ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
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Beside the seaside
HELEN MERCER is disappointed by a depiction of Englands ‘coastal commons’ that lacks compassion and fails to illuminate the root causes of their decay
BLIGHT AND NEGLECT: An illustration from Coast of Teeth
[Louis Netter]
KEITH RICHMOND relishes a superbly conceived modern version of Aeschylus’ drama of murderous family succession
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a minimalist installation that prompts intriguing connotations
FIONA O’CONNOR questions the achievement of this year’s Orwell prize winner for political fiction
LEO BOIX reviews two powerful Latin American novels in which myth and crime fiction expose the deadly consequences of patriarchy, clandestine abortion and state violence
New releases from Laura Veirs, The Waterboys, and Yard Act
Ron's rages are sincere and — according to his wife — healthily cathartic. But can these splenetic outbursts loosen the grip of capitalism at its most monstrous?
Coast of Teeth: Travels to English Seaside Town in an Age of Anxiety
by Tom Sykes and Louis Netter
Signal Books, £14.99
IF you have ever caught the train to Brighton of a weekend or bank holiday, you may have noticed the excited anticipation rippling through the carriage as it pulls into the station.
All races, cultures, ages, sexes and even classes have the prospect of a day of earthly pleasure-seeking: wide and windy beaches stretch to the horizon, along with bad food, slot machines and shivering dips.
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CAL McBRIDE relishes the lyrical truth of an unstable identity in an over-tidy and conventional social realist treatment
ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
JULIA THOMAS unpicks the mental processes that explain why book-to-film adaptations so often disappoint
JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist