Our pick of the top five new reads to order or pre-order this September, from smoker’s rights to California communes
Words Catherine Hales
The Lesser Bohemians
Eimear McBride
Fashion isn’t the only thing time travelling to the 90s; McBride’s excellent second novel (his first, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing was a bestseller) takes place in a bedsit in North London and centres around a young Irish woman who has come to the city to study acting.
Nicotine
Nell Zink
The next big thing in American literature, Nell Zink was longlisted for the Guardian first book award with Mislaid & The Wallcreeper. Her newest effort deals with real estate troubles, an unconventional love triangle and the contentious topic of smoker’s rights.
Autumn
Ali Smith
You may recognise Smith’s name from the publicity surrounding her novel How to Be Both, whose outcome differed depending on which copy you picked up. Autumn is “a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, on what harvest means.”
Hamish Hamilton, £16.99The Sellout
Paul Beatty
Not a new release but notable now due both to its nomination for the Man Booker Prize and the current climate of racial tension in the US. Witty and insightful, this satire deals with a young man who becomes embroiled in a race trial that goes all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Girls
Emma Cline
When a book’s film rights are bought mere weeks after publication (expect to see a Scott Rudin production of the novel in the near future) you know it’s probably worth a read. The Girls is set two years after the Summer of Love and is primarily about Evie, a girl in her early teens, who joins a Manson-esque commune.
