The Possible World
Liese O’Halloran Schwarz
Hutchinson, £12.99, pp368
Before becoming a doctor nearly 30 years ago, Liese O’Halloran Schwarz wrote a novel, Near Canaan, at medical school. This follow-up is the book full of big questions she’s been toying with ever since. Spanning an American century - from the Great Depression to the present day - it features a small boy who survives a multiple homicide, the ER doctor with relationship difficulties who looks after him and a wise old woman whose life stitches these strands together. The Possible World is slightly convoluted and tiptoes around reincarnation, but Schwarz steers her story just the right side of sentimental, finding hope and beauty amid isolation and loneliness.
Kaiser! The Greatest Footballer Never to Play Football
Rob Smyth
Yellow Jersey, £9.99, pp336
“If sex was football, I’d be Pele,” boasts Carlos Henrique Raposo - or Carlos Kaiser, as the Brazilian footballer styled himself. Raposo, who signed for several South American clubs in the 1980s, managed to avoid ever playing a match. “I wanted to live the off-field life… but I didn’t want to play football,” he tells the Guardian’s Rob Smyth in this almost unbelievable biography of a charming conman-cum-sociopath consumed by lies, scams, deliberate injuries and sex. Smyth has unearthed a fantastic tale that could only have existed pre-internet and lets Raposo, who schmoozed with everyone from Maradona to Freddie Mercury, revel in his tall stories, which are now the subject of an equally enthralling documentary.
Forest Dark
Nicole Krauss
Bloomsbury, £8.99, pp304
Krauss told the Observer last year that Israel imposes itself on the imagination of all American Jews. So it’s no surprise that this deeply personal story about memory, solitude and transformation is partly set in Tel Aviv and features a Brooklyn novelist called Nicole escaping a failing marriage and trying to write a new book. Meanwhile, a kindred spirit, 68-year-old lawyer-philanthropist Jules Epstein, is also looking for a fresh start. Written in alternate chapters and invoking everyone from Kafka to King David, Forest Dark is intelligent, witty and sometimes overindulgent – but always compelling.
To order The Possible World for £11.04, Kaiser! for £8.49, or Forest Dark for £7.64, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
