5 New Books Team Service95 Really Rates This April

Looking for your latest read? You’re in luck. April has a plethora of new books hitting the shelves. From the instant number-one bestselling Norwegian debut about growing up in the deprived outskirts of Oslo to the first volume in a planned septology with a deeply satisfying time-loop plot, get ready: your TBR pile is about to get a lot bigger...

The Stellar Depiction Of Male Friendship

Back In The Day by Oliver Lovrenski

“Set on the gritty outskirts of Oslo, this book follows four teenage boys as they drift from one high to the next, one fight after another, always teetering on the edge. Raw and unfiltered, it reads like a journal, capturing the fierce bond between young men struggling to survive, finding both refuge and recklessness in their friendship. But are these friendships their salvation or their downfall? I was hooked from the very first page.” – Samantha de Haas, Creative Production Manager  

The Dystopian Reality Check

My Documents by Kevin Nguyen  

“The lives of four young Vietnamese Americans are upended when a series of airport bombings cause panic in the US. When it is revealed that the suspects all have Vietnamese surnames, the new government sends Vietnamese Americans to ‘assembly centres’, a byword for detention camps. My Documents draws on the US government’s internment of Japanese Americans during WWII to paint a fictional dystopian future that seems all-too-plausible.” – Maria Padget, Book Club Director 

The LOL-Inducing Mood-Lifter

Calls May be Recorded For Training And Monitoring Purposes by Katharina Volckmer

“Jimmy is in limbo. After leaving his job as an undertaker, he winds up in a London call centre, taking complaints from holiday makers about the lack of harassment from the pool boys. Working the late shift to avoid his overbearing Italian mother, Jimmy cannot resist slipping into his callers’ fantasies and frustrations. Volckmer’s second novel – a send-up of work culture and a celebration of human connections forged in the most unlikely places – is smutty, raucous and highly original. Oh, and outside the UK, it’s called Wonderfuck.” – Maria Padget, Book Club Director 

The Booker Prize Long-Lister

On The Calculation Of Volume I by Solvej Balle 

“The first of a planned septology, On the Calculation of Volume I follows Tara Selter, an antiquarian book dealer who wakes each morning to find herself reliving 18th November, while everyone around her lives this day for the first time. In satisfyingly distilled prose, this is a stunning meditation on our need to share time with others, how we move through and the impact we have on the world. I can’t wait to read Volume II.” – Samantha de Haas, Creative Production Manager 

The One Everyone Will Be Talking About

Flesh by David Szalay

“We first meet 15-year-old István as an isolated and awkward teenager. By the end of this spare and unsettling novel, he is back where he started, as an isolated and melancholy 60-year-old man. As we follow him through the housing estates of Hungary to the battlefields of Iraq and to the pinnacle of London high society, we get a sense less of a man following his destiny, and more of someone watching his own life unfold. Throughout this episodic novel, the prose is contained, the dialogue is restrained, and yet tension looms on every page. It’s like nothing I’ve read before.” – Maria Padget, Book Club Director