Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward review - the power of empathy

This ingenious debut novel is a philosophical investigation into love, loss and the nature of reality Are you conversant with Aeschylus's gadfly? Wittgenstein's beetle? Kafka's "monstrous insect"? We can add to the list Sophie Ward's ant. This creature, one of Ward's characters believes, has separated itself from its colony to bore through her eye and penetrate her brain. This is, on the face of it, impossible, and the episode inaugurates the novel's debate concerning reality and our capacity to...