Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Whether we ascribe the cause to the ubiquity of internet porn, the artificiality of computer dating or the illusion of infinite choice, finding a suitable life partner seems more fraught now than it’s ever been. The only upside is that all this interpersonal trauma and uncertainty continues to inspire scintillating literary fiction. According to the latest crop of young female novelists, the problem lies squarely with males. Hero, in the novel of the same name by Katie Buckley, is young, beautiful (as she candidly admits) and ferociously smart. She’s slept with 108 men, been in love with a handful and is weighing up whether to marry the chef boyfriend who has just proposed. They are compatible, in love, and family and friends all approve — so why does the decision feel so impossible?Over the course of seven days, Hero, a budding writer, addresses her thoughts and doubts directly to him, detailing sexual experiences, past relationships and conversations with similarly wronged female friends. Hero is weighed down by the archetypes of witches, selkies, mermaids and sirens who are punished in myth for their independence. The fairytale princesses, whose lives are a blank beyond “happily ever after”, are no help to her either. Hero, thoroughly solipsistic, makes no attempt to delve into the inner lives of the hapless males she excoriates. “I can’t stop writing about you,” she admits, “because even when it seems like it’s about you, it’s about me.” With its plotless snapshots of female rage, Hero (Tinder Press £16.99) is a fierce and thrillingly subversive read.In contrast Alice, in Emma Van Straaten’s This Immaculate Body (Fleet £16.99), knows exactly what she wants. Tom is the perfect, sensitive lover, and they are destined to be together for ever. She knows him intimately, has delved deep into his habits and preferences and, unperturbed by his occasional messiness, loves cleaning up after him. There is only one problem — they have never met. She is his cleaner, and beyond the five stars and tip he apportions every week on the agency website, he barely knows that Alice exists. While Alice writes about Tom as though he’s a deity (“He” and “Him” always capitalised), her own self-loathing is profound. At her best she has intelligence and a caustic wit, despising the girls at her other job “who talk about Lizzo as though she’s Simone de Beauvoir”. But as her obsession takes hold and a meeting is forced, rationality and restraint dissolves. This portrait of a relentless stalker makes her more pitiable than frightening; at least until an unexpected ending reveals just how far Alice will go to merge her identity with the one she adores.Mairéad, toiling backstage in a theatre in London’s West End, also gets close to the material reality of her love object, in this case the leading man in Uncle Vanya. Elaine Garvey’s The Wardrobe Department (Canongate £16.99) is filled with eyelet-popping detail about the sheer effort it takes to maintain, clean and repair, day after day, the costumes in a major show. Washing undies, sewing gloves, racing to the cobblers and dry cleaners and endlessly sourcing stockings (Soho’s sex shops are the cheapest option) are regular tasks. The producer is vile, there are backstage sex pests to avoid, and as well as being overworked and under-appreciated, Mairéad feels stigmatised for her Irishness. So alert to insensitivity is she that she blames one cock-up on accidentally glimpsing the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside Parliament. But a brief recall to the hometown she fled reminds her that she feels just as adrift and angry there. Whether she’s detailing the drama of an Irish funeral or the panic of a backstage emergency, Garvey’s control of tone and voice is faultless. Seth Insua’s Human, Animal (Verve Books, £10.99) also displays impressive levels of detail, this time about the operation of a dairy farm, where the cows have names and personalities but are treated with a lack of sentimentality necessary to running a business. George and his elder son muck in, but younger son Tom is a problem, holed up in his bedroom, secretly wearing make up and chatting to men online. When he falls for Luke, leader of a group of animal rights activists, love and family are hurled into opposition and Tom’s very identity feels threatened. The characterisation is so adept that a plot which could seem contrived never fails to convince. James Alistair Henry’s Pagans (Moonflower £16.99) imagines a simpler, more brutal modern Britain. Unconquered by the Normans, it’s filled with warring tribes: tattooed, axe-wielding Saxons, mysterious Picts and mystical Celts. Two cops, male and female, Celt and Saxon, must join forces to find a ritualistic killer whose victims are nailed to trees in imitation of an esoteric new cult. Henry’s mash-up of fantasy and crime genres is inventive, enjoyably nasty and frequently very funny. Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X
