Helen of Nowhere focuses on an academic, known only as ‘Man’, who has recently lost his job as an English professor and separated from his wife (‘Wife’). He taught on largely transcendentalist themes, which are now being challenged by his (largely female) colleagues and students. His accusation that a student’s work may have been plagiarised was apparently the root of his dismissal, but he believes that he was in the process of being managed out in any case. His wife appears to have tired of him for numerous reasons, and is focused on her own writing career. ‘Man’ is considering a move to the country, and is shown around a large property by ‘Realtor’. The property’s former owner ‘Helen’ is now apparently in care, and has left the task of its sale to the realtor who apparently also lived in the house with her for some time.

The Rest of Our Lives focuses on the 50-something law professor Tom Layward, based in New York with his wife Amy and about to see their youngest child Miri off to college in Pittsburgh. We learn early on in the novel that Amy had cheated on Tom over a decade ago, at which point he had privately vowed to leave her after their children had both left home. As they prepare for Miri’s departure, both experience some degree of ‘empty nester’ anxiety and Amy decides to stay home rather than face the emotional trauma first-hand.

Flesh is set over most of the life of one man, István, with its main action taking place in his home country of Hungary, and London. We first meet István as a fifteen-year-old, living with his single mother in a new town. In an unsettling first chapter, István is (initially reluctantly) drawn into a sexual relationship by a much older woman, a friend of his mother’s. This relationship ends in tragedy, with István implicated in the death of her husband and subsequently serving time in a juvenile prison. The rest of the novel jumps forward in time for each chapter, often skipping significant moments in his life and focusing instead on their impact on him. Following a stint in the army during the 2003 war in Iraq, he moves to London where several chance developments lead him to a life of luxury. Up to a point, the novel seems like a classic ‘Rags to Riches’ narrative, but in its later chapters, we see István’s life gradually collapsing around him, and his eventual return to a relatively humble life in Hungary.

How to Make a Bomb was initially published last year in the US under the somewhat less provocative title Dartmouth Park. It’s a short novel, written in a sparse poetic style, eschewing paragraphs in favour of short sentences with line breaks and limited punctuation. Its focus is the fifty-year-old London-based historian Philip Notman, who is thrown into a deep personal crisis following a trip to a conference in Bergen. On his return he begins to struggle to pick up with his everyday life, and abandons his wife and (adult) son to head off in search of… something. Initially it seems that that something may be an affair, with the captivating Ines, who he met at the Bergen conference and initially seeks out in Cadiz. Yet relatively soon he is on the move again, this time to Crete to spend time in the dilapidated house of an older couple he helped out in Spain. He arrives seeking fulfillment of a different kind, away from the noise of modern life, and is further tempted by the allure of religion on a visit to a monastery. When all of this ultimately fails to resolve his issues, he heads back to London with a new sense of purpose, and a rather disturbing mission.

Larry's Party covers just over twenty years in the life of Laurence "Larry" Weller, an initially "ordinary man" in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It begins in the mid-70s with him as a 26 year old assistant florist, and ends with him hosting the titular dinner party in 1997, his life having changed beyond recognition, but in some ways coming back to where the book began...