Bina: A Novel in Warnings (Penguin Random House) by Anakana Schofield, like the author’s previous novels Malarky and Martin John, goes wild with the form of the novel and the notion of storytelling itself. Schofield resists providing the expected guidance of plot, as the events of Bina are constantly refracted and circled around, rather than revealed. The heroine is a no-nonsense Irish lady who has been misunderstood and railroaded for her entire life. She’s not taking it anymore. An unsavoury man has finally left her life and she is terrified he might return. Her involvement with a shadowy group whose purpose even she seems a little unsure of has landed her in trouble with the law, and she tries to avoid incarceration while also discouraging a group of protesters who have adopted her as a popular heroine. Oh, the suspense! The instability and uncertainty of the narrative can be unsettling, but it is also liberating, allowing readers the freedom to glory in Bina’s offhand confessions, which she suggests are being recorded on scraps of paper and detritus around her home and which grow with a sense of rage and injustice. This is a spectacular and original piece of literature: raucous, strange and mysterious. “I am going to write a combat manual. This might even be it. I think it’s time women prepared for war on the doormat.”