Current favourites
Bear Woman is an astonishing novel from one of Sweden’s leading feminists.
It parallels an autofictional account of motherhood and being an author with the true story of a young woman who was abandoned on an island off the coast of Canada in the 1540s for “adultery,” hunting bears and other animals with a primitive rifle and crossbow to survive — the Bjornkvinnan of the Swedish title. It ends up being something like a meditation on the misrepresentation and erasure of women in history and culture, and a celebration of the survival of this forgotten bear woman. Fascinating.
Sea of Tranquility – Emily St John Mandel
A beautiful and dizzying work of science fiction. Similarly to Mandel’s previous work, ‘Station Eleven’, this novel explores overlapping and intertwined narratives. But while her previous work is quite grounded, Sea of Tranquility expands into space and the very fabric of reality. It is visceral, breathless, deeply sad, but ultimately optimistic. Mandel keeps you clinging to every word as she unfolds the universe around you. – Tilda
The End of Eddy – Édouard Louis
A novel you can read in a day. The blazing debut of one of the stars of contemporary French literature; beginning the self-mythologising autofiction of several novels to come. This is a visceral book about growing up gay and poor in Northern France. He writes about his father and mother with great empathy, dealing with the forces that have determined their lives and thus his own and his siblings’. It is ultimately about the work of inventing oneself. The pages pour away as Édouard does away with Eddy. – Jonathon
The Second Cut – Louise Welsh
Louise Welsh writes really wonderfully exceptional crime fiction. She has created a gloriously seedy milieu of the Glasgow auction and deceased estate scene ( all gray skies, driving rain, the heavy scent of beeswax and leather, hungover coffees, dank bedsits, pawnshops, standover men, and snuff movies) and an even more gloriously imperfect hero in Rilke, a heavy-drinking, morally imperfect, utterly charming auctioneer. – Andy
“The more I addressed you on the page, the more I came to feel responsible for your existence beyond it. I realised that if I was going to start a family then I’d owe you an honest account of why. Not because I didn’t love you but precisely because I did, because I do.”
An open letter to a hoped-for family, Warmth by Daniel Sherrell considers our uncertain future with deep intelligence, passion and self-doubt. I’m thankful for its humanity – and eagerness to look without flinching. Wholly absorbing. – Jack
Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan
The kind of novel you didn’t know you were waiting for, had forgotten was still possible to write….but long for when you open a book. After you have read it, you say to yourself, how is it that such a book can exist and cut so deep in only ninety-six pages? Then you immediately re-read it, vowing to tell anyone who will listen that it features a small act of courage you couldn’t begin to describe but leaves you with a profound feeling of hope. Beautiful. Necessary. Lasting. – Jack