A fascinating, partly true, tale of the tenuous relationship between a whaling community and the killer whales that help them catch their prey, set within hardships of a sparse whaling season in Australia in 1908.

Combining fact with fiction, Barrett tells the tale through the naïve and earnest Mary Davidson, the eldest daughter of the Headsman, whose humorous and surprisingly self-reflective voice guides us through this unknown world as she stumbles through adolescence, crush(es), hardship and pain. There are no attempts to give ready answers to life, and even the history of some of the characters (and the future of others beyond the year of 1908) are left open, giving the the reader much to mull over.

An unusual and endearing book: simultaneously full of a quiet suffering, hopeful yearnings, and indefatigable courage.

Rush Oh! is published by Virago, 368 pages. 

This is a mature love story. It charts the course of the love between a couple from mixed backgrounds, from their first meeting to post-children. Where it is thin on plot, it is jam-packed with insightful nuggets and, though not yet a guide to marriage, something each married couple should read to better remember the consideration due their partner. While the narrator’s interruptions admittedly sometimes feel slightly patronising and somewhat didactical, they well suit de Botton’s style of musings and I felt they worked within the framework of this pseudo-novel.

It’s been a long time since I read Alain de Botton’s The Romantic Movement, first published in 1994, but I remember being irritated by its tone and disappointed by its attempts at philosophical conclusions. But that was almost 20 years ago and The Course of Love reflects both his personal and intellectual growth with a book that I would recommend.

The Course of Love is published by Hamish Hamilton, 240 pages.

David Szalay was born in Canada but has been quite rightly described as a ‘very English novelist.’ In Spring, his third novel, he writes with humour and searing honesty about a relationship set in London one rainy spring. What makes this novel great is Szalay’s microscopic examination of the exquisite possibility of love versus the far more likely possibility of deep despair when this love isn’t reciprocated.

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