News by Julie
Top Ten Summer Classics
Is there anything better than a summery read to get you into a sunny mood? Or a summery novel to read on your holiday? To get you into the spirit, we have chosen our top ten summer classics.
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We’re here to help you find that book that you can’t put down, the book you’ll push on all your friends, the book that’ll change your life.
We read literary fiction, non-fiction, classics and children’s books, all genres and styles embraced in our aim to share the love. You’ll also find fabulous Bookstagrams and literary news.
A world of bookish delights!
Kirstin and Julie
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Offbeat American Novels
Leaving the Atocha Station
An impostor in Madrid
The Tenants of Moonbloom
A bizarre epiphany in bygone New York
What Happens at Night
Emotional depth and purposeful peculiarity
The Princess of 72nd Street
A New York radiance
Review by Kirstin
Dead Lucky
Inspired debut novel of addiction and confession
The most original debut we’ve read this year, Dead Lucky by Connor Hutchinson tells the story of twenty-something Jamie, a funeral embalmer leading a chaotic double life in a Manchester suburb. Although dedicated to his job and in love with his fabulous girlfriend, Rebecca, Jamie is harbouring a secret which threatens to capsize his life. Addicted to gambling, on the edge of financial ruin and under pressure from Rebecca to purchase their first home together, Jamie needs to pull off a major win. By turns darkly funny and affecting, Dead Lucky invites us into the mind of a young man, who unable to share his troubles with those who love him, tells them to the corpses on his embalming table instead.
Review by Julie
Strangers by Belle Burden
The shock of abandonment
On the face it, the premise of Strangers by Belle Burden might repel some readers. A Waspy, privileged, New York woman is suddenly left by her successful, hedge fund husband. What’s new? you might think. That was my reaction too, however, as I started reading I was won over by Burden and her portrayal of grief, confusion and loneliness. Sure, millions of women around the world have been in a lot more dire straits than Burden, but the trauma of being abandoned is universal.
Review by Kirstin
The Writer’s Room
Reimagining writers’ spaces
When asked to conjure a mental image of writers at work, what do we see? Perhaps a book-lined study, tasteful art pieces, the writer toiling away at their desk, a solitary soul summoning the magic. The Writer’s Room by Katie da Cunha Lewin takes us on an absorbing and wide-ranging journey, beyond the rarified spaces of the preserved writer’s house and ‘exit through the gift shop’ vibe to the aspiring novelist typing into their phone on the bus to their day job, the harassed parent scribbling away between baby’s feeds, and the new writing spaces carved out by and for the 21st century writer.
Inspiring stories about art
All the Beauty in the World
Life, death, and the art of seeing
Duveen
The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time
The Lonely City
When loneliness turns into art
Adventures in the Louvre
A charming tour of the people’s palace
Review by Kirstin
Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes
Laughing through the tears
We’re devotees of the excellent Faber Editions series, dedicated to resurrecting radical novels of the 20th century. New to the list is an American gem, Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes by Henry Van Dyke. This distinctly offbeat 1950s-set drama is told through the eyes of Oliver, a young, gay Black man, who lives with his elderly aunt, Harriet, and her employer of thirty years , Mrs Etta Klein. In a tale that ranges from farce to tragedy (with lashings of rum), Oliver uncovers the truth behind a Klein family suicide, in the company of a sex-mad maid, a shady psychic, and his own beloved volume of Baudelaire’s poems.
Review by Julie
Territory of Light
A quietly powerful story of separation
Our nameless narrator’s husband has just announced he is leaving her. Adrift with a three-year old daughter she attempts to rebuild a life, but 1970s Japan is an unforgiving place for divorced women and shame, sadness and responsibility weigh heavily on her. Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima is a strange little book; its quietly powerful, sparse language perfectly captures despair and isolation in the wake of separation.
Review by Kirstin
Your Life Without Me
The space left by loss and assumptions unchallenged
Mr Burman is a middle-aged widower, still grieving the loss of his wife, Ada, in a car accident. By day he teaches English at a local high school, by night he grapples with the effects of his blood-pressure medication and worrying about his virtual estrangement from daughter, Leila. This low-key existence is shattered when one of Mr Burman’s ex-students, Raf, attempts to blow up St Paul’s cathedral. In Your Life Without Me by James Meek, we follow Mr Burman’s journey to London, where he is intent on visiting Raf in custody and uncovering the truth, in a richly metaphorical story of loss and the passage of time.
