Tag: Fiction
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Hamnet
by Maggie O’Farrell £10.99, Paperback The untold love story that inspired Shakespeare’s greatest masterpiece. On a summer’s day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Hamnet tells the powerful story of Agnes and Will, and of the son whose…
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Briefly, a Delicious Life
by Nell Stevens Paperback, £9.99 If I had to condense my review of this book into three words, I would describe it as full of life, which is ironic, as the narrator is a ghost who has been dead for centuries. However, this ghost – Blanca – watches and involves herself in the stories of…
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The Woman Dies
by Aoko Matsuda Europa Editions, Paperback, £14.99 What I love about short stories is that they can lightly slip into the crack of everyday hectic-ness. One day, Aoko Matsuda, the author of Where the Wild Ladies Are — witty, uncanny, feminist tales rewriting Japanese folklore, winner of the 2021 World Fantasy Award Best Collection —…
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The Proof of my Innocence
by Jonathan Coe This is the funniest book I’ve read all year. Stuffed with good puns and jokes, it’s also an excellent pastiche of genres including cosy crime, autofiction and ‘dark academia’ (no, I had no idea either – apparently it includes The Secret History). I knew I’d enjoy it when I saw that the…
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My Rice is Best!
By Selina Brown and Maxwell A. Oginni Penguin, Paperback, £7.99 Any books about food immediately draw me in, and this was no exception! Brown’s storytelling and Oginni’s illustrations are bound to start conversations about favourite foods and cooking. Each page is brimming with as much energy as the children in the book, Yinka and Shane,…
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A Language of Limbs
By Dylin Hardcastle Verve Books, Paperback, £10.99 I picked this book up at random based on the image on the cover, which really drew me in with the affection and vulnerability portrayed, and I’m very glad I chose it. Hardcastle weaves together the stories of two very different lives with great skill and emotion, and…
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Butter
By Asako Yuzuki Harpercollins, Paperback, £9.99 11 months ago, the paperback for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (by Gabrielle Zevin) came out and I spent the summer selling it. My first thought was that it was probably overhyped, but I was intrigued and caved when a friend lent me a copy in early autumn. I…
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All Fours
By Miranda July Canongate Books, Paperback, £9.99 “I’d whipped myself into a froth of longing — or worked, created fictions…. Was there any actual enchantment or was it all just survival, ways to muddle through?” I’m jealous of you if you are yet to read Miranda July’s All Fours, now out in paperback. It has…
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The Safekeep
By Yael van der Wouden Penguin, Paperback, £9.99 Call Me By Your Name meets Girl With A Pearl Earring in this consuming and simmering debut novel set in a rural town in the Netherlands. The Safekeep is one of those rare books where the things left unsaid speak as much as the ones on the…
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Blue Sisters
By Coco Mellors Harpercollins, Paperback, £9.99 The Blue sisters have always been exceptional – and exceptionally different. Avery, a strait-laced lawyer living in London, is the typical eldest daughter, though she’s hiding a secret that could undo her perfect life forever. Bonnie was a boxer but, following a devastating defeat, she’s been working as a…
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Intermezzo
From the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Normal People, an exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family. Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of…
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The Ministry of Time
by Kaliane Bradley, paperback, £9.99 Silly, romantic, and stuffed with ideas, this hugely entertaining novel made me laugh at the snappy dialogue and gasp at the twists. The narrator is a civil servant who is assigned to look after one of several people who have arrived from the past. Her assignment is Commander Graham Gore,…
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Dead Animals
by Phoebe Stuckes Paperback, £9.99 It can be nerve-wracking when a well-remembered former colleague writes a book. Will we be in it? Will it be good? Declaration of interest: Phoebe Stuckes is that colleague, our former bookseller extraordinaire. And having been wowed by Phoebe’s poems in Platinum Blonde, I knew that her novel would be…
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Mongrel
Promising violinist Yuki leaves her native rural Japan for London at 18 to start a new life. There, she falls in love with her teacher, over ten years her senior. Meiko grows from child to teen to adult, grieving her mother, falling in love with her best friend and losing her connection to her Japanese…
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Clear
Carys Davies is once again showing her talent in crafting the perfect short novel that combines enough action and character building to satisfy the most demanding reader. If you loved West, published in 2019, you must read Clear. Davies has carefully chosen each word to perfectly describe the remote Shetland Island and its only inhabitant,…
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Greta & Valdin
By Rebecca K Reilly Paperback £9.99 This is a quirky, funny, easy-to-read novel about millennial siblings Greta and Valdin, living together in Auckland. Greta is a master’s student in comparative literature who is secretly in love with fellow tutor Holly. Valdin is a former astrophysicist who, after a breakdown, lost his boyfriend and became a…
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Death at the Sanatorium
Ragnar Jónasson Paperback Need a pleasing mystery-to-curl-up-with on an autumn evening? I’ve just had the pleasure of reading Death at the Sanatorium. It fulfils all my criteria for a book to read as the equinox passes, trees change colour, and squirrels become frantic. It’s 2012 and Helgi, a young Icelandic criminologist, is writing his dissertation…
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Less
By Andrew Sean Greer Paperback £9.99 This book made me laugh out loud while alone on the Tube, despite my best efforts (Londoners will know what a travel faux pas this is). Several sections took me a while to get through, due to crying with laughter and being unable to see the text. Arthur Less…
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