The Song of Achilles is a retelling of the events of Homer’s Iliad, as told from the perspective of Patroclus. In Homer, Patroclus was a childhood friend and close wartime companion of Achilles. Later Greek authors, including Aeschylus and Plato, as well as Shakespeare (in Troilus and Cressida) brought out the implicit romantic relationship between the two characters, and it’s this aspect that Miller focuses on for her adaptation of the story.  

The Tiger’s Wife is set in a semi-fictionalised version of the Balkans, on the border between two unnamed countries, and takes place through a sweep of the twentieth century, in a period notably covering the Second World War and the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.  Its central character is Natalia, a young doctor who is on a mission of mercy to an orphanage. In the present day, she finds herself facing the double mysteries of her suspicious hosts, who spend their time digging for something in the surrounding land, and of the recent death of her grandfather, who took himself to a remote village to die.  

The Lacuna focuses on the life of the fictional author Harrison Shepherd, beginning with his childhood in Mexico in the 1930s and taking us through to the 1950s., interacting with significant moments and characters of historical significance along the way. We learn early on that he has kept diaries for much of his life, albeit with some important gaps (one of the lacunae that the title alludes to) and while the narrative is largely told through his diaries, it is mediated by a curatorial presence, the initially mysterious “VB”, and also punctuated by press clippings both real and invented.

Home is not a straightforward sequel to Robinson’s much-feted Gilead, but more of a companion piece, looking at a similar time period from different perspectives. In it, she shifts the focus to John Ames’ lifelong friend and friendly adversary in religious discussion, the Rev. Robert Boughton. It focuses primarily on three characters: the Rev. Boughton himself, who is aging and sick, and reflecting on his life and that of his family; his daughter Glory (probably the primary focus of this one) who has returned home in her late 30s, ostensibly to help him; and his ‘prodigal son’ Jack who arrives a little way into the novel following an absence of around twenty years.

The Road Home focuses on Lev, a middle-aged widower from an unspecified Eastern European country (possibly Poland), as he travels to London with the goal of making money to support his young daughter who stays back home with his mother. The novel begins as one of survival, as Lev acclimatises to the harsh realities of living in London with no money and no job. He initially sleeps rough and makes small change delivering leaflets for a kebab shop, before landing a job as a dish-washer (or “nurse”) in the high pressure kitchen of GK Ashe, a fine-dining, Gordon Ramsey style establishment. He eventually finds himself a (child size) room with recent Irish divorcee Christy, with whom he forms an endearing friendship.

Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in Nigeria in the years before, during and immediately after the Nigerian-Biafran (Civil) War (1967-70) in the decade following Nigeria’s independence from the UK in 1960. It focuses on three central characters: Olanna, the Igbo daughter of a wealthy businessman and eventually wife of Odenigbo, a Maths professor at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka; Ugwu, an Igbo village boy from Opi, who joins Odenigbo’s household as a servant (aged just 13) at the start of the novel; and Richard, the English expat and eventual partner of Olanna’s twin sister Kainene. 

On Beauty, unlike many of Smith’s other novels, is set predominantly in the US - though still has a healthy focus on Britain (or at least Britain as represented by - once again - North-West London).  It focuses on the intertwined lives of two families - the Belseys and the Kipps. Both have university professors at the helm, in the shape of Howard Belsey, a white English Rembrandt scholar (living with his African-American wife Kiki and three children in a fictional affluent university town near Boston, MA), and his nemesis Monty Kipps, a conservative Trinidadian initially living in London with his wife Carlene and two children. 

We Need To Talk About Kevin is told from the perspective of Eva Khatchadourian, a comfortably well-off former author and publisher of a series of travel guides.  It’s structured around a series of letters she writes to her partner, Franklin, in the years after their troubled son Kevin killed nine people in a high-school massacre, and was subsequently incarcerated for his crime. 

Small Island is mainly set in 1948, in a London still rebuilding after the war. Its main focus is on four characters who end up living in the same house. They are the house’s owner Bernard Bligh, his wife Victoria “Queenie” Bligh and two of their lodgers, both recently arrived from Jamaica, Gilbert Joseph and Hortense, his wife.  The novel jumps back and forward in time, with the “Before” sections covering the early life of all of the characters, including their wartime experiences. 

Property is told from the perspective of Manon Gaudet, the wife of a slave-owning sugar plantation owner in the Louisiana countryside in the 1820s. We initially have some sympathy for Manon, as we are introduced to her cruel and abusive unnamed husband through her eyes. Unhappy in her arranged marriage, her hatred for her husband is compounded by his frequently consummated obsession with the young slave Sarah, with whom he has two children (including a child revealed to be deaf), while Manon remains childless.

Bel Canto takes place in the initially plush surroundings of a party held at the residence of the Vice President of an unnamed South American country, in honour of the head of a Japanese corporation, Mr. Hosokawa. The powerful businessman is there to be wooed into a potential investment in the country, and has been tempted to attend a birthday party in his honour by the presence of world-famous opera singer Roxanne Coss, with whom he is (artistically) obsessed.

The Idea of Perfection takes place in Karakarook, a tiny New South Wales town in the middle of nowhere. At around the same time, two outsiders arrive in town for work-related purposes. Harley Savage is a part-time museum curator and textile artist, who has departed "the city" to help Karakarook with its "heritage"; Douglas Cheeseman is a vertigo-afflicted bridge engineer with a fascination for concrete, in town to assess (and likely demolish) the town's "Bent Bridge". Both are supremely awkward, throwing themselves into their work to try to escape the baggage of unsatisfactory lives and failed relationships.

When I Lived in Modern Times is the story of Evelyn Sert, a 20-year old hairdresser from Soho, of Latvian-Jewish heritage. After the war, she sets sail for Palestine, aiming to be part of the creation of a "new Jewish world" along with the refugees and idealists gathering there.

This is a Palestine still under the last throes of British colonial rule, and Evelyn is uncertain of her place in the embroyonic years of the creation of the Jewish nation. Unable to speak Hebrew (or in fact any languages other than English) she is initially at the whims of those around her, spending her first confusing months in a kibbutz before hitching a ride to the idealistic White City of Tel Aviv with the mysterious Johnny.

A Crime in the Neighbourhood is set in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Its events are narrated from retrospective distance by Marsha, who as a ten year old saw her life impacted by a trio of events in the early part of 1972: the departure of her father (who elopes with her aunt), the unfolding Watergate scandal (which preoccupies her mother) and most importantly, the rape and murder of a young boy in her local area.

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...

Fugitive Pieces is a novel in two sections, each focusing on a character's attempts to deal with trauma and loss relating to the Holocaust. Its first and longer section focuses on Jakob Beer, who as a 7-year old is the only person in his town to survive a round-up of Jews by invading Nazis. He is found by a Greek archaeologist, Athos Roussos, who take him into his care, moving him secretly to Zakynthos in Greece.

A Spell of Winter is a gothic novel set in wealthy rural England in the years before World War I. It focuses on two siblings, Cathy and Rob, who live with their grandfather after their parents have departed in initially mysterious circumstances. They are brought up mainly by a servant, Kate, and taught by their hated governess Miss Gallagher, who appears to have an unhealthy fascination with Cathy.