August 8, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
John Spurling – Arcadian Nights
Julia Donaldson – Counting Creatures
Kaouther Adimi – A Bookshop in Algiers
Cecily Gayford – Murder By The Seaside
Bella Mackie – How To Kill Your Family
Alice Oseman – Heartstopper Volume 2
Charlotte Higgins – Greek Myths
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Oliver Burkeman – Four Thousand Weeks
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Selby Wynn Schwartz – After Sappho
Michael Bond – A Bear Called Paddington
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July 31, 2022
by Team Riverside
Delia Owens – Where The Crawdads Sing
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Jessie Burton – The House of Fortune
Sayaka Murata – Life Ceremony
Kaouther Adimi – A Bookshop in Algiers
Bella Mackie – How To Kill Your Family
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Mieko Kawakami – All The Lovers In The Night
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Malcolm Gladwell – The Bomber Mafia
Yaa Gyasi – Transcendent Kingdom
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Colleen Hoover – It Ends With Us
Marion Billet – There Are 101 Things To Find In London
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July 30, 2022
by Team Riverside
Sceptre, Hardback, £16.99, Out Now
Milk Teeth is the stunning new novel from Jessica Andrews, the author of the Portico Prizewinning Saltwater. On the surface it might seem like Milk Teeth is a straightforward love story, half the novel is addressed to ‘you’ the object of the narrators’ affections, but this is just one of the strands of story that is braided into this novel. There are also vivid reflections on childhood and the oppressive demands made on young women, to look, talk, and act a certain way. The narrators’ awareness of her class background and her financial precarity haunt the story, food also plays a crucial role, the meals that the central couple eat together are lovingly described in perfect detail. Food is partially used as a metaphor for embracing desire, allowing oneself to have what you want the most without guilt, without starving yourself in penance. In a way the love story is between the narrator and her own self, Milk Teeth asks what does it mean to embrace love, change, to put yourself and your own desires first?
This is a beautifully written feminist read for the Summer. In a time when cool, spare prose is the dominant mode, Milk Teeth is hot, physical and sensory. I highly recommend this in particular for fans of Elena Ferrante and Sally Rooney.
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July 17, 2022
by Team Riverside
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Oliver Burkeman – Four Thousand Weeks
Malcolm Gladwell – The Bomber Mafia
Miranda Cowley Heller – The Paper Palace
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Keith Ridgway – A Shock
Charlotte Higgins – Greek Myths
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Kaouther Adimi – A Bookshop in Algiers
Cecily Gayford – Murder By The Seaside
Ruth Ozeki – The Book of Form and Emptiness
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Bella Mackie – How To Kill Your Family
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
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July 10, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Adam Hargreaves – Mr Men in London
Kaouther Adimi – A Bookshop in Algiers
Bella Mackie – How To Kill Your Family
Malcolm Gladwell – Blink
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
Lea Ypi – Free
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Miranda Cowley Heller – The Paper Palace
John Le Carre – Silverview
Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
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July 8, 2022
by Team Riverside
Jonathon Cape, Hardback, £14.99, out now
Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest novel is set in the fictional eastern European village of Lapvona, sometime in the Middle Ages. Lapvona is dirty, highly religious and poverty stricken. It is presided over by a Trumpian lord, Villam, who only cares about what joke he can make next. Villam is unwilling or unable to notice when his subjects are starving and thirsty whilst he hoards water in the grounds of his palace. In a departure from Moshfegh’s usual close first-person narration, Lapvona moves through a large cast of characters. Other figures include Marek, a disabled boy who is abused by his religious father, Father Barnabas the corrupt town priest, and Ina, a sometime apothecary and witch.
Moshfegh revisits some of the themes of her early work, the various ways that wealth corrupts, visceral depictions of the body, strange and unlikeable narrators. But the medieval setting is a striking departure from her earlier work and this new direction pays off in spades. Lapvona is a fictional setting but Moshfegh’s detailed portrayal of life for the inhabitants of Lapvona feels extremely vivid. The characters, while unsympathetic, are universally compelling. The gory elements are expertly deployed, as beautifully created as they are horrifying. The content is not for the faint of heart, (there is blood, guts, and even cannibalism) but I highly recommend this fantastically well-written novel, particularly for fans of Moshfegh’s first novella McGlue.
Review by Phoebe
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July 3, 2022
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Barrington Stoke, £7.99, out now
Charlene is a 15-year-old Black girl living in foster care. She loves her younger sister Kandi, who she’s not seen for two years, and she loves knitting. The craft relaxes her and keeps her grounded as her world changes around her over and over again. But her foster mum’s adult son torments her by destroying the gift she’s knitting for her sister, and before she knows it she has retaliated with her knitting needle.
