Which Books Should You Be Buying This Week?
Your round-up of the newspapers' book reviews March 4/5
It’s a fiction feast this week, predominately dominated by women, though I have managed to squeeze a bloke in, but before I turn to the newspapers’ book reviews, I simply must tell you about a book I couldn’t put down this weekend.
How I’M A FAN is a debut novel, I do not know. It is brilliant, insightful, heartbreaking, obsessive and destructive and it is my novel of the year so far. It was actually published last year by an indie publisher, but it caught the attention of so many in the trade that it was picked up by Granta et voila, here we are with this incredible cover.
The novel follows the thoughts of our unnamed protagonist who is in a highly toxic relationship with a man of some fame, though we don’t altogether know precisely what he is famous for, but does it really matter? What this book does is perfectly encapsulates the madness of deferring all your life decisions to a man who is just wasting your time in pursuit of stroking his own ego. What do the numerous women in his life matter compared to that? The racing thoughts and actions of our protagonist spin out of control, making the man who is causing all this chaos look completely sane, which can often be the case (she says from bitter experience).
“He is constantly failing in comparison to this person I know he could be. If he could only stop being exactly who he is, we could be happy,” contemplates the protagonist, as many lovers beforehand have contemplated.
There are many, many brilliant lines peppered throughout this novel that explore the themes of privilege – sexual, societal, racial. It is so incisively observed, so well written, I could not put it down and The Observer agreed with me, declaring it their debut novel of the year when they reviewed it in 2022, describing it as a ‘fast, fizzing cherry bomb of a debut’ which their reviewer couldn’t put down either. I urge you to buy I’M A FAN, and you can do so here.
Our next book is a sneaky little entry as it was not strictly reviewed by the newspapers this weekend, but you might have seen it mentioned in a few places as the TV adaptation is out on Amazon Prime. This novel is based on a Fleetwood Mac-type band and all it’s ups and downs. On publication DAISY JONES AND THE SIX was a Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller with the former declaring it ‘pitch perfect’.
The book’s author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, is also the author of THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO, another Sunday Times Bestseller and also to be made into a Netflix film, or, as it’s known in the trade among authors green with envy ‘time-to-pay-your-mortgage-off’ day.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is an author with considerable talent, and if you haven’t checked her out yet, now might just be the time and you can start with these two paperbacks. Buy THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO and DAISY JONES AND THE SIX.
Speeding right up to date now with a new release this week from Margaret Atwood. I found a review of her short story collection, OLD BABES IN THE WOOD, in The Guardian at the weekend quite an emotional read.
The book is dedicated to Atwood’s partner, Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019, and many of the stories concern a return to her beloved characters Nell and Tig and their ‘long and loving marriage, and what comes after.’
“Many of these stories dwell wanly on how love flourishes, as time goes on, amid the most crosspatch and cussed of human interactions,” writes Sam Leith reviewing, who also comments on Atwood’s mastery of the short form.
These stories, as you would expect from Atwood, are weird and wonderful, there is a “many-tentacled alien create, employed by the entertainment department of an ‘intergalactic crisis aid-package’, telling a collection of quarantined humans a fairy story.” There is a snail’s dismay as if finds itself reincarnated into a human body. And there is heart, tons of it by all accounts.
“Most of the characters in Margaret Atwood’s latest book are old, or heading that way, and their stories unwrap what TS Eliot called the gifts reserved for age. There are chips and fragments of lives, full of sass and sadness.”
You can buy OLD BABES IN THE WOOD here.
I promised you I’d made room for a bloke among all these women, and here he is, The Reverend Richard Coles, national treasure, former Communard and Sunday Times Bestseller himself has a novel out in paperback.
The Telegraph declared MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG as ‘no vanity project’ unlike a lot of celebrity authors. “With feline wit and cracking plotting, he proves the C of E’s loss is literature’s gain.”
The plot unravels after a community is left divided after news of the installation of a new loo in the church, as lines are drawn old secrets are unearthed and a killer is soon at loose among this once sleepy community.
The Express described this novel as a ‘cunning whodunnit’. It sounds to me like this would be perfect for fans of Richard Osman while they await his next novel out in the Autumn. (Oh, hello again Mothers Day!)
You can buy MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG here.
A couple of reviews of other paperbacks out this week now, and both of them were break-out books in hardback in 2022. First up is Bonnie Garmus’ LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY. Saturday’s Times had this to say about it this weekend:
“This emotional page-turner – by a first-time author in her mid-sixties – has been the year’s runaway hit. Rightly so. It’s singular protagonist is the scientist Elizabeth Zott. In early 1960s California, after workplace misogyny stalls her research career, Zott presents a television cookery show and sparks a domestic revolution. The former copywriter Bonnie Garmus wrote her first chapter after a male colleague passed off her ideas as his own. Brie Larson will star in the Apple TV+ screen version.”
You can buy LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY here.
And finally, another break-out book that The Times describes as ‘one of the funniest novels of 2022’, it’s I’M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY.
“This is the story of a dysfunctional middle-class family: stuffy, repressed Michael; twins, anxious Alice and trouble-making Hanna; and their nightmarish, narcissistic mother, who can’t stop meddling in their lives. As well as the snort-worthy comedy set pieces (see: the party where a woman chases her awful boyfriend through the window and someone’s pet ferret escapes), it’s gently serious and very touching. You love them all by the end.”
Good Housekeeping magazine insisted ‘if you loved Sorrow and Bliss, you’ll love this.’
You can buy I’M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY here.
There you go, seven brilliant books, all of them bar one paperbacks, I really do spoil you for choice.
Tomorrow I’ve got some exciting news for you, an exclusive for The Book Room that you can get nowhere else. Keep your eyes on your inboxes in the morning for details, book lovers!
Until then…
• Thank you to all who have been ordering from my online bookshop in the last week. Remember you can still support THE BOOK ROOM while I am waiting to open my physical store again by shopping online, in fact now I would appreciate the support more than ever. I can order ANY BOOK for you and you will receive it within 48 hours. It has never been a more important time to support both writers and independents bookshops, and by buying from me, you are doing both and contributing to a vital ecosystem.