Mark O’Connell A recent must-read: A recent book I loved is Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special. Here, she brilliantly captures the voice and the inner life of Mae, a young New Yorker working at Andy Warhol’s Factory. Flattery is such a unique and beguiling stylist, she is one of those writers whose sentences never quite wind up where you think they’re going. An unexpected joy (a book you knew nothing about): On the strength of a recommendation from a friend a couple of years back, I bought an essay collection called Firepool by the South African writer Hedley Twidle. I promptly forgot about it, but then picked it up recently and was blown away. His writing reminded me a little of John Jeremiah Sullivan – funny, literary, stylish, and with real intellectual depth – but he’s very much doing his own, distinctly South African thing. One of the bigger recent discoveries for me. A non-fiction recommendation: David Grann’s book The Wager is a masterpiece of narrative non-ficti
In this post-Fleabag world, publishing has become obsessed with the inner turmoils of messy millennials – but isn’t it time they pulled themselves together? Meet the novelists subverting the cliches