Needle is a gripping and revealing young adult novel, by Riverside favourite Patrice Lawrence. I could absolutely see how Charlene got into the situations in the story, and why she reacted as she did. While easy to read, with a compelling narrative, Needle raises critical issues around the criminalisation of young people, about childhood trauma, and about serious failings in our care and policing systems.
Charlene is reflective and realistic on her lack of control over her own life: “Annie [her foster mother] agrees that me and Kandi should see each other, but she says we can’t always control the world. Sometimes we just have to stand back and work out how to pull it back into a shape that’s good for us. That’s easier for people like Annie than me. She doesn’t have folks always shaping her world for her, then expecting her to smile and say it fits”.
The publisher has given three words on the book to describe the content – remorse, foster care, and justice. They could easily have added policing, bereavement and trauma. The brilliant cover made me want to read the book, not least the intriguing ‘sorrynotsorry’ motif. Whether and when to apologise comes to be of critical importance throughout the story. Perhaps you feel remorse or, conversely, don’t feel you’ve anything to be sorry for but those with power over you are urging you to play the game.
It’s relevant that Needle is dedicated to someone that the author describes as “bringing people together to change this”. I hope that that this change can happen, and also that some of Lawrence’s readers will find themselves and their experiences here: it is vital that we can find our lives in books sometimes.
Attending the launch for Needle, I found out that it was inspired by Lawrence’s work with the Howard League for Penal Reform. This would help explain just how believable the sections in the police station are. On the excellent panel at the launch, several young people who had been in care generously shared their experiences, and all said that they had found the book very relatable. I first came across the book when it was recommended by Charlie at the excellent Hastings Bookshop.
What stuck with me after reading Needle was the on and off role of so many adults in Charlene’s life. Some listen, some don’t. Some seem to understand, but more don’t (or won’t, or can’t). A few are permanent though limited in what they can do to help, like Charlene’s auntie, or hostile, like Kandi’s dad. Charlene herself is a constant, remaining funny and incisive throughout, even as she is clearly still a kid: “Sometimes I think my name is really Confidential instead of Charlene, because I hear that word so much. Everything I say is supposed to be confidential, but somehow everyone still seems to know my business”. In the end the questions of saying sorry, feeling remorse, playing the game and being true to yourself remain complex for Charlene. Outstanding.
Review by Bethan
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July 3, 2022
by Team Riverside
Ruth Ozeki – The Book of Form and Emptiness
Bella Mackie – How To Kill Your Family
Eliot Higgins – We Are Bellingcat
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Cecily Gayford – Murder By The Seaside
Malcolm Gladwell – The Bomber Mafia
Lea Ypi – Free
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
Daniel Kahneman – Noise
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Katherine Rundell – The Explorer
Lauren Groff – Matrix
Maggie Shipstead – Great Circle
Gwendoline Riley – My Phantoms
Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None
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June 19, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Bella Mackie – How To Kill Your Family
Ruth Ozeki – The Book of Form and Emptiness
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Tee Dobinson – The Tower Bridge Cat
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Sally Rooney – Normal People
The Secret Barrister – Nothing But The Truth
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
John le Carre – Silverview
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June 12, 2022
by Team Riverside
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Jonathon Lee – The Great Mistake
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Oliver Burkeman – Four Thousand Weeks
Malcolm Gladwell – The Bomber Mafia
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Elif Shafak – The Isand of The Missing Trees
Miranda Cowley Heller – The Paper Palace
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Alice Oseman – Heartstopper: Volume One
Phil Knight – Shoe Dog
Marion Billet – Busy London
Elizabeth Mcneal – Circus of Wonders
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June 9, 2022
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Picador, £14.99, out now
A complexly wrought debut novel by Julia May Jonas, Vladimir is the story of an unnamed female professor whose husband is facing allegations of sexual harassment from his students when she develops an obsession with Vladimir, a promising writer in his own right, who has recently joined the department.
Vladimir forms part of a spring of recent American campus novels along with Lee Cole’s Groundskeeping and Elif Batuman’s Either/Or. The campus setting is alternately lampooned as a greenhouse for elitists and treated as a microcosm for wider society. At first, I was wary of the already well-trod subject matter, abuse of power in academic settings, campus debates over free speech, writer’s feelings of envy towards each other. But Vladimir’s morally ambiguous narrator is far from a cliché. She refuses to see herself as a victim of her husband’s actions, speaks dismissively of his accusers and act manipulatively towards Vladimir, playing on his vulnerability as a man with a troubled wife and a young child.
As an unreliable and, at times unlikeable, narrator she is incredibly well drawn. As the novel develops her ideas and behaviour become increasingly horrifying and last third of Vladimir was wild and unpredictable. Vladimir is complex and surprising debut and I highly recommend it for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh and Rachel Cusk.
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June 7, 2022
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Nosy Crow, £7.99, out now
Granny Came Here on the Empire Windrush is a completely gorgeous picture book for young primary school age children. The story is by Riverside favourite Patrice Lawrence (we are particular fans of her young adult mystery, Eight Pieces of Silva).
Ava loves spending time with her Granny. They sing together and love to spend time with each other. When Ava needs help to decide which admirable person to dress up as for school, it’s obvious that Granny should help her work this out. Granny tells Ava all about wonderful women like Mary Seacole, Rosa Parks and Winifred Atwell.
She starts to talk about her own life, coming to the UK from Trinidad and making her life here. Ava realises that maybe she doesn’t have to look very far to find someone who has shown real courage.
As Granny looks through her memory box, we learn her story, and the courage that it takes to go so far from your first home and make a new life for yourself. I loved the emphasis here on family storytelling, and Sucre’s thoughtful illustrations bring the emotions of the narrative to life. The colour contrasts between the muted new place when Granny is homesick, compared to the vivid colours of her remembered island home, become extra important when she meets her future husband and her new city becomes colourful for her.
I loved the romance of Granny’s relationship: “I met your grandad. He was the conductor on the bus that took me to work every day. At first, we would just smile at each other. Then it was ‘good morning’. Soon, in spite of the noise in the factory, I looked forward to my morning journey… And my journeys home, when he would cross the whole of London just to come and meet me”.
This reminded me that there is an exhibition I’m keen to go to at the London Transport Museum right now called Legacies: London Transport’s Caribbean Workforce. The webpage has lots of lovely links to music and other resources which would complement Granny Came Here on the Empire Windrush too.
This is a sensitive and relatable book, tied to the lives of the Windrush generation and their families, but clearly speaking to timeless themes of making new lives and families far from home. I loved the author’s dedication, which shone through the story too: “To those that come from across the world. I hope you find love and peace.”
Review by Bethan
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June 5, 2022
by Team Riverside
Bob Mortimer – And Away…
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Akwaeke Emezi – You Made A Fool of Death With Your Beauty
Mieko Kawakami – All The Lovers In The Night
Douglas Stuart – Young Mungo
Lea Ypi – Free
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of The Day
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Alice Oseman – Loveless
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Bella Mackie – How to Kill Your Family
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May 29, 2022
by Team Riverside
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Sally Rooney – Normal People
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Douglas Stuart – Young Mungo
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Natasha Brown – Assembly
Akwaeke Emezi – You made a Fool of Death with your Beauty
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May 26, 2022
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Faber and Faber, £16.99, out now
Groundskeeping is a beautifully written debut novel that contends with questions of class, family and love. Cole’s protagonist Owen is working as a groundskeeper at a university when he meets Alma, a writer who has taken up a prestigious fellowship. Over the course of their relationship Owen is forced to better understand his relationship to his family, his home state and what role he will play in his changing life.
The novel is set in 2016, and Cole handles the political differences between the characters thoughtfully. Owen vehemently disagrees with his mother and stepfather, both Trump supporters, but they show a great deal of kindness to Owen and Alma. Their political views sit in stark contrast with the hospitality they show to Alma, who is Muslim. Cole renders rural Kentucky complexly; this is a contemporary novel that handles the subject of class with such intelligence and care. The rift that develops in Owen and Alma’s relationship is founded in her classism, even though she is a second-generation immigrant she has a comparatively privileged background, she went to an Ivy League college, she mocks Owen when he is accepted to a lesser-known writing fellowship.
The prose is dazzling, the world of the novel is created through gorgeous sensory detail, this is one of the best written debut novels I have read this year.
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May 22, 2022
by Team Riverside
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Marion Billet – Busy London
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Natasha Brown – Assembly
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet
Mieko Kawakami – All The Lovers In The Night
Douglas Stuart – Young Mungo
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Flann O’Brien – The Third Policeman
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May 13, 2022
by Team Riverside
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
John Le Carre – Silverview
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Cecily Gayford – Murder by The Seaside
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
Sally Rooney – Conversations With Friends
Daisy Buchanan – Insatiable
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Marion Billet – Busy London
bell hooks – All About Love
Colm Toibin – The Magician
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Chris Power – A Lonely Man
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May 8, 2022
by Team Riverside
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
John Le Carre – Silverview
Emily St. John Mandel – Sea of Tranquility
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
bell hooks – All About Love
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Oliver Burkeman – Four Thousand Weeks
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
M.H. Eccleston – The Trust
Min Jin Lee – Pachinko
Clara Vulliamy – Marshmallow Pie: The Cat Superstar
Oliver Jeffers – Here We Are
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
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May 1, 2022
by Team Riverside
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Daisy Buchanan – Insatiable
Marion Billet – Busy London
Caleb Azumah Nelson – Open Water
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Alice Oseman – Heartstopper Volume 2
Douglas Stuart – Young Mungo
Joseph Hone – The Paper Chase
Nicholas Nassim Taleb – Antifragile
Shirley Jackson – The Missing Girl
Catherine Belton – Putin’s People
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Emily Danforth – Plain Bad Heroines
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April 26, 2022
by Team Riverside
So excited to have all these new signed copies in the shop…
Jessie Greengrass – The High House
Jeremy Atherton Lin – Gay Bar
Emily St. John Mandel – Sea of Tranquility
Maddie Mortimer – Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
Catherine Prasifka – None of This is Serious
Laura Price – Single Bald Female
Ali Smith – Companion Piece
Nina Stibbe – One Day I Shall Astonish the World
Douglas Stuart – Young Mungo
Charmaine Wilkerson – Black Cake
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April 25, 2022
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Picador, £14.99, out now
Three people, separately and at different points over three hundred years, experience an anomaly. In the middle of their ordinary lives, there is an instant of blackness, a violin, a strange sound. Then everything reverts to normal. One of these is an exile from England in Canada in 1812; one a novelist visiting Earth on a book tour; one is Vincent, a young woman walking through a wilderness. Also linking them is the detective Gaspery-Jacques Roberts from the 25th century, who is investigating this glitch in time and space.
Sea of Tranquility follows St. John Mandel’s outstanding novel The Glass Hotel (see https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2020/08/05/the-glass-hotel-by-emily-st-john-mandel/). Several characters, including Vincent and Mirella, appear here. I shouted out loud, I was so delighted to see Vincent again. The humanity and relatability of the characters is clear, so much so that their extraordinary circumstances came to seem normal to me as I read. Off world colonies and multiple worlds are made familiar to us by the concerns of those living in them: fear in the face of danger, suspicion of overarching authorities, affection for home, and the pull of those you love. Olive, visiting Earth and more specifically Salt Lake City, says: “There’s something to be said for looking up at a clear blue sky and knowing that it isn’t a dome”.
Like Octavia E. Butler, whose novels I am belatedly discovering, St. John Mandel uses her futuristic work to explore ideas about ethics and responsibility. If you knew what was going to happen to everyone you met, would you be able to resist intervening in their lives? Who gets to decide what is the ‘right’ world, the ‘correct’ timeline, and why?
The novelist Olive Llewellyn speaks of pandemics to her book tour audiences, and the Covid-19 pandemic features as a historical incident. But as a new virus pops up on the news during the tour, her reactions to it feel very familiar to us. As do her feelings, in 2203, being asked about being away from her young daughter for work. A woman praises Olive’s husband for looking after her daughter. “Forgive me,” Olive said, “I fear there’s a problem with my translator bot. I thought you said he was kind to care for his own child”.
I enjoyed this novel so much. There is also a good cat in this book.
Review by Bethan
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April 24, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Eliot Higgins – We Are Bellingcat
Jeremy Atherton Lin – Gay Bar
Tim Marshall – Prisoners of Geography
Julian Barnes – Elizabeth Finch
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
Catherine Belton – Putin’s People
Sarah Winman – Still Life
Bella Mackie – How to Kill Your Family
Emily Danforth – Plain Bad Heroines
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Luke Kennard – The Answer to Everything
Albert Camus – The Plague
Sathnam Sanghera – Empireland
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April 18, 2022
by Team Riverside
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Stanley Tucci – Taste
Ali Smith – Companion Piece
Douglas Stuart – Young Mungo
Bella Mackie – How To Kill Your Family
Patrick Radden Keefe – Empire of Pain
Michael Lewis – The Premonition
Sathnam Sanghera – Empireland
Caleb Azumah Nelson – Open Water
Frank Tallis – The Act of Living
Adam Hargreaves – Mr. Men in London
Eliot Higgins – We Are Bellingcat
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Mary Lawson – A Town Solace
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April 13, 2022
by Team Riverside
Thanks to Laura Price for popping in to sign her new novel, Single Bald Female. Good luck with the book, Laura!
