Thursday, January 02, 2014

2014 in books: turn over a new leaf

The return of Sherlock on TV, Wolf Hall at the RSC and Lord of the Flies: the ballet – plus new books from Dave Eggers, Sarah Waters, Stephen King and many more

  • Review calendar composite image
January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

JANUARY

1 Cumberbatch, Freeman et al return for a new series of Sherlock (BBC1). But surely there's no way that Holmes could have survived that fall at the end of the last series ...
7 The Costa award category winners are announced – best novel, first novel, biography, poetry collection and children's book. The writer to follow Hilary Mantel as overall winner will be revealed on 28 January.
8 On the subject of Mantel, the RSC adaptations of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies officially open today and run until the end of March.
12 The film adaptation of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, set in Nazi Germany and starring Geoffrey Rush, opens. Other film adaptations this month include the Kenneth Branagh-directed reboot of Jack Ryan, based on Tom Clancy novels, and Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, based on the memoir of a Wall St conman.
14 King Lear with Simon Russell Beale, directed by Sam Mendes, opens at the National Theatre.
28 On this day 75 years ago, WB Yeats died in Menton, France, prompting WH Auden's elegy ("He disappeared in the dead of winter: / The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted").

Fiction

& Sons by David Gilbert (Fourth Estate). A Salingerishly reclusive writer tries to reunite with his estranged sons in a panoramic American novel that's been lavishly praised in the States and talked about as a possible Man Booker contender over here. Interview, page 10
Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic). In the follow-up to the much talked-about The Slap, a young, working-class Australian swimmer falls apart under the pressure of family and ambition.
The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin (Doubleday). The cult Tales of the City series continues, as transgender landlady Mrs Madrigal, now in her 90s, takes a road trip into the Nevada desert and back into her past.
The Thing About December by Donal Ryan (Doubleday). The Spinning Heart,  about an Irish village in the grip of recession, won the 2013 Guardian first book award. Ryan's new novel is set in rural Ireland a decade earlier, when the Celtic Tiger was still raging.
Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem (Cape). Lethem's latest focuses on three generations of a radical New York family.
The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane (Sceptre). An impressive debut about old age, memory and the mystery that is other people.
More

No comments: