This is an extraordinary and moving book, finding women’s hidden histories in the archives. Hartman makes the invisible visible, in many cases literally with vivid images that will stick in your mind long after you’ve finished reading. Photos, newspaper clippings, and contemporary documents let you see for yourself the stories of women refusing to live like slaves, and striving for freedom and joy.
Focussing on young black women in America in the early twentieth century, Hartman uses a vast range of archival material, and draws out the words and voices of those women wherever she can. Her approach is creative and hugely engaging, and you can tell it’s going to be something different from the cast of characters listed at the start of the book. Included are “Mabel Hampton: Chorine, lesbian, working-class intellectual, and aspiring concert singer” and “The Chorus: All the unnamed young women of the city trying to find a way to live and in search of beauty”. Some of the content is inevitably quite distressing. There is deprivation and glamour, imprisonment and rebellion, servitude and love.
The book’s subtitle is Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, and the lives of the women we encounter reveal the personal cost of social injustice and change. In an interview about writing the book, Hartman said she asked herself: “What is it like to imagine a radically different world, or to try to make a beautiful life in a situation of brutal constraint?” (https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/saidiya-hartman-on-working-with-archives/). It’s not like anything else I’ve ever read. The closest thing I’ve found (and also excellent) for revealing hidden women in the archive is Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive by Marisa J. Fuentes (https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15502.html).
Michelle Alexander, author of the seminal book The New Jim Crow, rightly calls Wayward Lives “… a startling, dazzling act of resurrection”. This is exactly what it is. Stunning.
Jonathon Cape Vintage, Paperback, Fiction, £14.99, out now
Vesta Gull lives by herself, dependent on her dog Charlie for company, she feels alienated from the people in local town, she is seemingly destined to spend the rest of her life alone, until she discovers a threatening note in the woods and her world is transformed. ‘Her name was Magda, nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.’
Moshfegh’s other novels such as My Year of Rest and Relaxation seem to be inspired by writers such as Bret Easton Ellis, but Death In Her Hands is an altogether different adventure, a mystery in the mode of Shirley Jackson. In this case the ghosts vividly inhabit Vesta’s imagination, she is haunted by the voice of her controlling late husband and by the dead body of the girl she believes is lying in the woods. The people she imagines, such as ‘Blake’ the author, she thinks, of the note are often as real as the townspeople she encounters, creating an unsettlingly fragile boundary between real events and Vesta’s imagination.
As a fan of Moshfegh’s writing I found this to be an interesting foray into the mystery genre, Moshfegh twists the reader’s expectations all the way up to the novel’s horrifying and brilliant conclusion.
This is a cheerful picture book about a small girl’s mission to share her love of space. Rocket is a stargazer who lives in a town, and is determined that folks where she lives should come to the park to watch the meteor shower.
Rocket’s brother Jamal is lovely but he’s always looking down at his phone… like everyone else, he needs to look up!
With a shout out to the legendary Mae Jemison, Look Up! is a great way to show primary children how exciting space can be, and that it’s available to everyone. The enthusiasm in the book is infectious, helped by the lively and fun illustrations. I particularly liked the astronaut cat who appears on every page. I’ve already bought three copies as presents, and I’m pretty sure these won’t be the last.
We’re very happy to have Luan Goldie’s new book Homecoming in stock – and thanks to Luan for dropping by to sign the paperback of her Nightingale Point!
Rebecca Solnit’s latest work is a slim volume of memoir recounting her experience of living alone in San Francisco. Through the lens of her own journeys and interactions, Solnit takes us through subjects such as the art world, environmentalism, gendered violence, gentrification, and the writer’s own struggle to have her voice heard.
In some ways Solnit treads similar ground to her previous works, such as Wanderlust and Men Explain Things To Me, however her personal insight into these subjects is invaluable. I found her perspective on the changing landscape of San Francisco particularly interesting.
As always, Solnit’s prose is measured, although the main focus of the book is on how women are silenced, Solnit arms her reader with information and hope. She writes often of her friends, and how these connections have sustained her personally and professionally. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in feminism, writing and activism.
Hamish Hamilton, Hardback Fiction, £12.99, out now
An unsettling new vision from the author of The Water Cure. On the day every woman gets their first period they are assigned either a blue or a white ticket, the first signalling that they will not have children, the second indicating that they must. Calla is given a blue ticket, but later in her life she develops an intense, forbidden longing for a child. When she acts on this urge she is thrown into conflict with a mysterious and threatening regime that pushes her onto a journey into exile.
