All The Books I Read in 2025
All the books I read over the course of 2025! This has taken an age to write. Why did I read so many? Surely I could have slowed it down and savoured things a bit more. Worked my way through, I don’t know, ten. But the list just kept on a-rolling! Honestly, it got to the point where I was just going to skip the rubbish books and not bother telling you about them to save time, but I am nothing if not a glutton for punishment and so here they all are, the good, the bad and the meh.
Except that I’m not explicitly going to tell you if they’re bad, or even if they’re meh: since becoming a published author myself (humble brag, here’s my book!) I can’t bring myself to be openly critical about other people’s writing because a) I know how much of your life you have to pour into birthing said book and b) I don’t want to invoke some sort of writers’ karma where if you say something true-but-salty about someone else’s book, even if it is eighty thousand words of self-obsessed drivel so dull it makes you want to slowly extrude your own brain via a nostril a la the ancient Egyptian mummification process known as Excerebration, you’ll suddenly invite negativity into your life and get loads of one star reviews saying things like
“package arrived DAMP and TORN AT CORNER!!!!!!! Would give it zero stars if possible!”
So yes. You’re going to have to try and read between the lines here - if I highly recommend you read something, I’ll try and make it obvious.
Here we go: all the books I read in 2025. Chronological order. Scattered images. Cowardly, heavily edited thoughts.
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Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey.
The year started with a good one: Our London Lives. Set in 1979, this story follows two characters over many decades, watching (often frustratingly) as their lives collide and then veer away again, repeatedly. Milly is a teenage runaway, Pip is a young boxer, both are Irish outsiders in London who find a sort of refuge in one another.
It should be a straightforward love story but Pip drinks and Milly finds it hard to stand her ground with things, which sometimes makes you want to bash your head slowly against a wardrobe door. Anyway it’s beautiful, if sometimes a little slow, and I loved that it was set in Clerkenwell and Smithfields (my old neck of the woods) and that you saw how the area changed over time.
Here online, if you fancy it.
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher.
“In Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher tells the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit.”
That’s the official one-liner on this short and snappy autobiographical book. It misses out the crucial fact that this is short. I was incensed at how short this was! Because parts of it were unbelievably funny. Sad, because it’s all about Carrie Fisher’s - erm - unconventional Hollywood childhood and her dire battles with addiction and her mental health, but she manages to tell her story with that flippant sort of humour that leaves your mouth hanging open.
And then, just as I was getting into it, feeling connected, poof! It ended! I had to look online to see whether maybe I had half the book missing! Alas no.
If you fancy a quick read, it’s online here
Benediction by Kent Haruf.
I did not want this Kent Haruf trilogy to come to a close. It started with Plainsong then continued, so beautifully slowly, with Eventide and then Benediction rounded the whole story off, except that it’s not so much a story as an exploration of very ordinary lives and events. Haruf is a genius at bringing home how life events can feel small, apparently insignificant and mundane when you read about them through a wide lens but when they are under a microscope, as they are in this trilogy, they are utterly catastrophic. World-changing.
This is slow, rural America, timeless in that it could be any decade in the last hundred years, pretty much, and it feels almost painfully beautiful to read about because it’s all so strangely relatable. Normal lives. I loved this trilogy so much that I felt bereft from the first chapter of Benediction, knowing that it was going to come to an end.
Online here
Kala by Colin Walsh.
“Human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, can the estranged friends figure out what led to Kala's disappearance... and stop history repeating itself?”
I enjoyed this. It always feels weird to say you’ve enjoyed a story about murder, but the characters were brilliant and I liked how it flipped back and forth through time, which sometimes irritates me, so… well done. Did it terrify me? No. I don’t consider this to be a thrilling sort of thriller. But it’s not some airport slasher horror, for God’s sake, it’s a proper read with complex characters and excellent settings…
Here online
Red Head At The Side of the Road by Anne Tyler.
“A glimpse into the heart and mind of a man who sometimes finds those around him just out of reach – and a love story about the differences that make us all unique.”
Oh I enjoyed this one massively. It’s a slow, very meticulous look at one man’s life and relationships and very set way of doing things and interacting with people. At first his actions were frustrating, but then I began to understand him and as I began to slowly understand him and the way his mind works, it was honestly like an epiphany. Because this character could be at least two people I know in real life and who I have struggled to understand and empathise with.
