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LIARS AND SAINTS by Maile Meloy John Murray pounds 7.99, pp272
360-FLIP by Molly McGrann Picador pounds 10.99, pp192 CANARINO by Katherine Bucknell Fourth Estate pounds 15, pp340
RHAPSODY by Robert Ford
Atlantic Books pounds 10.99, pp304
EVE GREEN by Susan Fletcher Fourth Estate pounds 12.99, pp288
A WHILE ago , John Murray's freshly resuscitated fiction imprint acquired a debut American novel praised by, among others, Philip Roth. Maile Meloy's Liars and Saints was a shrewd purchase, but then, less than a month shy of publication, it was named among Richard and Judy's summer reading choices and rushed immediately into paperback.
Rightly or wrongly, their endorsement is likely to put off a portion of the reading public even as bestsellerdom beckons. This is a shame, since Liars and Saints is not quite what it seems. A brisk epic, it covers four generations and some 50 years in fewer than 300 pages, charting immense changes in American society as they impact on one increasingly higgledy-piggledy family.
Its matriarch is Yvette, a practising Catholic who weds calm Teddy Santerre in pre-war haste and drives him wild with her 'over- the-shoulder smile'. 'Families change irrevocably with each additional child,' Yvette reflects, and so Meloy's narrative expands into an ever more complex prism of viewpoints as first one and then another daughter arrives.
Later, a baby boy enters the family, followed...