Blue Ticket takes its place in the pantheon of feminist dystopian novels, the women are central to the narrative, their dissent is not just prohibited, it is dangerous. Mackintosh deftly explores the boundaries between natural urges and the systems that constrain them. Although Mackintosh’s prose is heavy with description and poetry, I could see and touch all that she described, Blue Ticket is also surprisingly fast-paced. I found myself holding my breath towards the end, waiting to discover Calla’s fate.
Whilst the questions of the book are weighty, Mackintosh avoids addressing these to the reader directly, Blue Ticket is above all an intensely poetic exploration of freedom, choice and desire.
Poet, author and essayist Ben Lerner’s latest novel, soon to be out in paperback, is as absorbing, dryly humourous and intellectually incisive as ever.
Lerner’s work is often described as autofictional, and in this instance the coming-of-age story of Adam Gordon, a gifted high-school student in Topeka Kansas during the ‘90s (like Lerner) and budding poet (like Lerner) whose parents are psychologists (like Lerner’s) seems to hew close to his lived experience. As in his excellent previous novels, Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04, his general approach involves laying a forensic bedrock of reality, from the references to and even cameos by historical figures like Bob Dole, Paul Manaforte, Fred Phelps and Tupac to discussions of real works of art and films, institutions and global events. In this recognisably concrete world, Adam’s encounters with his violent “bro” friends, figures of the nascent alt-right movement, Westboro Baptist Church and developing field of psychology are weighted with the reality of an anthropological study, or longform reportage.
Disquietingly convincing, too, are his investigations into the persuasive power of words. The journeys of he and his parents enfold psychoanalysis, poetry, rap, political debate and constant internecine argument, and the weaponising of rhetoric – the verbal deftness of the point made often trumping the veracity of what’s said, in a queasy presaging of modern political discourse – tends to be the order of the day. In this way, young Adam Gordon’s micro-level experiences reflect the coming world of alternative facts and virulent division towards which he, and his country, are being pulled.
Which is all interesting and vital enough, but Lerner adds to this an occasional grain of the surreal which harks straight back to his poetic beginnings. There are slippages between time periods and points of view, and visual motifs – paintings, hospital rooms – that return at odd, flashing moments, as if the novel is beset by glitches. This feels like a very modern form of surrealism, less dreamlike flight of fancy than the kind of punch-drunk informational overload brought on by a heavy internet binge. In this way, the abstract and concrete sit comfortably and beguilingly together, in a work which is just as adept at communicating bursts of feeling as it is at adroitly analysing. Essential modern reading.
My favourite in this collection of essays is ‘In Quinhagak’, where Scottish nature writer and poet Kathleen Jamie travels to a small village by the Bering Sea, mainly home to Yup’ik people. She makes genuine connections with people she spends time with there, noticing different ways of experiencing time, and alternative ways of relating to history and land. She finds the Yup’ik people’s ownership of their land, and care for it, intriguing, contrasting it with the almost total private ownership of land in Scotland (p. 89).
In ‘Links of Noltland 1’, working alongside archaeologists on remote Orkney, Jamie gets to see Neolithic treasures near their original sites, including the famous Westray Wife (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westray_Wife). She is invited for dinner with a group at a colleague’s house. After dinner, “…the others were sprawled on their orange sofas watching some old Quentin Tarantino film on Netflix. They looked like the seals hauled out on the weedy shore. If seals could watch Netflix, they would” (p. 154). The humour throughout the book reminded me how much I loved her raucous poem The Queen of Sheba (https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/queen-sheba).
Inevitably, the climate emergency shadows everything. Jamie is thoughtful about it, and is not defeated. She notes impacts observed by people living on land they have been familiar with for generations. “We all know it. We can’t go on like this, but we wouldn’t go back either, to the stone ploughshare and the early death. Maybe that’s why the folk here don’t embrace their Neolithic site much. It’s all too close to the knuckle.” (p. 156). Early trips to Tibet, and memories of her mother and grandmother, make this a wide-ranging and always interesting collection.
As a huge fan of her previous collections Sightlines and Findings, I had asked for this for my birthday and was delighted to get it. Reflective, enjoyable, and enlightening.
