Before the Coffee Gets Cold
By Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot
A clever and moving book (the first in a series of 3) that explores the age old question of what you would do if you could go back in time to have one final meeting or conversation with a person of your choice. Exes, friends, family members, lovers – the novel follows the busy comings and goings of a cafe in Tokyo and the table with the mysterious guest who only occasionally gets up to go to the toilet... A captivating read with a distinct style and a really lovely exploration of loss.
Emergency
By Daisy Hildyard
Language as lush and rich as the landscapes it describes. A narrator trapped inside her flat during lockdown looks back on her early life in rural Yorkshire in the 1990s. Not one for lovers of plot, but beautifully written and providing much to ponder in its exploration of the relationship between humans and the natural world.
Parable of the Sower
By Octavia E. Butler
This novel was put onto the OCR A Level Literature specification recently and, having loved Butler’s novel Kindred, I thought I’d read it. The opening was complicated and confusing – I gave up. But I decided to give it another try and, this time persisted through the opening, got thoroughly immersed in it and found it a really fascinating dystopian novel.
Our Wives Under the Sea
By Julia Armfield
A weird, romantic, vivid exploration of what happens when two people in a marriage live separate lives under the same roof. This is a short, compelling novel about a marine biologist who returns from being stranded at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine, and her wife, who has to try to understand how their relationship has been reconfigured by the experience. I found this really stuck with me after reading – some haunting imagery and mind-bending ocean facts make for an unsettling, memorable read.
The Emperor’s Babe
By Bernadine Evaristo
The heroine Zuleika is the feisty daughter of an African trader, who marries her off at the age of 11 to an already-married, middle-aged Roman businessman. Though he offers her an education and she begins to write her own poetry, she’s soon bored of life in his London villa (well, Londinium, Britannia, AD 211!) and catches the eye of a visiting Roman emperor. The novel is told in blank verse, scattered with Latin and modern British slang that makes it feel strangely familiar. A fun read!
Demon Copperhead
By Barbara Kingsolver
There’s been a lot of hype about this, but it’s deserved. Inspired by David Copperfield, this is Dickens transported to the modern Appalachians (where Kingsolver lives). The novel follows our hero and friends through an impoverished, hard-scrabble, drug-numbed experience of growing up. The writing is full of empathy and humour. The narrative voice and the sense of place are beautifully done. But there is also an undercurrent of righteous anger and ‘truth to power’ which gives the novel depth, relevance and political edge.
Close to Home
By Michael Magee
Sean’s in his first year out of uni, working in a nightclub, pulling scams at the self checkout and squatting in a mouldy bathroom-less flat. Coming back to Belfast after 3 years away he starts to see his home and his family in a new light, making new meanings of the events of his childhood and starting to understand the profound trauma that his community has suffered. Like Anna Burns’ Milkman, this really explores the psychological impact of the Troubles. A great companion piece would be the BBC doc, ‘Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland’.
The Perseverance
By Raymond Antrobus
If you were on our Big Poetry Day in May, you will have been lucky enough to hear Antrobus read from this excellent collection. I bought it on the day and have been dipping into it ever since. Plenty of poems which would work well in the classroom and which could go alongside ‘With Birds You Are Never Lonely’ – the poem of his which is included in AQA’s new poetry collection for the GCSE Literature anthology.
Courting India
By Nandini Das
This is a stunning work of non-fiction about the earliest attempts at mercantile engagement in India by the English, under James I. The central figure is Sir Thomas Roe, first ambassador to the court of Jahangir, the Mughal ruler. Das is a literary scholar with a great interest in early modern literature and history. While this book is very detailed and predominantly historical, it creates a fascinating backdrop to texts of the period and how we might read them with knowledge of the context in which they were written.
Brian
By Jeremy Cooper
Brian lives in a flat above a restaurant in Kentish Town, London, and works for Camden Council. He has no friends and no real interests. Then he becomes a member of the BFI on London’s South Bank and begins watching a film every day. Suddenly his life takes on meaning. Moving from the 1980s through to the 2000s, this is a curiously uplifting novelised slice of history, at one and the same time an exploration of the kind of life rarely seen in novels and a work of film criticism.
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency
By Olivia Laing
Laing’s collected essays about art and culture. Insightful, poignant, informative – and superbly written.
The New Moon’s Arms
By Nalo Hopkinson
Calamity (the name she chose for herself) is dealing with two fairly typical life events for a middle-aged woman – the death of her father and the menopause. However, her hot flushes manifest things: first objects from the past and then a small boy. Calamity’s discovery of her own personal history takes place in the context of Caribbean history, myth and culture.
Good Pop, Bad Pop: an Inventory
By Jarvis Cocker
From a treasured vintage jar of Marmite to a school exercise book full of Cocker’s first plans for a band called ‘Pulp’, this is a joyful rummage through one man’s attic/life which will, if nothing else, make you feel better about any hoarding tendencies you might have.
Man-eating Typewriter
By Richard Milward
An absolutely bonkers book. Written entirely in Polari, it tracks protagonist Raymond Novak’s mad-cap life, counting down the 276 days to his ‘fantabulosa’ plan to commit a crime that will revolt the world. A wonderful, linguistically mind-blowing, reimagining of countercultural life that encompasses occupied Paris, life on a cruise-liner, the Tangiers of the Beatnik generation and Swinging London in the 1960s.
We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958
By Fintan O’Toole
This is a bit of a commitment at 600+ pages, but it’s a pacy, engrossing read about 20th-century Ireland defining itself as a nation viewed through key moments in Fintan O’Toole’s own life. His focus is on exposing the many contradictions in the story Ireland tells about itself, and manages to combine damning political commentary and fond personal memoir. Really enjoyable.