I seem to very much enjoy these slow, microscopic character studies. Colm Toibin, Sally Rooney, Claire Keegan, just off the top of my head; whole books where only a few days or weeks pass by. Intricate peerings into the workings of the human mind. Maybe because you end up almost absorbing the character. Maybe it’s because you end up seeing so much of yourself, or someone you know? Anyway, strongly recommend.
Here online.
Night Crawling by Leila Mottley.
“An unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising and utterly mesmerising.”
This is a hard read. It’s very intensely violent and also grim-without-any-sign-of-an-optimistic-ending, but the story has really stayed with me, so much that I don’t need to pop onto Amazon to re-read the blurb even though it’s a whole year later. (That really is a feat for me.)
The main character, Kiara, is picked up by the police and ends up doing a deal with them to sell her body in return for them not charging her for something she didn’t have any control over in the first place. It’s the sort of injustice that makes you incensed from the first chapter - you just know that Kiara’s life is going to spiral into chaos and misery.
There was a bit of unneeded padding as it went along, I thought, sometimes a bit repetitive, which took some of the edge off at times, but - as I said - the story has really stayed with me.
Online here.
List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey.
“Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn't an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv's mum stopped talking.
Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all?”
This is sort of a novel about the Yorkshire Ripper murders and how they affected local communities but it’s told from the viewpoint of a child. I struggled with this, because a) I find child narrators in books (and child actors!) incredibly annoying anyway but b) she only really half understood what was going on, yet we as adults reading it know what was going on, so I felt more informed than the narrator and it just left me not knowing where I stood with it all.
I think, judging by the 14,000 five star ratings that I am possibly the only person in the world who had this minor issue, but then most people like the kid in Sixth Sense who says “I see dead people” and honestly, I wished he had stayed locked in that cupboard for the duration of the movie.
Anyway, brilliantly written and the scene-setting was superb. As a child of the eighties, the main (child, gah!) characters were only just ahead of me and so it felt relatively familiar. Not the bit about the murders, but the general vibe. Thatcher the milk-snatcher, etc.
Here online.
When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy.
“Caught in the hook of love, a young woman marries a dashing university professor. She moves to a rain-washed coastal town to be with him, but behind closed doors she discovers that her perfect husband is a perfect monster. As he sets about battering her into obedience and as her family pressures her to stay in the marriage, she swears to fight back - a resistance that will either kill her or set her free.”
Right. I thought that this was very powerful, this story of a very intelligent and independent woman who finds herself under the total control of a monstrous man. She cannot escape him, or his violence and I read much of it feeling very nauseous about how she was possibly going to escape him.
Here online.
What a Way to Go by Bella Mackie.
“Anthony is dead. His wife and four children each have a motive. And there’s a true crime-obsessed outsider ready to expose the killer…”
This was a great romp. The main character is a total berk and, because he has recently died, he speaks to us from the afterlife. His family (still alive) are almost all horrendous. You don’t really root for any of them, which makes this the sort of farcical murder mystery you can fully stand back from and enjoy without restraint. I read this on holiday over the plane journey and initial sun-lounger session. A great holiday read, I’d say.
Online here.
The Slowworm’s Song by Andrew Miller.
“An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with the daughter he barely knows when he receives a summons - to an inquiry into an incident during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.”
Slow worm? Slow story. Struggled to finish. Is what I wrote in my notes. I’m going to writers’ hell. This has not put me off buying The Land In Winter, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker, because for all its slowness it was gloriously written. Maybe it’s because I read this sandwiched between two murder mysteries?
Online here.
The Mysterious Affair At Styles by Agatha Christie.
“Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to the rolling country estate of Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder. Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who has grown bored of retirement…”
From my notes: My first Agatha C, will it be my last? Enjoyed massively but God crank up the pace a bit and get on with it would you! Blasphemy!
I read this book because it was on the shelf in the holiday cottage in Dittisham where we stayed last Easter, and directly opposite the cottage was Agatha Christie’s holiday home. (Greenway, absolutely visit there, I thought it was great. Sunny day, had deckchairs out on the lawn. Her clothes in the dressing room. Recordings of her chatting with friends, etc. Loved it.)