How does a person who cares (possibly too much) for others respond to their woes, and to the all-time-great woe of the climate emergency? Serious subjects are addressed with joy and great style in this funny and kind short novel from the author of The Department of Speculation.
Lizzie lives in New York with her husband and son. But this is regular Brooklyn, not glitzy, and her snapshots of ordinary life are a treat. She chats to Mohan, who’s working at the bodega. “I admire his new cat, but he tells me it just wandered in. He will keep it though because his wife no longer loves him”.
She’s a librarian with an academic background, and her old tutor (now hosting a podcast on climate change) hires her to answer podcast correspondence. The listeners’ emails are revealingly fraught or apocalyptic. A podcast guest “…signs off with a small borrowed witticism. ‘Many of us subscribe to the same sentiment as our colleague Sherwood Rowland. He remarked to his wife one night after coming home: “The work is going well, but it looks like it might be the end of the world.””
The perils of taking too much responsibility for others are teased out: Lizzie ends up taking a car service (taxi) she can’t really afford too often, as the driver’s business is failing and she doesn’t want him to suffer. How she eventually ends this entanglement is striking.
Offill has spoken candidly about trying to address a huge issue in a short novel. Being in relative denial about the impacts of the climate emergency is a fact of everyday life, so as a reader it’s interesting to watch Lizzie move away from ignoring it and towards acceptance of the situation. I agree with the Guardian interviewer who concluded: “At its core, the story asks: what happens after we start to pay attention?”. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/08/jenny-offill-interview – it was this interview that made me want to read the book, and also prompted me to finally read Stan Cohen’s States of Denial).
Enjoyable and relatable, but also very serious and relevant. A great short read with wisdom and heart.
If you like your novels to take you to a series of elsewheres, and give you characters to get obsessed with, The Glass Hotel may be your perfect book.
It moves through striking settings: skyscraper Manhattan, a deluxe glass hotel in the Canadian wilderness, and a ship that the young and beautiful woman Vincent falls from as the novel opens. But who is Vincent, and why does she disappear? And why has someone etched in acid on the hotel lobby window “why don’t you swallow broken glass”?
Mandel has said that she wanted to write about the collapse of a too good to be true investment scheme, and those affected by it (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/04/emily-st-john-mandel-i-admire-novelists-who-are-pushing-the-form-forward-in-some-some). But the book is about our ability to delude ourselves more generally, to be able to carry on living with some level of knowledge of what is going on, but to be in denial about the true meaning of our actions until everything collapses. I had read Stan Cohen’s classic States of Denial just before reading this, and his themes of knowing and not knowing at the same time were echoed over and over in The Glass Hotel.
The Glass Hotel reflects the very different worlds an individual can occupy and move between. From poverty to wealth, abundance to ruin, work to permanent leisure. Vincent comments on the similarity between wealthy urban areas around the world after visiting Singapore and London, noting that they are a culture or nation of their own – “the kingdom of money”. One character, a former businessman, notices the world of shadows – people living in the margins compared to his more mainstream life. He sees people in Las Vegas holding up signs advertising ‘girls to your room in 20 mins’ (p.247). “He’d seen the shadow country, its outskirts and signs, he’d just never thought he’d have anything to do with it”.
It is also about how the people from your past might come back to haunt you, literally or figuratively.
The possibility of finding joy in difficult situations, and the value of resilience, recurs. Vincent’s brother Paul, meeting her after some time apart, notes: “He studied Vincent closely for signs of trouble, but she seemed like a reserved, put-together person, someone who’d conducted herself carefully and avoided the land mines. How did she get to be like that, and Paul like this?”.
I fell into this novel and didn’t want to stop till I’d finished.
This might be the best mystery I’ve ever read. I immediately reread it and liked it even better second time around.
A prominent local family host a party at their smart villa in a seaside town in 1970s Japan. Seventeen people are poisoned and only one member of the family survives: teenage Hisako, a blind girl. Hisako claims that all she can remember is a blue room, and a flower.
Convinced that she is guilty of murder, a local police inspector tries for years to prove it. But an easier suspect takes his own life, and people start to move on. A gathering together of multiple forms of testimony helps to find an answer at last.
