Welcome to Bookstoker!
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
I’ve been enjoying this very unusual and utterly absorbing (thinly veiled, true) story about a Hungarian writer (the narrator and Magda Szabó herself) and her housekeeper Emerence. It’s a novel about a precarious relationship, mutual respect (and some disrespect), balance of power and the secrets of a remarkable life, all under the magnifying glass.
Truly original novels are few and far between. All the more reason to hail the wonderfully quirky Summer Light and Then Comes the Night by Jon Kalman Stefansson. It’s the portrait of a remote Icelandic town set in the 1990s and if that fails to excite you, I promise that this unexpected, humorous, warm story is worth reading. Stefansson describes dreams and aspirations, crushed or fulfilled; love and desire, unrequited or reciprocated. Life, basically. His tone in playful, conversational and above all, funny. A breath of literary fresh air.
The continuing boom in Latin American literature (LatAm), has introduced us to some amazing writers (we’ve loved recent works by Mariana Enriquez and Dahlia de la Cerda). In common with these and other LatAm writers, in The Queens of Sarmiento Park by Camila Sosa Villada, the author brings us an impassioned and lyrical tale that blends the political and subcultural with a dash of magical realism. Hers is the story of ‘the queerest boarding house in the world’, the sex workers who live there with the matriarchal Auntie Encarna, and what happens when Auntie finds an abandoned baby and decides to raise him as one of their own.
A 1971 Czech gem from the distinctive Vintage Classics list, I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal gives us the tumultuous life story of Ditie, hotel waiter, entrepreneur and lover. Hung up on his stature (both physically and socially), but with the loftiest of ambitions, Ditie chronicles his life, a rise from impoverished beginnings in pre-war Prague to self-made millionaire, before losing it all again. In Hrabal’s humorous, often bawdy, philosophical tale, the events in Ditie’s life are inextricably linked to the years encompassing the Nazi annexation and Soviet communist occupation of his homeland. His journey from wily youth to chastened reflection is a remarkable one.
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.
A 1965 cult read (reimagined for the 21st century by Vincenzo Latronico in his recent excellent novel, Perfection), Things: A Story of the Sixties by Georges Perec is a wry portrayal of post-war materialism. Chronicling the lives of a young Parisian couple, Jérôme and Sylvie, Perec shows us how they are served by their time and place in history. With the advent of mass advertising and the concept of ‘lifestyle’, a desire for stuff and more stuff has been ignited, yet Jéröme and Sylvie are determined not to join the 9 to 5 treadmill. They want to be free but are unaware that there’s always a price to pay.
Literary sensation Lázár by Nelio Biedermann will be on many TBR lists this summer. His debut historical fiction novel has caused a stir far beyond Hungary, where it’s set, and is a good first stab from the 22-year-old author. It’s the riches to rags story of the aristocratic Lázár family living through the upheavals of the 21st century. Who doesn’t crave a sweeping historical fiction novel? And Biedermann succeeds – almost.
First published in 1967 and now available in a freshly translated Penguin Classics edition, The Cat by Georges Simenon is a bleakly funny tale of marital warfare, old age and obsession. Celebrated for his wonderful Inspector Maigret novels, Simenon also wrote a series of psychological novels he named ‘romans dur’ (hard novels). In this one, we meet seventy-somethings, Emile and Marguerite Bouin, married in haste and repenting at leisure. Since Emile accused his wife of fatally poisoning his beloved cat and launched a barbarous retaliatory attack on her pet parrot, they have been enmeshed in a silent battle of wills. Will it be a duel to the death?
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.
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.
