Deep Pockets: Snooker and the Meaning of Life
Brendan Cooper
Little, Brown, £20, pp288
Exploring a potted history of professional snooker with as much emphasis on Shakespeare and Greek myth as Steve Davis and Ronnie O’Sullivan might not seem the most obvious way to justify the sport’s continuing significance. But Cooper, who has published academic guides to William Blake and American poetry, is a convincing, entertaining and philosophical guide to the strange magic of snooker over the past five decades – and what it might be able to teach us about the meaning of life. It should be his big break.
Camp Zero
Michelle Min Sterling
John Murray, £16.99, pp304
The climate crisis has driven (rich) Americans away from intolerably high temperatures towards the cooler north and retreats such as Camp Zero. Meanwhile, humans have a chip implanted to remain online at all times. This debut from Canadian Min Sterling is less dystopian than pretty obvious speculative fiction. Still, though the prose is similarly plain, the story gradually builds into a page-turning, feminist mystery-thriller, as Rose – an escort employed in this radical enclave – and principled teacher Grant realise the camp is full of hidden agendas. Messy, but stacked with ideas.
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
Maddie Mortimer
Picador, £9.99, pp448 (paperpback)
Maddie Mortimer’s moving story of a woman living with cancer was longlisted for the Booker last year and won the Desmond Elliott prize. Deservedly so: there is something brilliantly confrontational about a novel refusing to sentimentalise – or even chronologically navigate – terminal illness. This creative book is full of different fonts and text weights, lists and narrations from the point of view of both the disease and the chemo. These layers deepen the fascinating pictures of mother-daughter relationships and family histories and make her debut uplifting and life-affirming.
To order Deep Pockets, Camp Zero or Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
