Love Groundhog Day and Russian Doll? These are the novels for you
High-concept fiction is having a moment. Funny, inventive and crackling with big ideas, these ambitious stories will have you instantly hooked
Florence Knapp’s first novel The Names, publishing this month, tells not one story but three. As it opens, a mother is preparing to take her newborn boy to formally register his name. Will it be Bear, as his older sister would like, her own choice of Julian, or Gordon, named after his controlling father? The universe pivots on the decision she makes. Knapp plaits together the three stories that follow to trace the three different worlds in which the boy grows to manhood. Think of it as Sliding Doors for nominative determinism.