It is blasphemous to say this I’m sure, but it just needed to be a bit more pacey for me. I’ll give another one a go because I know it was a first attempt. (Haha. Biggest selling author of all time after Shakespeare, I’m sure she doesn’t need my opinion!)
Here online.
Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers.
“1957, the suburbs of south east London. Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. As the investigation turns her quiet life inside out, Jean is suddenly given an unexpected chance at friendship, love and - possibly - happiness.”
Absolutely faultless. (Can you tell I’m running out of energy, I’m relying on the book blurb to do the talking here.) I rarely give a mental 10/10 but this just absolutely captured my heart, what a gorgeous love story and what a gut-wrenching twist! Very Atonement. You know I said I’d try and make it clear when I strongly recommended something? Consider this a big flashing neon sign.
Here online.
California Gold by Jodie Chapman.
“A portrait of a marriage, a family and the thin line between a dream and an obsession.”
I was honoured to get an advanced copy of Jodie Chapman’s new novel (it had a different title, even!) but also felt that it was a massive responsibility because I am incapable of being able to lie convincingly and I was worried that if I didn’t love it as much as her others (Oh Sister was one of my books of the year in 2023) then she’d know and it would all be mortifying!
Thankfully it’s absolutely brilliant. You think it’s going to be the story of true love and a dream life, that Hollywood cliché where two souls find one another and live this movie-worthy, enviable, cool kind of existence.
But everything turns out to be not as expected - it’s the most realistic shattering of dreams I’ve ever read. Deftly executed shatterings, sometimes so depressing you think to yourself, geez, give them all SOME kind of break!
But such is the brilliance of the book. I kept coming back to it throughout the day when I should have been working because the characters crept under my skin and I felt a compulsion to check up on them, to see whether anything had improved for them. Top tier.
Pre-order here.
Hunger Stone by Kat Dunn.
“Set against the violent wilderness of the Peak district, a compulsive sapphic reworking of original vampire novel CARMILLA, the book that inspired DRACULA: a captivating story of unstoppable hunger…”
This was entertaining with a good dark plot that gradually unveils itself and a nice dose of revenge. The vampire woman did my head in though. I’m not good with the whole seduction scenario when one of the players is a monster, ghost or otherwise supernatural being. It gets very vague and confused. It’s a bit like dream sequences, again: I just want to say DID IT HAPPEN THOUGH?
I think vampires in general just need to chill out with the whole “seducing humans” thing, either bite them and be done with it or leave them alone. I can’t believe that many people get a sexual thrill from the thought of being exsanguinated by a vitamin D deficient ghoul with meat breath.
Here online.
How to Kill your Family by Bella Mackie.
“Meet Grace Bernard.
Daughter, sister, serial killer…
Grace has lost everything.
And she will stop at nothing to get revenge.”
Ploughed into this because I enjoyed the other Bella Mackie one so much. Again, an aeroplane read, perfect for holidays because it actually has a sense of humour and a good plot.
Online here.
Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst.
“A luscious summer novel about friends, lovers, and friends' lovers.”
OK, iPhone notes:
Felt like basking in sunshine on a picnic rug, but naked and in front of people. Comforting but also uncomfortable. Made me feel clever and also down with the kids.
This is the sort of read that makes you feel as though you frequent cool dinner parties. The sort that people (probably) have in East-East London, where there’s a guitarist from an up-and-coming band who brings the dessert, a girl who’s big on Instagram for showing videos of vintage shoe repairs and at least three fashion stylists.
THIS IS NOT A DISS! I used to go to that sort of party! I am just at least ten years too old, now. Which is sort of how I felt about the book. A bit… too old. In one way it was eye-opening, in another way I kept feeling quite maternal towards the characters and wanting to say “oh bless. There’s more to life than shagging, dears! Take up a hobby!”
Online here.
The Housemaid by Freida McFadden.
"Welcome to the family," Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I'll soon learn that the Winchesters' secrets are far more dangerous than my own...”
Huge runaway bestseller in the realms of Fifty Shades of Grey, etc. iPhone note for this one said: - gah. Good twist though.
Here online.
A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry.
“The joyous and electric memoir from beloved music icon Neneh Cherry.”
Ha! My iPhone note for this was: Hectic life.