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April 5, 2022
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Bloomsbury, £6.99, out now
This is an excellent new short story from the author of Circe and The Song of Achilles. I’ve not read those yet but I will do now, having read Galatea.
Galatea is being kept a virtual prisoner in hospital on the wishes of her husband, with the complicity of the medical staff. Her husband, a sculptor, created her out of stone to be his perfect woman: compliant, beautiful, and with no will or wishes of her own. But Galatea is developing a secret plan for her own freedom, and that of her young daughter Paphos.
The story is Miller’s response to Ovid’s telling of the Pygmalion myth: “…others (myself included) have been disturbed by the deeply misogynist implications of the story. Pygmalion’s happy ending is only happy if you accept a number of repulsive ideas: that the only good woman is one who has no self beyond pleasing a man, the fetishization of female sexual purity, the connection of ‘snowy’ ivory with perfection, the elevation of male fantasy over female reality”.
Miller offers a sharp take on abuse and control in relationships, and specifically men’s control of, and ideas about, women. As Galatea says: “The thing is, I don’t think my husband expected me to be able to talk”.
Accordingly here, some of the content is challenging. This is appropriate given the subject. I don’t always find fiction with mythical or fantasy elements convincing, but the ease and confidence with which this is written makes Galatea feel very real. I felt like Galatea herself was demanding that I witness her struggle, her cleverness, and her courage.
Issued in a beautiful small blue hardback form, it would make a great gift for the right person. I immediately reread it on finishing and it was even better the second time around. A vital read.
Review by Bethan
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April 2, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Kae Tempest – On Connection
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Marion Billet – Busy London
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Colm Toibin – The Magician
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Matthew Green – Shadowlands
Daisy Buchanan – Careering
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Agatha Christie – Miss Marple and Mystery
Michael Lewis – The Premonition
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March 31, 2022
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Fitzcarraldo Editions, £10.99, out now
The second of Fernanda Melchor’s novels to be translated into English and also longlisted for the International Booker Prize, Paradais is a slight volume nonetheless packed with violence and tension. Polo, the protagonist, is a teenage alcoholic stuck in a dead-end job working as a gardener for a luxury housing complex. He is abused by his mother and his boss and his only real friend is the spoilt Franco, an overweight internet addict with a dangerous obsession with his neighbour, an attractive married woman. Polo’s anger and frustration with his family, his employer sends him spiralling towards destruction.
I haven’t read such a brilliant and horrifying study of the extremes of capitalism and machismo since American Psycho. Melchor’s description is rich and visceral, the oppressive heat outside and claustrophobic house where Polo lives are rendered in complex claustrophobic detail.
Paradais is a shocking and brilliant follow-up to Hurricane Season, I highly recommend this novel for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh and Bret Easton Ellis.
Review by Phoebe
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March 20, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Catherine Belton – Putin’s People
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Marion Billet – Busy London
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
John Preston – Fall
Eliot Higgins – We Are Bellingcat
Charlotte Mendelson – The Exhibitionist
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Tim Marshal – The Power of Geography
Rebecca F. John – Fannie
David Baddiel – Jews Don’t Count
Siobhan Dowd – The London Eye Mystery
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March 15, 2022
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Vintage, £8.99, out now
As the Shinkansen bullet train speeds out of Tokyo, several of those on board seem to be on missions to kill. But who will kill, who will die, and why?
This is a speedy and satisfying locked-room crime novel. It’s not clear at the outset how the disparate group of characters are connected. What links a father bent on revenge, a hitman obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, and a professional killer who’s concerned that he’s unlucky and wants to quit? And what are the roles of those off the train, including a woman who is phoning with instructions?
So many questions, and Bullet Train presents an engaging mystery for readers to try and solve. It’s violent, but given the sheer number of murderers this is perhaps not surprising. This was part of my ongoing Japanese crime reading jag, following on from The Aosawa Murders (https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2020/07/25/the-aosawa-murders-by-riku-onda/). Isaka is a prize winning author in Japan, and the movie starring Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock is due out this summer (see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12593682/).
For an escapist and entertaining crime read, this is a good choice.
Review by Bethan
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March 14, 2022
by Team Riverside
Margaret Atwood – Burning Questions
Lucy Caldwell – These Days
Marlon James – Moon Witch Spider King
Charlotte Mendelson – The Exhibitionist
Graham Robb – France: an Adventure History
Julia Samuel – Every Family Has a Story
Nikesh Shukla – Your Story Matters
Posted in Fiction, Nice things, Non fiction, Signed Copies |
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