Books of the month: From Daisy Buchanan’s Insatiable to Nikesh Shukla’s Brown Baby

Martin Chilton reviews six of February's biggest releases for our monthly column

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I was curious to check out Hollywood star Ethan Hawke’s novel A Bright Ray of Darkness (William Heinemann), although perhaps the less said about it the better. A heavy-handed opening, featuring an unconvincing row in a taxi cab, is followed by a dismal sex scene between the middle-aged actor protagonist and a young woman begging him to “come on my face now, on my lips and on my neck,” all of which prompted me to make my excuses and leave for pages elsewhere. 

Happily, there is lots of satisfying fiction out this month, including Lucy Jago’s historical gem A Net for Small Fishes (Bloomsbury), a novel based on the scandal that shattered the royal court of James I in the early 17th century. I would also recommend Conor O’Callaghan’s We Are Not in the World (Doubleday), a powerful tale of a fractured father-daughter relationship. 

Among the best debut fiction this month is Tish Delaney’s love story Before My Actual Heart Breaks (Hutchinson), Nadine Matheson’s gritty London-based thriller The Jigsaw Man (HQ), Ali Benjamin’s The Smash-Up (Riverrun), and Inga Vesper’s tense The Long, Long Afternoon (Manilla Press), about a seemingly happy Californian housewife who vanishes in the 1950s.