I was so fascinated by Neneh Cherry’s life, reading this - there was never a dull moment, she had lived an entire human’s life by the age of about six, in terms of significant events! - that when I had to return the book to the library (it was in high demand, apparently) I immediately downloaded the audiobook to finish the last five chapters. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the audiobook, because Neneh Cherry reads it and her voice is borderline hypnotic and I kept falling asleep.
Online here.
Assembly by Natasha Brown.
“Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.”
iPhone note: Oooh! Fresh. Short. Punchy. Great.
This is a short read, but you know when something grabs you because it’s just so different? The story left me feeling really pessimistic about modern life, but at the same time it was a female viewpoint we don’t often see in novels: disenchanted and disappointed in life, but in a very rational and level-headed way. Quick to read but spends a long time in your thoughts.
Here online.
Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers.
“Inspired by a true story, Shy Creatures is a life-affirming exploration of loneliness, love and the quiet forces that shape our lives, reminding us that freedom can come in unexpected forms.”
amazing!! Almost as good as Small Pleasures.
I mean what else can I say. Strong recommend again for Clare Chambers. I enjoyed this immensely.
Online here.
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
“An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.”
iPhone notes: Outstanding. What a turn in a story, totally blew me away.
Oh, this one really got to me. I thought I had the story all figured out - I thought I knew whose “side” I was on! What a dark, twisted tale - I am loathe to say too much, because the thrill is in the discovery, but after the thrill comes a deep, deep sense of sadness and a realisation that histories and stories never truly tell both sides. We are so easily led. Phenomenally demonstrated in The Safekeep.
One of my books of the whole year, for the twist alone.
Online here.
Room on the Sea by André Aciman.
“As the sultry summer week draws to a close, the end of their rendezvous comes into focus, and Paul and Catherine are forced to decide whether to act on their feelings or leave the fantasy of what could have been to the annals of the past.”
iPhone notes: Argh! Who talks like this?! Is it a US thing? Dialogue is intensely annoying. Lovely short story about love.
What is it at the moment with novels that have dialogue that would absolutely never be spoken in real life? Where for some reason characters speak to each other as though they’re reading from a psychotherapy book? I don’t get it. Is there a certain demographic in the US where this dialogue is normal? Do people actually say things like these lovers? Example:
Him, to lover: ‘We may be lonely, even ordinary, but we’ve been happier and more thrilled to meet than I’ve been in a very long time. It’s been years since I’ve felt as welcome to be who I am or felt as interesting as I have these past few days. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be with someone who is eager to laugh with me, to know what I like, what I think, and with whom I’m dying to speak every day.”
Honestly, if Rich came out with this I’d think he’d had his coffee spiked with MDMA. I’d think I was being pranked.
Then she replies. Brace positions.
“We are each in our own way enjoying this new wind in our lives, but we also know it can’t infringe on our other life.”
I feel like I’m reading an entry from the journal of an early settler. Don’t get me wrong, the language is lovely! The story is lovely! It’s just this dialogue. I’m seeing it a lot. It’s starting to make me question whether I’m imagining it. Or perhaps I speak like a caveman and nobody has dared tell me.
Here online, if you fancy a short and sweet read.
Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal.
“Charlotte Walker has swapped her grey life in London for a year in a tropical paradise. Officially, she’s there for conservation but the reality is far more complicated. For somewhere on the island lies the answer to a truth she’s waited her whole life to learn. If she finds it, then perhaps she might finally find herself too.”
iPhone notes: Fun and comforting, like Doc Martin but on a faraway island.
Need I say more? I raced through this, really enjoyed it. A sunny, satisfying read - the Solero of 2025 books.
Here online.
Sleep by Honor Jones.
“A dazzling debut following a newly divorced young mother reckoning with a long-buried secret as she returns home one summer.”
- exquisite
I’m glad I kept notes on my iPhone as I went along, even if they did just consist of a single word. I thought that Sleep was a beautifully written examination of the motherhood cycle. The first part of this novel felt like treading on eggshells; a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship where I kept on thinking something even worse was always about to happen. Not that the things that did happen were at all insignificant. It was just that it gave me absolutely no faith in the parents whatsoever, that the child could have been in free-fall and there was nothing in the way of a safety net. Very unsettling.
