Books in brief: Fires Which Burned Brightly, Boudicca’s Daughter and The Land in Winter

Fires Which Burned Brightly: A Life in Progress by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson Heinemann, £20)

Sebastian Faulks’s quasi-memoir, which consists of a series of interlinked essays touching on anything from his private education and love of wine to his perpetual disappointment that his best-known novel, Birdsong, has never been turned into a feature film, is a slippery beast. It masquerades as the reminiscences of one of Britain’s best-loved novelists, but Faulks is too cunning a literary stylist to give us straight autobiography. Instead, chapters contradict one another and statements of self-conscious banality are juxtaposed with shocking moments of candour, making for a consistently surprising read.

Boudicca’s Daughter by Elodie Harper (Apollo, £18.99)

After her deservedly bestselling Wolf Den trilogy, Elodie Harper remains within the classical world, but this time there is a twist. A lesser novelist would have focused on Boudicca, the storied British warrior who nearly repulsed the Romans, but Harper instead tells the saga of her little-known elder daughter, who she names Solina. Boudicca’s Daughter is as rich in intrigue and narrative sweep as Harper’s earlier books. There is great toughness and poignancy here, as Solina journeys to Rome and into the clutches of a notorious historical villain – to terrifying effect.

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (Sceptre, £10.99)

Andrew Miller’s Booker-longlisted novel, published in paperback on 23 September, focuses on two rural couples – Eric and Irene, and Bill and Rita – in the West Country in the early 1960s. All are outsiders, struggling to come to terms with issues of class and gender. When a seismic weather event – the “big freeze” – comes to Britain, it brings clarity, too, even as it causes the quartet’s buried secrets and concerns to come to the surface. This chilly, brilliant novel is Miller at his best.

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