Writers from Anne Tyler to Joan Didion and Tom McCarthy explore the possibilities and perils of remaking one’s life

The author continues to deftly mine the tensions and resentments of family life with a tender and sprawling saga set across six tumultuous decades

From parents who meddle in their children’s relationships to ex-wives who loom over second marriages, families in fiction can be just as complicated as they are in real life

A mundane life is once again thrown into turmoil in the US writer’s best novel in some time

Buddhist wisdom and Anita Brookner help make sense of those annoying others

Diana Athill, Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Strout all provide wisdom and humour in times of need

From Shirley Jackson’s arsenic-laced dinner to David Sedaris’s essay about his sister’s death, family get-togethers make for dramatic reading

From Nancy Mitford’s ‘the Bolter’ – so named for her serial monogamy – to the mother of Kramer vs Kramer, here are the best mums on the run

Male authors are always pronouncing their own brilliance – or boasting about not reading books by women. So, after a lifetime spent writing and attending literary festivals, John Boyne would like to get something off his chest …

From Alice Munro to Rachel Cusk, Anne Tyler to Margaret Atwood, great writers reveal a more complicated story than we’re inclined to tell ourselves

Not many novelists have managed to write well about these unglamorous but subtle dramas. From George Eliot to John Updike, here are some who have

John Crace trims Anne Tyler’s modern update on Shakespeare’s battle of the sexes to an evenly matched 800 words

What if you actually tried to make the dishes described in novels – from the fish stew in Ian McEwan’s Saturday to Bridget Jones’s blue soup? Here’s one recipe