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The Critics: Books On the eve of the 2016 US presidential election, the American author Curtis Sittenfeld published a short story called "The Nominee", which inhabited the mind of a former first lady now running for president herself. When Hillary meets Bill, the troubling idea that this is essentially fan-fiction began to enter my mind, Sittenfeld the ultimate Hillary stan. While Hillary still faces a hostile media, Sittenfeld suggests that without the added baggage of Bill, she is able to nimbly dodge any lingering scandal. [Extracted from the article]

The Voice in My Ear Frances Leviston Jonathan Cape, £16.99,272pp "Isn't it a bit hackneyed to be talking about mothers?" The ten stories all centre around a different protagonist named Claire, and every Claire finds her life clouded by a difficult mother whether they dominate the foreground or linger slightly out of frame. Claire in "Broderie Anglais" finds herself "obscurely angry" with her mother for persistently offering to sew her dress for her: when Claire capitulates, and her mother runs it up a size too big, it is crushing. [Extracted from the article]

The narrator of Rob Doyle's second novel is an Irish writer who regards his native country as "a backwater of banal, misshapen people", and believes he must move abroad in order to flourish. Attending an art festival in Germany, Doyle's narrator is nonplussed by the proselytising nature of the works on show. Doyle's 2016 short story collection, This Is the Ritual, portrayed several earnest young writers of a similarly zealous bent to Threshold's narrator. [Extracted from the article]