Love After Love
By Ingrid Persaud
Set between Trinidad and New York, this is the story of an unconventional family, a trio trying to reconcile their histories with their present, and understand where and with whom they belong. Loveable characters and Trinidadian vernacular bring the story to life – I raced through it.
The Wife of Bath – a Biography
By Marion Turner
There are lots of historical/literary books being published at the moment. This one is an exceptionally enjoyable, fascinating and brilliantly narrated account of Chaucer’s Wife, telling her story in the context of real medieval women, before going on to look at how she was received in later periods, including our own period, with all the contemporary adaptations her character and story have spawned. For Chaucer fans, it’s a must-read but for a general audience too!
The Perfect Golden Circle
By Benjamin Myers
Fictional account of two misfit friends at the forefront of the crop circle phenomenon. Set in 1989, it really captures that particular time in an uplifting tale of male friendship and artistic endeavour.
The Things That We Lost
By Jyoti Patel
From Stormzy’s publishing house, #Merky Books, The Things that we Lost follows Nik, whose dad died when he was little and whose grandfather passes away during his last summer at home, before leaving London for a prestigious university. Consumed by grief and suddenly othered by the students and locals of his new home town, he spirals into depression. Meanwhile his mum Avani, still damaged by the loss of Nik’s dad years before, is powerless to help. There’s so much warmth and pain (and chai) in this book and the characters are so realistic and beautifully drawn; it’s an outstanding debut novel. Good find, Stormzy!
Really Good, Actually
By Monica Heisey
This is a fun and easy to read novel about a young woman finding joy again after an unexpected and premature divorce aged 28. Both laugh out loud funny and sharp, Monica Heisey captures the sometimes too relatable aspects of modern life, love and friendship. Would recommend in your sunglasses with a cocktail in the garden...
Kick the Latch
By Kathryn Scanlan
It’s hard to work out exactly why this book works, but it does. The writer transcribed interviews with a woman working in the male-dominated world of horse-racing; only she didn’t use the transcriptions directly for her novel, but adapted them in an unspecified way. The result is a wonderfully distinctive narrative voice that recounts a fascinating, often brutal, life in short vignettes.
Trespasses
By Louise Kennedy
Trespasses is very much in the Irish tradition of writing the politics of place in domestic settings and quotidian experience. Sectarianism is depicted in parallel experiences of language, topography and history but inevitably there are moments of trespass, and the novel gets its powerful momentum from how unforgiving these are in 1970s Belfast.
Booth
By Karen Joy Fowler
I felt about Booth as I felt about ‘The Five’ by Hallie Rubenhold – historical fiction done well. This is a story about John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. But really it’s a story about the fascinating Booth family including his immensely talented alcoholic father Junius – a tragedian Shakespearean actor, his mother, and his siblings. The siblings (there were 10 in all) include his oldest sister Rosalie, a hunchbacked girl who is forced to bear the responsibility for all the children who follow, his tortured older brother Edwin – a fine Shakespearian actor in his own right, and Asia, his high-spirited and charismatic older sister. The characters are imaginatively brought to life and, despite the fact we know what’s going to happen, it’s difficult to put down.
Blonde Roots
By Bernadine Evaristo
One character’s story of living through the obscenity of the transatlantic slave trade… but with almost everything in reverse. In Evaristo’s language the whytes are the slaves and the blaks are the masters and slave-owners. We follow Doris Scagglethorpe, the daughter of a cabbage farmer, as she makes her escape. It’s witty, vibrant, illuminating, angry and provocative.
For your students:
Unraveller
By Francis Hardinge
Deliciously dark fantasy set in a world where curses come true and only one boy can unravel them. Great writing. Plenty of plot twists. Quite a long read but plenty of twists to keep you going.
The Door of No Return
By Kwame Alexander
A verse novel set in the 1860s in what is now Ghana, steeped in West African traditions, story telling and culture. The first of a trilogy centred on 11 year old Kofi and his family and it ends just as Kofi is torn from his home.
The State of Grace
By Rachel Lucas
Compelling romance/coming of age story. Grace is relatable to any teenager, but also gives an insight into what it’s like to live with autism.
Mark My Words: The Truth Is There in Black and White
By Muhammad Khan
Two very different schools are forced to merge. Aspiring journalist, Dua Iqbal, sets up a digital magazine to give voice to the kinds of students and stories that aren’t represented in the official school mag and finds her first big scoop.
Chomp
By Carl Hiassen
Both tense and hilarious, great for animal lovers, a glimpse behind the scenes of a terrible reality show, and a chance for a relatable shy teen to have his moment. Great fun and well-written.
The Girl From the Sea
By Molly Knox Ostertag
Unusual mix of selkie mythology and real world issues (a family splitting up, coming out). A sweet graphic novel in which text and artwork interweave and juxtapose. LGBTQ+ rep.
Jon for Short
By Malorie Blackman, illustrated by Vladimir Stankovic
Each time Jon wakes in hospital another part of him is missing! One for horror fans (I found it quite scary as an adult!) with plenty of chills and a great twist. A Barrington Stoke quick read. Reading age 7. Interest age 13+.
Stitched Up
By Steve Cole
Haven’t seen a children’s book about the sweatshops behind the garment industry. An interesting but accessible read. A Barrington Stoke quick read aimed at yr7 reluctant readers. Reading age 8. Interest age 11+.
Grave Matter
By Juno Dawson
Great to see this popular author is writing for Barrington Stoke. A Gothic tale of grief and dark magic. A Barrington Stoke quick read. Reading age 8. Interest age 13+.
Image by Michael Luenen (Pixabay).
