A.M. Homes with Joan Wickersham

May We Be Forgiven is the first work in six years by A.M. Homes, author of The End of Alice, The Safety of Objectsand The Mistress's Daughter. Set in Winchester, the novel concerns one family's descent into psycho-sexual dysfunction and violence, and is written with a rare mixture of narrative intensity, elegance, and emotional punch. George, a television executive, is admitted to a psych ward after he crashes his car and kills two people. Harry, his repressed older brother, begins sleeping with George's wife. What follows is a kind of digital age picaresque, an ever escalating series of outrageous events (characters are hospitalised, kidnapped, sacked and admitted to sinister correctional facilities) in which dark satire eventually gives way to spiritual uplift.

Joan Wickersham's The News from Spain explores love, loss, and the unspoken expectations and pressures of romantic relationships, with a forensic and bracing precision. These short stories range over time and space—from 18th century Vienna to 1940s America—but they are linked by characters on the verge of emotional tipping points. Though aware of love's transience and the futility of any easy explication, Wickersham allows her characters to recognize what has been lost and what remains to be recovered. A haunting and gorgeous collection.