Bookstoker Young Readers
The Song Walker
Song, sisterhood and spirituality
John Agard’s Windrush Child
A wide-eyed tale of hope and new beginnings
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
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Review by Julie
Trust
Hugely enjoyable literary Russian-doll
A novel, an autobiography, a memoir and a diary; four alternative truths. Pulitzer Prize winning Trust by Hernan Diaz is a riveting read, an experimental novels-within-a-novel which deals with the questions of truth, trust and American capitalism. Andrew Bevel is an American gazillionaire banker at the turn of the last century. Incensed by an unflattering roman a clef – which everyone recognises as based on his life – Bevel is keen to set the record straight and hires Ida Partenza as ghost writer for his own (carefully supervised) version of events. Ida, who has a few issues of authenticity herself, starts digging and discovers that all is not what it seems in the Bevel household.
Review by Kirstin
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
Revisiting a fabulous cult classic
A treat for those with a penchant for camp gothic drama, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell is the cult classic that spawned the legendary 1962 film. It chronicles the descent into madness of faded childhood vaudeville star, Baby Jane Hudson. Holed up in a crumbling mansion with her infinitely more famous actress sister, Blanche, the dysfunctional siblings’ tale is one of envy, unaddressed daddy issues, and monstrous villainy. Cinephiles will love how Farrell conjures the scenes that inspired the movie, and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford inevitably become the sisters in the reader’s mind’s eye.
Review by Kirstin
Time Shelter
Winner of the 2023 International Booker Prize
A distinctly European novel, the award-winning Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov combines philosophy and satire with a fascinating premise. Enigmatic therapist, Gaustine, opens a pioneering dementia clinic in Zurich, wherein each floor recreates a different decade, allowing patients to find peace and comfort in their own temporal sanctuary. As the business gains in reputation, even healthy clients begin flocking to this clinic of the past, desirous of escaping their dysfunctional present. In Gospodinov’s emblematic take on 20th century Europe, Gaustine’s experiment morphs into something dangerous as he notes ‘…when you have no future, you vote for the past.’
Review by Kirstin
Cursed Bread
A beguiling and erotically charged mystery
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh is a wonderfully enigmatic and mesmerising read, by an author whose presence sings from the Granta Best Young British Novelists 2023 list. An acknowledged purveyor of disquieting fiction, here Mackintosh introduces us to Elodie, a frustrated baker’s wife in post-war provincial France. Spending her days mired in gossip and domesticity, the bored young woman is ripe for seduction. It comes in the form of a dashing young ambassador and his wife, the beautiful and damaged Violet, their arrival heralding a sultry, sexy summer, and a rash of darkly peculiar goings on.
Bookstoker Young Readers
Different for Boys
A perceptive and empathic LGBTQ+ read
Friend
An inspiration for the budding poets in your life
Glowrushes
A profound and beautiful celebration of art and storytelling
Review by Kirstin
A Way of Life Like Any Other
Hilarity with a dash of vinegar
The New York Review of Books Classics series is a marvellous creation, an eclectic mix of fabulously-jacketed titles, invariably accompanied by compelling intros. A recent serendipitous dip into the collection blessed us with A Way of Life Like Any Other by Darcy O’Brien, the story of a young boy in 1950’s Hollywood, his movie star parents and their sordid and absurd descent into has-been territory. Irresistibly described as ‘completely bananas’, we find out what happens after the glitter fades, in a bizarre coming-of-age novel that combines hilarity with a dash of vinegar.
Bookstoker Young Readers
Kids Fight Extinction
Give nature a hand
The Blue Book of Nebo
Survival and renewal in post-apocalyptic Wales
Needle
The hardest word
Review by Julie
Cuddy
A novel about a saint and a historical cathedral might not make you race to the bookshop, but Cuddy by Benjamin Myers turned out to be a lot more riveting that you’d imagine. Meyers novel is a playful medley of forms – poetry, play, diary and prose. In five different parts, he tells the story of Saint Cuthbert, Durham Cathedral and people whose lives were in one way or another touched by it. A moving love letter to Durham and superb storytelling from an author to watch.
Review by Meg
A Little Life
A profoundly moving novel about friendship in the twenty-first century
The hottest play in London at the moment! If you can’t get hold of a ticket. The book will do just fine! Here’s our review. Enjoy.
When I was given a copy of this much-lauded, lengthy book at the beginning of the summer my heart sank slightly. I’d read so much hype about this challenging blockbuster novel that I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to read it. A close friend put me off further by declaring that she had given up half way through as she found it too gruelling and unrelenting. However, relaxing on holiday in sleepy Somerset, I braced myself and began what turned out to be an exhausting and harrowing yet profoundly moving novel.
