A chapter or two from some novels
- Chad Harbach - Harry, a shy 17 y.o. baseball fanatic, is offered a sports scholarship, the distant college so keen to have him that a student with a single room is given compensation so that Harry can share. I wasn't impressed by the sample.
- Darran McCann - I like this far more. It's 1917, and an Irish hero's returning home after years. He arrives just as a dance is ending - the priest is trying to make people come home. There's secret drinking. He's aware that he's the star of the show.
- Lily Tuck - "His hand is growing cold; still she holds it. Sitting at his bedside, she does not cry". It's evening, and her husband has suddenly died. She thinks back to their wedding, to how they met in Paris, etc. He was a mathematician, which leads to the use of some unlikely analogies.
- Will Wiles - someone's looking after the flat of a house-proud friend. Didn't see much to enjoy.
- Evan Mandery - The blurb says "Imagine a brainier version of The Time Traveller's Wife rewritten by Woody Allen back when he was still funny". The crazy golf is fun.
- Nicci Cloke - 25 y.o. Fitz and Saffy are a couple. "To Lilah, anyone without beauty or wealth was boring ... We did the lines". According to the blurb, Saffy later in the novel has problems.
- Bonnie Jo Campbell - Margo, 15, had sex with her uncle Cal. Her father wasn't happy, and wanted Margo to claim it was rape. She likes using guns, killing deer at 30 yards. Her mother left suddenly a year before, wanting to find herself. It's rich in local detail, promising.
- Anjali Joseph - she's in Paris. She meets up with some people. "He was tall, broad-shouldered. She made these observations to herself. and a delight rose up in her." She goes to bed with him. It was unsatisfying. I wouldn't buy the book.
- Sam Thompson - Interesting in parts, working out who the narrator was, and what the city was like. But it went on a bit.
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