The Aosawa Murders is made up of witness accounts, stories and other ‘found’ testimony. You read along, almost as an investigator yourself, and the process is extraordinarily engrossing. It reminded me of the things I liked best about Graham Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project, but ultimately it’s not really like anything else (https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2016/09/07/his-bloody-project-by-graeme-macrae-burnet/).
Riku Onda’s writing is beautiful and the translation seamless. The setting is so vivid it becomes a character in itself: “But the ocean here isn’t refreshing at all. Gazing at it doesn’t give you any sense of freedom or relief. And the horizon is always close, as if waiting for an opportunity to force its way onto land. It feels like you’re being watched, and if you dare look away for just a moment the sea might descend upon you.” (p. 14)
The need to reread immediately is a reflection of the intricate and satisfying plot. I suspected I could make more connections by having a second pass of the evidence, and I did.
The book literally gave me chills. There were a couple of moments where I gasped aloud. It’s both understated and electrifying and I’m still not sure how the author achieves this. The Aosawa Murders has opened up a whole world of Japanese crime writing for me. I went straight on to read The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada. I will never forget The Aosawa Murders.
Meesha has a loving family and a joyful and creative spirit, but she finds it hard to make friends. This latest picture book in Tom Percival’s Big Bright Feelings series deals with this common experience sensitively and with helpful practical suggestions.
Appropriate for infants and up, the gorgeous illustrations show how the world can be a little monochrome when we feel alone. Meesha makes her own toy friends out of bits and pieces, but finds that while they are very compliant, they are not much fun to play catch with!
The feelings of being alone in a crowd, and of lacking the skills to get involved with what other children are enjoying, are explored in an accessible way than many (including adults) will be able to relate to.
When someone takes a risk to come and talk to Meesha, will she be able to take a chance and involve him in her games? The author gives us handy hints: “… if you ever see someone who looks a little bit ‘on-their-own’, try to include them. Ask them what they like to do. You never know, it might be something that YOU love to do as well, and you might just have met your new best friend!”
A kind and useful book. If you like this, I also recommend Ruby’s Worry, an excellent book by the same author about getting help when the worry monster visits.
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift” (p. 327). I came across Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and popular science and nature writer, through references to her earlier work Gathering Moss. She is the Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. Gathering Moss has been mentioned in literary reviews, in nature writing, in science writing, and on the thoughtful blog Brain Pickings (https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/13/gathering-moss-robin-wall-kimmerer/). Anything so niche, which appeals across such broad spectrum of readers, intrigued me.
I still haven’t managed to read Gathering Moss, mainly as it’s hard to find in the UK, but I am completely bowled over by her latest work, Braiding Sweetgrass. Wall Kimmerer shares her vast knowledge and wisdom about plants and the natural world and introduces a completely new (and yet also ancient) way of thinking about nature. She draws on her many roles: as a Native American, a mother, an observer, a scientist and a joyful activist.
She provides a refreshing and vital alternative approach to thinking about human and non-human life. Language is key here: for her, and the indigenous cultures she describes, every living thing is a who, not a what.
Her writing about specific engagements with nature is as engrossing as her big picture analysis, and often the two meet. As she and other volunteers gather to help salamanders across a busy road, so they will not be killed by passing cars, the second Gulf War begins. “Somewhere another woman looks out her window, but the formation of dark shapes in her sky is not a skein of spring geese returning” (p.349).
There is nothing fluffy or foolish about her coherent and radical ecology. “… it seems to me we humans have gifts in addition to gratitude that we might offer in return. The philosophy of reciprocity is beautiful in the abstract, but the practical is harder” (p. 238). She is ready to engage with the practical questions of how we live now, as a planet, as a species, as nations and as individuals.
Opening hours will differ from our regular hours as we will be working with a much smaller team but we still hope to be open seven days a week.
Initially we will open:
10am to 4.30pm on weekdays
11am to 5pm on Saturdays
11am to 4pm on Sundays
We will be closed Sunday 12 July.
It may take us a while before we have all the new books you might need but we will be offering our usual ordering service and will be happy to take orders via phone or email once we are up and running.
We are now closed with immediate effect until the end of April, when we will review the situation.
We are sorry for any inconvenience, but we are sure that you will understand that we are acting to protect the health and welfare of our customers, and our staff.
