2005 Christmas reads: Fiction

Espresso Tales
By Alexander McCall Smith
(Polygon $39.95)

Edinburgh's citizens get a dose of McCall Smith's addictive fictional serial about a street in their city every week in the Scotsman. Canny. We get the lot in book form in this sequel to 44 Scotland St, with his cast of characters good and ghastly continuing with the everyday things of life. Precocious Bertie, 6, is still in therapy and pink dungarees; preening Bruce enters the wine trade; and art dealer Matthew has issues with a gold-digger. Great fun.

Runaway
By Alice Munro
(Vintage $26.99)

That most economical Canadian writer returns with another collection of short stories about relationships and the damage people can do to each other. Haunting and superbly written. With an envious introduction by Jonathan Franzen, who describes Munro as "the best fiction writer working in North America".

We Need to Talk about Kevin
By Lionel Shriver
(Serpent's Tail $29.95)

Eva Khatchadourian can't help it; she has never liked her son Kevin, who has grown up to become a malevolent teenager. When Kevin goes on a killing spree at his school, career woman Eva must ask herself: who is truly to blame? A fantastic, disturbing novel; winner of this year's Orange Prize.

The Darkness of Wallis Simpson
By Rose Tremain
(Chatto & Windus $49.95)

Inside the head of Wallis Simpson as she lies dying in Paris, grimly clutching her jewellery box as she ends her days in the clutches of her lawyer — and memories of her final marriage. A super collection of stories by the prize-winning author of The Colour, the lineup includes the tale of a East German border guard, jobless after the fall of the wall; a bored lawyer on a family picnic; an alcoholic gas-fitter; and an American tourist in London.

On Beauty
By Zadie Smith
(Hamish Hamilton $35)

Howard Belsey, a liberal Englishman and a professor in an East Coast college in the United States, is struggling to maintain any interest in his 30-year marriage to a black American woman, while his youngest son will converse only in gangsta rap. Then his oldest son falls for the daughter of a rabid right-winger and the two families embark on war. Wickedly funny.

The Penelopiad
By Margaret Atwood
Weight
By Jeanette Winterson
(Text Publishing $24.95)

Two more instalments in popular series retelling ancient myths. Atwood gives Homer's saga of Penelope and Odysseus a twist, as Penelope muses on the unscrupulousness of her absentee husband; Winterson's take on the legend of Atlas and Heracles is a peppy dissection of the nature of coercion, with language like, "Sorry mate."

The Possibility of an Island
By Michel Houellebecq
(Weidenfelf & Nicholson $39.99)

Daniel is a standup comedian who has started to loathe both laughter and people, yet he stills yearns for love. A thousand years into the future, and Daniel24 — the 24th cloned version of Daniel — lives alone with a cloned version of Daniel's dog Fox as the remnants of society implodes around them. There is a price to pay for immortality.

The Sea
By John Banville
(Picador $34.95)

After losing his wife to cancer, art historian Max Mordern returns to the seaside village where he had spent a life-changing childhood holiday. In a state of heightened grief, he immerses himself in his memories. This year's Booker Prize winner.

Saturday
By Ian McEwan
(Jonathan Cape $59.95)

This was the one many had picked for the Booker. London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne is comfortable with his life but when he wakes early on Saturday, February 13, 2003, and thinks he sees an airliner going down, he feels a deep unease that things are going wrong with the world. Later that day, as he tries to get through a huge anti-war protest, his fears become more specific.

Lunar Park
By Bret Easton Ellis
(Picador $34.95)

Remember Patrick Bateman, the efficient killer yuppie in Ellis' American Psycho? Bateman is back, and so is Ellis, the central figure in this novel about a writer called Bret Easton Ellis, who became famous young because of a book called American Psycho. Ellis didn't handle success well, developing a gigantic drug habit, but now he's married, living in the suburbs, pretending to be straight. Then Patrick Bateman turns up ... slapstick funny, excessive, weird.