Bookclub Reads

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

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Nervous Conditions

Instant African classic

Rare is the book that becomes an instant classic but that was the case for Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga when it was published in 1988. Set in 1960s and 70s in what was then Rhodesia, it’s the coming-of-age story of Tambu, a gifted girl from a dirt-poor farming family who defies her gender and class to be allowed an education. Nervous Conditions was the first book published in English written by a black Zimbabwean woman and its feminist outlook, inspired by Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, revolutionary in itself. A fenomenal portrayal of misogyny, colliding cultures, colonialisation and class.

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A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland

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A Room Above a Shop

Love in a cold climate

An Observer Best Debut Novel of 2025 and Hay Festival Book of the Year, A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland is a poignant and beautiful tale of secret love. Set in a Welsh valley town in the late 1980’s, against a backdrop of industrial decline and the emerging AIDS crisis, it tells the story of two unhappily closeted gay men, M and B (symbolically shielded by the use of only their initials). Drawn to each other one fateful evening, they begin a tentative relationship in an insular, small-town community which would shun and shame them if the truth were revealed.

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Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda

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Reservoir Bitches

A graveyard full of pink crosses

Fierce, street smart, and laced with dark humour, Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda is a literary adrenaline shot; thirteen blistering and brilliant tales of contemporary Mexican womanhood, from an activist and debut writer whose theme here is women who live with violence. With a cast of characters spanning the social scale (aging seamstress ‘spinsters’ traumatised by the degradation of their once nice neighbourhood, an impoverished young woman contemplating a lonely abortion, a wealthy narco heiress running her father’s empire), De la Cerda shows us the lengths these women will go to to survive.

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Vaim by Jon Fosse

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Vaim

A Three Sentence Miracle

One sentence books scares me. Vaim by Jon Fosse, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2024, is one of those, although to be fair, it is more like a three-sentence book, one sentence for each of its three parts. How wrong I was. In stream-of-consciousness prose Fosse hypnotises his reader with the story of invisible, middle-aged Jatgeir, his beloved wooden boat and the enigmatic Eline amongst the deep fjords of Norway’s west coast. It has an almost otherworldly feel to it this novel and a timeless, disorientating quality which is part of its magic. Ideally, this short novel should be read in one sitting. I was reading it while juggling Christmas dinners and dishwasher emptying, not the ideal context. Find yourself a quiet corner on a rainy Sunday, immerse yourself and be enthralled.

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The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

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The Wax Child

Many women, many witches

The wax child entered this world in the early 1600’s and was christened on the Danish island of Funen. We know this because it tells us so; a beeswax doll with human hair and fingernail parings, it looks like a child, longs to be a child but will never be. Now that its mistress is dead and gone, it lies face up beneath the soil, dreaming and remembering. It has stories to tell us, of witchcraft and persecution, female solidarity and betrayal. Based on historical witch trials, The Wax Child by Olga Ravn is an eerie, unsettling and oddly beautiful novel.

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The Silver Book by Olivia Laing

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The Silver Book

Celluloid dreams in 1970’s Italy

It’s the tail-end of an Italian summer in 1974, and English art student, Nicholas, is sketching the churches of Venice. He has the looks of a Renaissance angel and an obvious artistic flair, irresistible to the wandering eye of Danilo Donati, celebrated costume and set designer. Donati is in need of an apprentice (and another lover is always welcome). In The Silver Book by Olivia Laing, real-life people and events meld artfully with fiction, as Nicholas is invited into the decadent world of 1970’s Italian cinema and the lives of directors Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Through the prism of the cinematic arts and its legendary characters he bears witness to a turbulent Italian era.

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So Long See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

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So Long See You Tomorrow

The classic you didn’t know you should read

An absolute gem of a book, So Long See You Tomorrow by Willam Maxwell had never been on my radar of books to read until I stumbled upon it in a scantily stocked airport bookstore. It’s a novel of two loosely connected stories: the narrator who looks back at his childhood in Lincoln, Illinois and the devastating loss of his mother and the parallel tragedy of his friend Cletus’ family. Maxwell’s evocative yet sparse writing is nothing short of genius.

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Clear by Carys Davies

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Clear

More than words

Winner of the Ondaatje Prize 2025, and Wales Book of the Year, the captivating Clear by Carys Davies is one of our favourite recent reads, devoured as a one-sitting treat. Set on a far-flung Scottish island in 1843, it tells the tale of John Ferguson, a man of God, sent to evict Ivar, the island’s last remaining tenant farmer. When an accident upon his arrival leaves John incapacitated, Ivar takes him in and tends him. They share no common language, life experience or world view, but in Davies’ touching story of solitude and human connection, a tentative companionship is born.

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Flesh by David Szalay

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Flesh – Winner of the 2025 Booker Prize

Rags to riches

Working-class boy, István, rises from poverty in communist Hungary to join London’s super rich in Flesh by David Szalay. The road there is far from obvious and has little to do with István’s skills or intelligence and everything to do with a series of random coincidences. The prose in Flesh by David Szalay is as sparse as István’s emotional life but as addictive as any of the drugs consumed in London’s nightclubs.

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Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

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Goodbye to Berlin

Observing the downfall of a nation

‘I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking’, starts Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, an autobiographical collection of loosely connected stories from the author’s time living in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power. Observing is indeed what he does: the decadent nightlife, the discontent and poverty of the working class, and most chillingly, the sinister beginnings of persecution of Jews. It’s a dark but also comical book with the author playing a supporting role to an eccentric gallery of characters. A quirky and notable classic.

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