don’t understand the fuss. For years, ‘Terry Pratchett makes you I joked that every living American claims to be feel seen and forgiven’ “half-Irish, half-Cherokee”. Not 50 pages into The Goldfi nch, the narrator’s mother is described, without Patrick Ness irony, as “half-Irish, half-Cherokee”. I thought : “Nope, there’s no truth to be found here.” The last book that made me laugh The book I am currently reading Elif Batuman’s The Idiot. It manages the trick of I’m just about fi nished with Adam Levin’s thousand- being laugh-out-loud funny while not actually page The Instructions , about a 10-year-old boy who being a comedy. It just observes life, in all its truth, thinks he might be the Jewish Messiah. Everyone and is hilarious for page after page. Never trust an makes David Foster Wallace comparisons, as if that entirely dour book; it’s what bad writers think art is. explains anything, but I’ve found it a vastly enter- The book I couldn’t fi nish taining, wildly over-loquacious joy. Then, for Many. Lots. Several. There’s no shame in it. If a book something completely diff erent, I’ll be starting doesn’t hold your interest, it’s probably the book’s fault. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Doors of Eden . He writes The book I’m ashamed not to have read incredibly enjoyable sci-fi , full of life and ideas. None. Zero. Nada. There’s also no shame in not The book that changed my life reading a book, any book. The kind of people who Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. I read it maybe a would shame you for not having read something are dozen times when I was 15 and 16, and it broke all the not anyone you need to know or associate with. rules for what introverted, painfully preppy me Their breath invariably smells of sour wine, and thought writing was supposed to do in novels. It they probably still listen to the Beautiful South. dared to be playful , which was a revelation. My comfort read The book I wish I’d written Discworld by Terry Pratchett. I am always at some Not a book – because jealousy is a mug’s game – but point through the cycle (I’m currently on The Thief the last line of Sula by Toni Morrison is the most of Time). They’re not only gloriously funny, they’re devastatingly perfect fi ctional sentence I know of. A humane in a way that makes you actually feel seen woman fi nally reali ses what the death of her lifelong and forgiven, with all your faults. He was a one-off , friend and sometime enemy means to her: “It was a Sir Terry. When I fi nish reading them through, I fi ne cry – loud and long – but it had no bottom and it simply put the last book down and pick the fi rst had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.” one up again. The book I think is most overrated I have tried to read The Goldfi nch three times and Burn by Patrick Ness is out in paperback, published MURDO MACLEOD/THE GUARDIAN MACLEOD/THE MURDO failed each time. None of it rings true to me, and I by Walker . Saturday 8 May 2021 The Guardian 5 ¶ Cover story Wish you were there? 6 The Guardian Saturday 15 May 2021 Cover story ¶ potential to replace us is also a persistent anxiety, espe - A new crop of novels c i ally with fears of mass unemployment in the wake of Covid. The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the examines offi ce culture Sun, in which humans are being outper formed by machines and some are denied education and career – yet for many it feels advance ment, feels uncomfortably close to our own. The white-collar workplace has long provided like a distant memory. writers with inspiration, from the passive rebellion of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, who would “prefer not Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett to”, to the entry of women into the offi ce, explored in books such as Rona Jaff e’s 1958 The Best of Everything and the presciently unsatisfying mag azine intern- considers work and our ship in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.