And then you get the aftermath; how the events of childhood weave their way throughout the rest of the character’s life and inform the person she becomes and the way in which she responds, in turn, to new events. Very clever. It makes you realise how terrifying it can be to have that huge responsibility, being a mother, knowing that you will inevitably make mistakes, realising that they are not always mistakes so much as life just turning its giant wheel, all to be repeated!
Blimey.
Online here.
Sandwich by Catherine Newman.
“For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape.
The humble, quirky beach house they rent has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, shared mishaps and memories. It is a place where her family comes together and Rocky wants to cling to every moment.
Now, sandwiched between her children who are adult enough to be fun but still young enough to need her, and her parents who are ageing but healthy, Rocky wants to preserve this precious moment of balance for ever.
But life is always full of surprises and this week will be no exception. With her body in open revolt and surprises invading her peaceful haven, the seesaw of Rocky’s life is tipping towards change…”
iPhone note: best book of 2025 so far! Have taken photos of pages I like, it’s that good.
I loved this book because:
a) it felt relevant to me. Although Rocky is way ahead in terms of life stage (her kids are grown up, mine are still in Primary school, she’s a bit older, etc) the emotions she has around her own identity and around motherhood all feel really raw and immediate.
b) it’s sometimes outrageously funny. Very honest. I guffawed more than a few times, in public, and looked mad.
Would read this one again and again - I gave away my first copy and have since repurchased twice!
Here online.
Milf by Paloma Faith.
“Paloma invites us into her own coming of age and relationship with her mum, to
explore how our bonds with our children evolve into adulthood. We see a
glimpse of the complexities and joys of Paloma's experience of juggling
romantic love, heartbreak and dating with the demands of motherhood.”
Here online.
Fire by John Boyne.
“A chilling, uncomfortable but utterly compelling psychological journey to the epicentre of the human condition, asking the age-old question: nurture – or nature?”
Stupendous, didn’t see any of that coming! Shocking.
iPhone note says it all, really - we have a huge neon flashing sign of a recommendation for this one. It’s one of four books in the “Elements” collection and by far the most compelling and gripping.
Online here.
The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks.
“Tech billionaire Lukas Parn has an ambitious plan. Behind the doors of the IVF clinic in his London institute, a daring switch is made. Young academic Talissa Adam believes she is simply carrying a child for a grateful family, but the baby inside her is different from any living human. The boy, Seth, grows up unaware, though his parents not that he’s different: he can’t make plans, is unaware of danger and seems to have at least one extra sense. But as Seth becomes a man, the truth about him is revealed and the world starts to hunt him down.”
This concept (swapping genetic material so that a baby is born with some Neanderthal DNA*) is both creepy and amazing. Kept me hooked, even though some of it was very science-y and made my mind chase squirrels.
(*“Neanderthal DNA” is probably completely incorrect, but let us continue.)
Some parts of the book seemed completely unnecessary, like a trip out to a derelict chateau in the wilds of France where there was a tethered man and an old lift shaft, never to be mentioned again, but I liked that it followed the story through many decades. Long but overall it kept me entertained on my sun lounger.
Here online.
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively.
“Claudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying. But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world . . . and in the process, my own'. And it is her story from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia's life is entwined with others and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak, to put across their point of view.”
iPhone Note 1: amazing! Reminded me a bit of Still Life crossed with the English Patient.
iPhone Note 2: oh, this won the Booker Prize. No surprise. Top notch, absolutely loved the main character!
Here online.
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins-Reid.
“Carrie Soto is the greatest player the world has ever seen. But six years after her last match, she watches a young British tennis player steal her world record - and Carrie knows she has to go back and reclaim her rightful place at the top. Even if the world doesn't believe in her. Even if it almost breaks her.”
Well I made an error here, because I read a book that’s all about tennis and I’m not massively fascinated by tennis. I can take it or leave it, tennis. If you love tennis then you might love this. If you’re not a huge tennis fan, you might find it readable but slightly lacking, due to most of it being about tennis. iPhone notes:
meh….but readable. Smallest font I have ever seen, needed microscope. Not into tennis so that probably set me back as it’s all about tennis.
Online here.
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner.
“Romy Hall is starting two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility. Her crime? The killing of her stalker.”
