Penelope Lively

The power of the past, the directive hand of childhood: the themes of The Unknown Bridesmaid are familiar fictional territory. But Margaret Forster has a deft and idiosyncratic touch in this story of child psychologist Julia, whose young clients reflect the trauma of her own early years. Sessions with Camilla, Precious, Janice, Claire and others

Sam Frears is 40. He has an extremely rare condition called familial dysautonomia, or Riley-Day syndrome; the life expectancy for most babies born with this is five years. Mary Mount has made her account of what it is like to be Sam a short impressionistic chronicle, interspersed with comments from his mother, Mary-Kay Wilmers. The

A biography that is also a collaboration with its subject is something of a novelty. Here, Maggie Fergusson writes the life, while Michael Morpurgo contributes seven stories, each springing from the subject matter of the preceding section. Fergusson has previously written an excellent biography of George Mackay Brown, so has now moved from a detached

In 1598, a certain Margaret Browne of Houndsditch gave a graphic description to the court of her neighbour Clement Underhill engaged in an adulterous act with her lover, as observed through a hole in the party wall. Some people have always been very interested in what the neighbours are up to; all of us can

Within the past month I have been to an 80th and a 90th birthday lunch, both of them highly festive occasions. And now here is an entertaining, erudite and thought-provoking meditation on the matter of age by Jane Miller (aged 78). The so-called twilight years are no longer quite that, for some of us. This

Jennifer Johnston is adept at economy. Here is a short novel in which the eight characters are introduced one by one, with minimum fuss — some dialogue, a brief reference by someone else — and their complex relationships obliquely revealed. Complex indeed are these connections. ‘I am gay, bent, queer, homosexual, call it what you

Fifty-two-year-old Alan Mackenzie has been in severe and unrelenting pain for 16 months, having slipped a disc during a game of volleyball. No one has been able to alleviate his condition, not ‘four physical therapists, three ortho-paedic surgeons, two neurologists and an acupuncturist in a pear tree’. He no longer expects to get better, and