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Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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Long Island Compromise

Screamingly funny satire on wealth and privilege

When Carl Fletcher, styrofoam factory owner and one of Long Island’s richer residents, is kidnapped from his driveway one morning, life changes forever for the Fletcher family. Carl is returned unhurt, at least physically, in exchange for a large pile of cash placed on a baggage carousel at La Guardia airport, but the kidnapping still reverberates decades later. His three children have turned out deeply dysfunctional, each in their own way. Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner is an extremely funny satire and deep dive into privilege, Jewish identity and a spot-on comment on how we live now.

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Death in Spring by MercDeath in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda

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Death in Spring

Cryptic Catalan tale of tyranny and submission

In an isolated village in the Catalan mountains, an adolescent boy goes for a dip in the local river, swimming downstream to the nearby forest. Here, in the leafy half-light, amidst an ominous clustering of butterflies and bees, he witnesses his father carve open a tree and fold himself into it, in anticipation of certain death. A highlight of the marvellous Penguin European Writers collection, Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda is a bildungsroman unlike any other, a surreal tale of oppression, ritual and exile, with a nod to the darkest folklore.

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Broken Threads by Mishal Husain

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Broken Threads

An illuminating and compulsive read

I confess to being a complete ignoramus on the history of the partition of India. Luckily, the brilliant Broken Threads by Mishal Husain has come along to change that. Husain – fiercely intelligent BBC Radio 4 news presenter, feared by British politicians for her razor-sharp interviews – has written the memoirs of her grandparents and parents. In Broken Threads, she weaves together the political and the personal to create an insightful and moving account of their lives as well as India and Pakistan’s fraught shared history.

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Doppler by Erlend Loe

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Doppler

A tent, an elk, and an existential crisis

Doppler is sick of his nice life with his nice wife and nice children. Sick of toeing the line and being a passive consumer in Oslo society, chasing money in a city bloated with oil wealth. Also, his father is dead and it hurts. A bump on the head from a cycling accident prompts an epiphany, and in a clever, satirical skewering of modern life, Doppler by Erlend Loe chronicles Doppler’s desertion of his family, in exchange for a tent in the Norwegian forest, where he will take up contemplation of modern existence in the devoted company of a very small elk.

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Table for Two by Amor Towles

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Table for Two

A magnificent short story collection

Anyone wary of short stories should put their doubts to rest and dive into the utterly magnificent Table for Two by Amor Towles. I’ve been chuckling through his stories which range from a neurotic wife convinced her husband is having an affair to a Russian peasant turned opportunistic capitalist by the Russian revolution; from a high-strung Goldman Sachs banker suspicious of a fellow concert goer to the incompetent aspiring author whose skills at forging puts him on a new career path and many more. Once again, Towles’ superb storytelling skills shine.

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My Husband by Maud Ventura

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My Husband

Crazy in love

A French publishing sensation and winner of the Prix du Premier Roman, My Husband by Maud Ventura is an unnerving tale of manipulation and control. Narrated by a seemingly devoted wife, it gives us seven days in her marital life, a rollercoaster of a week as she veers between doting on her beloved husband, setting traps to test his love, and punishing him when he falls short of her lofty romantic ideals. Occasionally creepy, often crazy, Ventura’s page-turner imagines the potential pitfalls of a scenario where the intensity of one (unbalanced) spouse’s love burns as brightly as it did on their honeymoon night a full fifteen years before.

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You Are Here by David Nicholls

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You Are Here

Having just finished watching the lovable Netflix series One Day, I went straight for newly published You Are Here by David Nicholls. It’s not that Nicholls’ plots are that different from other romcom novels. Where he stands out is in his incredible skill at making it all so very relatable. It’s impossible to read his books without nodding, smiling, even shedding a tear with recognition. You Are Here, is the story of not-so-young-anymore Michael and Marnie finding love (no spoiler, it’s in the blurb) and it’s the way there that makes this such a special read. The perfect funny and uplifting summer novel.

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Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

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Kairos

Fatal Attraction

A coincidental meeting on an East Berlin bus changes the life of 19 year-old Katharina forever. Across the steamy bus, she catches the eye of Hans, a married author and journalist 34 years her senior. They start an intense clandestine affair, but as passion turns to obsession, the relationship descends into something dark and unescapable. In Karios by Jenny Erpenbeck, one of Germany’s literary superstars, their psychological drama is played out in parallel with the political drama of the fall of the Berlin wall.

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Being Mortal

Surprisingly reassuring on a grim subject

I’m not sure how I’m going to convince you to read this book. Most of you will, understandably, want to look the other way. There are details about dying in Being Mortal by Atul Gawande that will make you shudder and stories about elderly people’s lives that will make you want to cry. But, for me, this book was an eye-opener and surprisingly reassuring, despite it’s grim subject matter. Gawande is an Indian/American surgeon, health-care researcher, a Harvard professor, author, journalist, in short: a brilliant man whose books on health care issues regularly climb to the top of non-fiction bestseller lists.

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Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

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Western Lane

A debut novelist of brilliant promise

Longlisted for The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024, and appearing on last year’s Booker shortlist, Western Lane by Chetna Maroo is a spare, tender novel of grief and loss, told from the viewpoint of bereaved 11-year-old Gopi in her unique search for resilience through the game of squash. Following the untimely death of her mother, Gopi’s struggling father has launched his three daughters into an intense regime at Western Lane sports centre. Here, on the squash court, Gopi will find space to breathe and contemplate a world of adult silences and the challenges of adolescence in a cross-cultural family.

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