Good Girl centres on Nila, a 19-year-old student of Afghan refugees living in Berlin in what seems to be around the late 2000s/early 2010s. She has lost her mother and is keen to distance herself from her father, and throws herself into the Berlin clubbing scene, spending long nights and days partying, notably at ‘the Bunker’ (transparently Berghain) where she meets the much older American writer Marlowe, with whom she begins a tempestuous sort-of-relationship based around a mutual affection for art and the consumption of illicit substances.

The City Changes Its Face is both a sequel to and a kind of retelling of McBride’s brilliant 2017 work The Lesser Bohemians. It joins that book’s protagonists, Eily and Stephen, just a few years after its events, with the setting roughly the same - we’re still in grimy mid-90s London, although the lovers’ new house is somewhat less poky and grim than their Camden dwelling in the first book. It hops around in time between the ‘present day’ setting of late 1996, and various periods in between the action of The Lesser Bohemians and that time. The broad concept is that the ‘now’ sections detail an argument between the two over the course of a day, with the hops back in time providing some context. In the middle of all of this is the book’s centrepiece, a description by Eily of a screening of a rough cut of Stephen’s autobiographical film, which expands on his traumatic backstory, this time artistically mediated and then interpreted by Eily, rather than in his first-person confessional voice as in the first book.

The Lesser Bohemians is told from the perspective of Eily, and 18-year-old Irish woman, newly registered at a London drama school. As she settles in to her new life in 1990s Camden Town, she attracts the attention of Stephen, an actor of some renown in his late thirties. They begin an intense, passionate and often destructively turbulent relationship. Initially, it seems like the focus may be on the imbalance of power in their age difference, and their are certainly aspects of that, but ultimately the story develops in much more complex ways as each reveals details of their traumatic past, which in sharing binds them ever closer together.

Our London Lives is told from the alternating viewpoints of two Irish immigrants who meet in a central London pub in the 1970s. Milly is a bartender at a traditional city pub, catering for a diverse clientele covering locals, city workers, and most importantly, boxers from a neighbouring club. One of those is Pip, who we first encounter as an ex-convict who has just come out of rehab, in 2017 (the novel’s ‘present day’). Pip’s story is told entirely from the vantage point of that present day, with all the retrospective mix of nostalgia and regret that comes with that sort of angle. By contrast, Milly’s narrative unfolds chronologically, in the moment, through the years from the late 1970s through to, eventually, 2017. In her story there are large leaps and gaps that aren’t immediately filled in, but the two perspectives collide in a richly satisfying (though far from conclusive) ending.

Ordinary Human Failings is set in London in 1990, as a housing estate community is rocked by the death of a toddler, with suspicion quickly falling on Lucy, the 10-year old daughter of an Irish family, the Greens. A tabloid journalist, Tom, is dispatched to investigate, with a strong focus on digging up dirt on the Green family, whose outsider, reclusive status means they are the inevitable target of attention for the crime. It’s pitched as a thriller, with a mystery to be solved, and Tom is convinced he’s going to be the one to solve it. He moves the family into a small hotel, plies them with drink and looks for the inevitable trauma that has led them here, and a motive for the crime.

Martyr! introduces us to Cyrus Shams, a recently sober son of Iranian immigrants (and evidently an autobiographical proxy for the author). As a child he moved to the US following the loss of his mother when her plane (Iran Air Flight 655; based on a real incident) was shot down over the Persian Gulf by US forces. His father, who made his way in the States as a factory farm worker, has also died, leaving Cyrus seeking meaning initially in narcotics but subsequently in poetry.

The Glorious Heresies is a darkly humorous yet moving tale set in the criminal underworld of Cork, in post-crash Ireland. It shifts perspective between five central characters, most centrally Ryan Cusack, the eldest of six siblings who has lost his mother and despite high intelligence and a talent for music has fallen into a life of low-level drug dealing, only really gaining satisfaction from his relationship with Karine.

Children of Paradise (named after Marcel Carné’s 1945 French film) tells the story of Holly, a young woman just arrived in an unnamed city, who takes a job at its oldest cinema, The Paradise. The cinema is clearly a relic of a bygone age, staffed by a memorable motley crew of misfit cinephiles, barely existing on pitiful wages and whatever their customers leave behind underneath their seats (money, valuables, unidentifiable narcotics) in its one screen. Holly is a relative novice to the world of the cinema, and initially an outsider. She soon becomes accepted by her fellow employees, and begins to live their life of seemingly 24/7 film viewings, subsisting on pilfered booze, popcorn, dubious nachos and those even more dubious abandoned drugs. She begins to have regular encounters with a fellow employee, Paolo, though later discovers that this was merely par for the course - everyone is sleeping with everyone else at the Paradise.

The Promise charts the decline of the white South African Swart family, at their farm outside Pretoria, over four decades. The novel covers the funerals of four out of five of the core family, against a backdrop of a changing South Africa, from the later years of Apartheid through the optimism of the Mandela years, Zuma-era corruption and into almost the present day.

Shuggie Bain is a deeply personal story, clearly heavily influenced by Stuart’s own childhood, of a caring but “different” child, Hugh “Shuggie” Bain growing up in 1980s Glasgow with his alcoholic mother, Agnes. The book begins with the pair (and Shuggie’s two siblings Leek and Catherine) living with Agnes’ parents and Shuggie’s father “Shug” in Glasgow tenements. Shug moves the family to the isolated mining “scheme” accommodation of Pithill, before abandoning them to move in with another woman. Agnes is glamorous but unfulfilled, taking refuge in alcohol which worsens as her parents die and her daughter marries young and moves to South Africa.

The Sea is narrated by Max Morden, a retired art historian reflecting on key moments of love and loss in his life. With little delineation, Max shifts his narration between three timeframes. The oldest covers a period in his childhood, during a summer holiday in a seaside town called Ballyless, where he becomes infatuated with a middle-class family, the Graces. His obsession focuses first on the mother, Connie, and then (in a different way) the daughter Chloe, who is also inextricably linked to her mute twin, Myles. We're also introduced to Carlos, the husband, and Rose, the twins' nursemaid. This part is in many ways the centrepiece and the events within it echo and reverberate across the other sections.