The colossal power of loneliness, and the impossibility of being alone

Let’s start with a question: ‘Can you imagine living a fulfilling life when you cannot touch anything in your home without instantly thinking about your father’s genitals?’ Before you all jump to the dark conclusion that, in conjunction with the review’s grandiose title, Canon must be a book about sexual abuse, let me reassure you: the novel’s hero, Yara, considers every man’s touch and every male-adjacent surface unclean because of their father’s habitual scrotum-fondling, which ruins their...