Music Night at the Apollo: A Memoir of Drifting (Bloomsbury, £14.99) describes the year Lilian Pizzichini spent with her cats on the Adam Bonny, a narrowboat moored on the Grand Union Canal amid the factories and sink estates of Southall. The boat stays moored but, on a tide of cider and cheap vodka, and fuelled by skunk, cocaine and heroin, Pizzichini takes a wild and perilous voyage, encountering not only the local Punjabi and Somalian lowlife but also her own ‘white underclass ancestors’. It sounds grim, but it’s actually rhapsodic, funny and weirdly hopeful.
Ian McEwan is usually impressive, and The Children Act (Cape, £16.99) is especially so. A subtly musical arrangement of urgently topical issues — legal, medical, religious and, as always, erotic — it may be read at a sitting, but resonates for much longer.
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