Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls

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Sweet Sorrow

Touching and funny portrait of first love by the author of One Day

Disaffected teenager Charlie Lewis is finessed into joining a summer holiday drama camp by a girl he meets by chance. She is beautiful, clever and well-read; he can’t act, has zero ambition and is only there because he fancies her. Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls is a pitch-perfect, delicately choreographed love story that will make you laugh and cry and wish you were young again – and then be glad you’re not.

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An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

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An American Marriage

Soul-stirring Women's Prize for Fiction Winner

Celestial and Roy are two young black newlyweds, he an executive with a promising career ahead; she an up-and-coming folk artist. When something terrible happens they are torn apart for five years – their lives unravel and they question everything they thought they knew. I read An American Marriage by Tayari Jones as an e-book without having read the blurb (surprising for me but there you are) and I think this is the best and only way to read it. If you know what is going to happen – and almost every review will tell you – then the spoiler makes the whole book a bit pointless.

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Where to start on the Booker Prize long-list 2019?

The Booker Prize long-list 2019 of 13 books was published yesterday and the question is, as always, where to start, if at all…We’ve reviewed a few of them and thought we’d share our views. The big unknown – although entirely unsurprising – entry is The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s much-anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, out in September. The Booker judges, bound by strict non-disclosure agreements, can’t say a word about what happens in the book, so we’ll have to take their word for it.

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Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

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Leaving the Atocha Station

An impostor in Madrid

Ben Lerner’s pot smoking, pill popping protagonist Adam is an endearing, hilarious and vulnerable anti-hero whom I immediately warmed to. On a poetry fellowship to Spain from Kansas, Adam comes weighed down with self-doubt. His knowledge of Spanish is negligible, his skills as a poet questionable. Adam self-medicates to the point that much of his life has become an out-of-body experience. Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner had me in stitches, but just like Adam’s experience of life, this book has layers and layers of meaning, some hilarious, some profound, many of them both.

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YA books for the summer

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YA Books for the Summer

If you’re lucky enough to have a voracious teen reader in your life, then you’ll already know what I’m about to declare. Young Adult literature rocks these days. No more sad bookshop shelves offering three Sweet Valley High novels and a dusty Judy Blume. Walk into any large bookshop and you’ll find thousands of YA titles stretching into the striplit yonder (and they’re not all vampire books!) In fact, the diversity and quality of contemporary YA writing makes reviewing new titles a real treat.

Here are a handful of Bookstoker’s favourite picks of YA books for the summer.

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Bookstoker for the Wildsmith Papers

My article for The Wildsmith Papers this month looks at books by female founders. Sadly, there aren’t exactly an abundance of female founders and of those that exist, few seem to have had time to write books. Nevertheless, I was able to find some and boy what a joy it was to read those books! What an incredible bunch of women doing amazing things. Have a look for yourself!

The Witches of St. Petersburg by Imogen Edward-Jones

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The Witches of St. Petersburg

Intriguing tale of black magic, forgotten Russian princesses and Rasputin

Russia is divided and trouble is brewing. Revolution is bubbling angrily beneath the surface. The poor are starving and desperate, yet in the Imperial court of Tsar Nicolas II the aristocracy live a life of senseless decadence and wanton excess. Two mysterious sisters burst into the Romanov Court. Princesses Anastasia and Militza arrive from the tiny impoverished backwater of Montenegro and, thanks to their socially aspirational father the ‘Goat King’, are married off to wealthy Russian aristocrats. The Witches of St. Petersburg by Imogen Edwards-Jones is ideal beach reading: gripping, entertaining and gossipy.

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