Books in the Media: praise for Maggie Stiefvater's 'ambitious' adult debut novel
Beguiling historical fiction, an accomplished biography and an exploration of the benefits of nuclear energy make up the highlighted books in this week’s roundup.
The Sunday Times’ Nick Rennison selected Maggie Stiefvater’s adult debut The Listeners (Headline) in a round-up of “The best historical fiction of 2025 so far”. Set in the fictional Avallon Hotel in the Appalachian Mountains during the Second World War, The Listeners follows general manager June Hudson who must now house Axis diplomats in her beloved hotel. June must also appease the mythical waters that run through the hotel, which threaten the luxurious equilibrium she has strived to create.
Rennison called it an “ambitious work that brings its setting and its large ensemble of characters vividly to life”. In an interview with The Bookseller, Stiefvater said: “I love metaphor, and I also love that sense of liminal space being a place for change – and magic gets to be that liminal space.”
Frances Wilson’s biography of Scottish writer Muriel Spark, Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark (Bloomsbury), is “explicitly an origin story about the making of a novelist”, wrote Isabel Berwick at the Financial Times. “Wilson’s style is so original and engaging that many readers will hope that the second part of Spark’s life, covering her life as a famous author until her death at 88 in 2006, will form a future volume.” Wilson added that the result of a “blend of existing sources and fresh archival finds is an unputdownable and ‘electric’ perspective on the extraordinary talent and life events that together forged Spark’s fiction”.
The Spectator’s Lisa Hilton called Wilson a “ferociously clever writer” and Electric Spark a “revolutionary book”. Hilton continued: “Wilson’s achievement in Electric Spark is equally remarkable: an entirely original method of life writing which leaves conventional biographical techniques gasping in the dust.” Writing for the Times, Wilson noted: “Muriel Spark was a puzzle, and so are her books. This is their peculiar genius.”
Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World (Bodley Head), by nuclear chemist Tim Gregory, proposes that “nuclear energy is the only viable route to net zero by 2050”, wrote Dorian Lynskey at the Guardian. “Nuclear optimism was shattered by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, but, as the subtitle of his book advertises, Gregory is determined to bring it back,” noted Lynskey, who called Gregory an “excellent popular science writer”: “Clear as a bell and gently humorous. If you want to understand the workings of fission or radioactivity, he’s your man.”
Bryan Appleyard at the Spectator found that “Gregory’s case is that nuclear power is humanity’s only hope... his argument is powerful.”
Francesca Maria Benvenuto’s “engrossing” debut novel So People Know It’s Me (Pushkin), translated by Elizabeth Harris, presents a “run of sprawling entries” by 15-year-old prisoner and convicted murderer Zeno. Drawn from the author’s experience working as an “accomplished” criminal lawyer, So People Know It’s Me displays Benvenuto’s “strength as a storyteller”, declared David McAllister at the Telegraph. The review concluded: “Her messaging is similarly deft: everybody is simultaneously the product of structural problems and also not, as Zeno proves. Good people can arise even from difficult circumstances and vice versa.”