OK, this started off brilliantly and I was fully invested. It’s about a woman doing life for killing her stalker (in the US) and the writing is fresh and modern and really engaging. But after a while, perhaps half-way through, I had honestly lost interest as to why she had killed her stalker because it felt a bit laboured. I was gagging for a huge twist, like the narrator suddenly turning out to be an unreliable narrator, because it felt very dark and sassy like that, but no.
Writing is incredible, made me want to immediately read another Kushner, which I did, see below.
Online here.
We all want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman.
“Deeply moving yet laugh-out-loud funny, We All Want Impossible Things is a jubilant celebration of life and friendship at its imperfect, radiant, and irreverent best.”
OK so here’s an interesting thing: I loved this book, almost as much as Sandwich, same author, and in fact had I read this first then I potentially could have loved it even more than Sandwich. But something strange: the characters in this almost felt like the same characters in Sandwich! The same dialogue, same sort of relationship issues and complexities, same parent-child dynamics… I couldn’t put it down, so this is by no means a criticism, but just thought it was notable.
Maybe that’s a great thing. To have such a strong voice and style that it continues through to different stories and characters.
Anyway, would read this again in a flash. And anything Newman decides to put out. It was heart-wrenching but also strangely uplifting.
Here online.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner.
Sadie Smith – a 34-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics and bold opinions – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France.
Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical activists influenced by the beliefs of an enigmatic elder, Bruno Lacombe. But just as she is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Sadie becomes caught in the crossfire between the past and the future…
Couldn’t get into this: a rare pass! Got three chapters in. Perhaps should have given it more of a chance but I was in Ibiza and needed something gripping.
Online here.
Water by John Boyne.
The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the locals, she is Willow Hale, a solitary outsider escaping Dublin to live a hermetic existence in a small cottage, not a notorious woman on the run from her past.
But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes?
Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences. Here, on the island, Vanessa must reflect on what she did - and did not do. Only then can she discover whether she is worthy of finding peace at all.
It’s online here. Wasn’t my favourite! Raced through a load of John Boyne’s books after loving the first one:
Earth by John Boyne.
An inescapably gritty story about one young man whose direction in life takes a vastly different turn than what he expected.
I read this in one sitting. It had the same sort of - very engaging - dark twist as Fire, I think they are really clever, these elements books. I don’t think you need to read all of them for them to make sense, though they are all connected in small ways.
Online here.
You Are Here by David Nicholls.
I liked this book about two divorcees on a walking trip so much that I immediately started planning a coast-to-coast walking holiday! It’s a rom com in book form and the dialogue is really funny, I mean properly top-notch hilarious. I love walking (restyled as “hiking”, in recent years, apparently) and love reading about walking, which should be as interesting as watching paint dry but isn’t, because nothing is as satisfying as reading about someone walking in horrendous rain, with wet boots and blisters and a flask of soup, when you’re reading it from a warm bed!
Oh my God, the joy.
Anyway, it’s here online.
Carrion Crow by Heather Parry.
A powerful and spine-tingling gothic tale exploring mother-daughter relationships, sexuality, and class.
Crikey this is dark. Gothic horror at its finest, complete with woman-trapped-in-attic (classic!), Misery-level crazy mother, rotting food and disintegrating body parts. This gets GRIM. It is not for the faint-hearted.
Fantastically written, and I was left feeling very empty and depressed and horrified which I think was possibly the book’s mission statement. This will never be a Disney film, if that’s your usual benchmark.
It’s here online - get the hardback, the cover is ace.
Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson.
BLOODY LOVED THIS! Barbara Buncle has a shot at writing a novel to try and up her income (she’s unmarried, it’s the thirties) and writes a runaway success that is all about the people in her village. It causes all kinds of problems, but this is a lighthearted read that’s easy and joyful, I couldn’t put it down. Felt like fiction from a simpler time - you know when a book makes you feel physically warmed? Silly and altogether fabulous.
Find it at Persephone Books here.
Flesh by David Szalay.
My love of Flesh is well documented (lol!): I wanged on about this Booker Prize winner for weeks after finishing it. My last wanging on said this about it:
“It won the Booker Prize and for good reason; it’s sparsely written and the main character barely says anything but somehow the story is totally engaging and you can’t stop following his journey. It’s a really interesting style, I felt as though I was almost reading a film script, with my brain being forced to invent all of the setting and action.”
