Late Sonata (Brio Books 2020) is the winner of the 2020 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize, by author Bryan Walpert. While Walpert has published short stories, scholarly works, science writing and poetry, this is his first novel-length (or novella-length) work.

Well, hold onto your hats because Poly (Ventura 2020) by Paul Dalgarno is certainly not for the faint-hearted. This is a book that really pushes the boundaries of what is considered ‘acceptable’ or ‘normal’ and is confronting in the way that the behaviour and motivations of the characters are portrayed. But that’s exactly what makes this book so interesting. It is (I think / I assume) a novel that depicts a lifestyle that is very different to what the majority of readers experience, and yet what Dalgarno does so well is not only to enlighten the uninformed reader about the practicalities and justifications for certain lifestyle decisions, but he also incorporates the more unusual aspects into the everyday and banal day-to-day grind of work and parenting and socialising, combining the two threads into a fascinating microscopic perspective of what it might be like to live a polyamorous life.