We are monitoring the situation daily and have no confirmed cases of coronavirus among our staff to date. We will take immediate action if needed and will notify through our Instagram and/or blog if we need to close the shop for a period of time. So it’s business as usual for now.
If you are planning to make a special trip to see us, please ring us before you travel – 020 7378 1824.
Katherine O’Dell is an actress, and her daughter Norah tells her story. From the Irish theatre of the 1940s to London’s West End and the early days of Hollywood, famous Katherine’s life is exciting and often turbulent. But no-one could predict that she would shoot someone. Why did this happen?
Norah notes: “I was twenty-eight and the time of the assault. I struggled on for the next year or more, but there came a day when I could not make it in to work. I was writing a book, I said. And then that became true. I wrote, not one, but many books. But I never wrote the one I needed to write, the one that was shouting out to be written, the story of my mother and Boyd O’Neill’s wound”.
From the Booker winning author of The Gathering and The Green Road, all of the things Anne Enright is known for are present here. There is family drama, mothers and daughters, snappy lines and a story that seizes you and doesn’t let you go.
Norah begins to feel able to tell her mother’s story after Katherine’s death, prompted in part by irritation with how the story is being co-opted by others. But how can she get to the truth? Can she tell her own story too?
My colleague read this first, and rightly said this was a must-read for fans of fiction about theatre. The dry wit reminded me of another all-time great theatre book, Penelope Fitzgerald’s At Freddie’s.
Paperback, Hodder Children’s Books, £6.99, out now
The legendary Mr Panda returns.
As ever he is long on kindness and manners, and short on rudeness and entitled behaviour.
This time he is offering free hugs (after checking first with each potential recipient). He is all ready to hug a smelly skunk and a potentially bitey crocodile. But everyone would seem to prefer to hug someone else. It is a difficult moment when you realise that perhaps no-one wants to hug you. But maybe someone will offer Mr Panda a hug instead?
Engaging bright pictures and a relatable character make this a great addition to a winning series. This perfect Valentine’s gift is guaranteed to raise a smile.
Great-Uncle Oscar, Great-Aunt Rachel, Great-Uncle Martin and other family members were missing from Michael Rosen’s post-war childhood. Although those who had disappeared were spoken of, there was mystery around what had happened to them. (A poem for Oscar and Rachel is available at https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/clockmender-oscar-rosen-and-his-wife.html). For Rosen, some of the mysteries were not resolved until he was doing the research which formed this book.
This outstanding short book is written for children aged about ten and up, as well as adults. It is a useful and appropriate way to start talking about the Holocaust with children. He tells his family story through accessible and moving prose interspersed with his poems. In a moving interview in the Guardian, he talks about the long impact of the silence about those who were missing (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/28/michael-rosen-family-history-jewish-culture). As the article notes: “Unusually, the book is aimed at children aged 10 and over, as well as adults. Rosen decided to write it that way after visiting a school where a pupil denied the Holocaust to his face. “This young man put up his hand and said: ‘It didn’t happen, did it?’” As the teacher panicked, Rosen remembers counting to three and patiently saying: ‘Well, no, it did happen.’”
Rosen shares original family letters, postcards and photos which make the stories even more compelling, and show readers that you can do your own research about things that are important to you. You don’t need to be a specialist.
Fans of Rosen’s work will meet people they remember: his memorable childhood friend Harrybo; his beloved father; and his grandfather (who turns out to be the inspiration for this excellent poem from You Tell Me http://bepalmer.blogspot.com/2012/05/). I had this book as a child. I can remember so many of those poems now.
One of the things that makes the book truly exceptional is the framing of the stories as being absolutely similar to stories of current refugees. “This story is about things that happened to my family a long time ago, back when photos and films were in black and white. But when I think about it, my relatives were refugees – a lot like the people you may have seen on the news recently… So I hope this book becomes part of a bigger conversation about the refugee crisis. About how to find fair and decent ways of helping people like my relatives” (p. 5). Deep humanity emerges from the book which contrasts with the inhumanity that caused the deaths of all these much-missed people. This makes The Missing both beautiful and essential reading right now.
Hardback, Granta, £16.99, out now
y I’ve ever read. I immediately reread it and liked it even better second time around.
Our bestselling books, from 7 July to today 21 July:
Aaronovitch to Riverside to sign copies of his new book, False Value. Come and get them while they’re hot…