I have nothing more to add, other than I do love it when writing comes along that feels fresh and new and unusual.
It’s online here.
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout.
Lucy befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
I found this very striking; thinking of all of the stories of all of the lives that mostly go unrecorded, or are considered unremarkable. I suppose this follows on from what I was saying about the Kent Haruf trilogy, that most life events are only significant to that very small group of people they affect, and when you put that small slice of humanity under the microscope, their everyday lives seem colossal. Events are catastrophic. The characters’ deaths in these books signal the end of everything, we as the readers are distraught. Because, I suppose, it is the same for all of us. Our existences are tiny, almost unseeable, yet at the same time we are all that exists!
I think I need a holiday.
Online here.
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne.
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery. At least, that's what his parents make sure to remind him. Adopted as a baby, he feels more and more disconnected with the family that treats him more as a curious pet, rather than a beloved son.
So, as a young adult, Cyril decides to embark on a quest to find his place in the world. Sometimes misguided and often in the wrong place at the wrong time, life has dealt him a difficult hand but Cyril is resolute that he can change things, and find the courage to be himself.
And in doing so, his story will come across that of Catherine Goggin, a young, pregnant woman finding herself alone and isolated at only sixteen. There is a place in the world for both of them, and Cyril is determined to find it.
I loved this but I’ve been writing for about three hours now and my arse has gone to sleep, so enjoy the blurb above which tells you everything you need to know.
It’s here online.
Love Forms by Claire Adam.
Trinidad, 1980: Dawn Bishop, aged 16, leaves her home and journeys across the sea to Venezuela. There, she gives birth to a baby girl, and leaves her with nuns to be given up for adoption.
Dawn tries to carry on with her life - a move to England, a marriage, a career, two sons, a divorce - but through it all, she still thinks of the child she had in Venezuela, and of what might have been.
Then, forty years later, a woman from an internet forum gets in touch. She says that she might be Dawn's long-lost daughter, stirring up a complicated mix of feelings: could this be the person to give form to all the love and care a mother has left to offer?
I had mixed feelings on this one. I loved all of the scene-setting in Trinidad and found the scenes from Dawn’s childhood and teen years to be really engaging - I couldn’t put the book down for those parts. But something didn’t seem to quite ring true about the search for her child, over so many years - I found the present day London scenes quite frustrating and found myself wanting to skip through to them to return to the past.
But then it redeemed itself at the end with some very good mother-daughter/circle of life scenes. A mixed bag, though I did read it over Christmas and was probably not firing on all cylinders, mentally. Has anyone else read this? Or any of the books I’ve listed? Do weigh in down in the comments section!
Love Forms is here.
Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lisse Evans.
It's 1945, and Corporal Valentine Vere-Thissett, aged 23, is on his way home.
But ‘home’ is Dimperley, built in the 1500s, vast and dilapidated, up to its eaves in debt and half-full of fly-blown taxidermy and dependent relatives, the latter clinging to a way of life that has gone forever.
And worst of all - following the death of his heroic older brother - Valentine is now Sir Valentine, and is responsible for the whole bloody place. To Valentine, it’s a millstone; to Zena Baxter, who has never really had a home before being evacuated there with her small daughter, it’s a place of wonder and sentiment, somewhere that she can’t bear to leave.
But Zena has been living with a secret, and the end of the war means she has to face a reckoning of her own…
Funny, sharp and touching, Small Bomb at Dimperley is both a love story and a bittersweet portrait of an era of profound loss, and renewal.
Full blurb for you because this might have overtaken Sandwich as my book of the year. I’m having a hard time deciding. The story is so tender, so funny, so touching, it just has a bit of everything and the fact that the plot revolves around a bat-shit crazy stately home that the family decide to open as a National Trust-style tourist attraction is the cherry on the top. I love stuff like that!
This felt like Downton Abbey meets Small Pleasures (above) meets Still Life (Sarah Winman) meets Miss Buncle’s Book, such heart-rending topics told with a light touch and the sort of easy, straightforward narrative voice you can’t stop hearing.
I mean, I’m just going to say it, which is a risk: read it, you won’t regret it. It’s here online.
Notes, thoughts and own recommendations in the comments please!