Four new books to read this week

In 2119, Professor Metcalfe is obsessed with a poem from 2014 recorded by literary great, Francis Blundy, written for his wife Vivien.

- Ian McEwan

What We Can Know is an astonishing consideration of how the tendrils of the past leak into the present, how it's recorded and interpreted, and the dangers of believing what we want to.

Most fascinating are the snippets of McEwan's imagined future Britain, largely submerged, where the youth are dumbfounded by the greed of the past and the planet is reeling from nuclear war and climate change. It's terrifyingly believable, while the thoughts he raises around loss - because of Alzheimer's, infidelity, death rumble spectacularly throughout. 9/10

No Friend To This House

by Natalie Haynes, hardback (ebook)

If there is one thing Natalie Haynes (author of Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and Pandora's Jar) knows what to do, it is reposition the classics. And her latest offering raises the bar.