A list of all-time favourite books and lockdown reads for fellow book lovers.
*This is NOT spoiler free*
1) Nutshell – Ian McEwan
Cast your mind back to summer 2019, when holidays were common and welcomed and your only issue with lying around the pool was related to flashing someone when your bikini bottoms decide to travel north…. Remember when life was easier, well that’s when I read this book.
Life is anything but easy for Trudy, who is pregnant with her soon-to-be ex-husband John’s baby. I imagine she’d define her relationship status as ‘it’s complicated’. To complicate things further, Trudy is engaging in an affair with Claude, John’s brother. Now, to be fair to them Trudy and Claude do have a lot in common -- greed, an unhealthy obsession with wine and the fact they both want John dead. And so, one anti-freeze flavoured smoothie later, John is dead and Trudy and Claude hope they will finally have everything they ever wanted including John’s beautiful Georgian town house. The only witness to their crime is our narrator, Trudy’s unborn child. Yes, that’s right, the whole story is narrated from inside the womb. But this little baba has a personality all of their own, and a particular taste for the expensive Sauvignon Blanc Trudy seems to swallow down on the reg. McEwan relies on the unspoken bond between expectant mother and unborn foetus to reveal Trudy’s guilt at the murder of her ex and her growing dislike of loverboy Claude.
I won’t spoil the ending for you but here’s one of my favourite quotes from the book:
“Trudy and I are getting drunk again and feeling better, while Claude, starting later with greater body mass, has ground to cover.”
2) We are all Completely beside Ourselves – Karen Joy Fowler
Now this book, and I cannot stress this enough, is truly amazing. It has been top of my all-time favourite books list for a long while now. If you haven’t read this yet and you plan to, perhaps skip on down to the next one… *BIG spoiler alert*
Fowler takes us on an absolute journey in this novel, jumping between the past and present as main character Rosemary attempts to uncover the secrets of her childhood and her missing sister Fern. For the first four chapters of this book, my stomach was in knots trying to figure out what on earth has happened to Fern, how a five-year-old can just disappear -- never to be spoken about again. Was Fern a figment of Rosemary’s imagination, has she died, was she abandoned by the family? It’s not until chapter five when everything Rosemary has been saying finally makes sense.
“There’s something you don’t know yet about Mary. The imaginary friend of my childhood was not a little girl. She was a little chimpanzee.
So, of course, was my sister Fern.”
And just like that, *mindblown*, a whole new world is unveiled to us. A world in which Rosemary’s psychologist parents raised her alongside a chimp as part of a misguided experiment into human nature. The real friendship and sisterly bond between Rosemary and her chimp twin cleverly plays out as Fowler guides us through the past and present, leaving the reader both fascinated and heartbroken at how this experience has effected both the sisters’ lives.
3) The Queen of Bloody Everything – Joanna Nadin
One of my lockdown reads, I devoured this novel, a treasure of a book I found lurking in a second-hand bookshop at a National Trust, somewhere we might find main character Dido. This was the first book I read for pleasure after three years of everything from Shakespeare to James Joyce on my English Literature course. It has sparked my joy for reading all over again.
This beautiful book tells the tale of Dido and her eccentric mother Edie, a gin-swilling, weed smoking artist who always manages to fall short of Dido’s expectations. Dido recounts her life to her mother as she sits beside her hospital bed.
“What I didn’t tell her, what I don’t tell her, is that it’s not a writer I want to be, but the girl in the book. That the real reason I read – the only reason I read – is because I am imagining myself on the pages, trying to narrate a life for myself more ordered and more accomplished than the one I’m living.”
This retrospective style allows us a unique insight into the relationship between Dido and her mother which often results in Dido mothering Edie through yet another heartbreak, lost job or depressive episode. Dido longs for the life she sees over the back of her garden gate -- the house of the Trevelyan’s, full of home-made dinners, present parents and her new crush Tom. As Dido falls for Tom and makes a best friend of his sister Harry, she begins to idolise everything the nuclear family represents, everything Edie is not. Raw at times, Nadin isn’t afraid to deal with everything from mental health and suicide to love and music. I've recommended this book to almost everyone I know, it's currently residing at a friend's in Bristol which is why it's missing from the photo above.
4) Normal People – Sally Rooney
If you haven’t heard of Normal People yet, then I can only assume you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months. I was worried when I started this book that it wouldn’t live up to the hype, but for me it definitely did.
The third-person narrative of Rooney’s writing allows the reader to become completely absorbed in the minds of both protagonists Marianne and Connell. The unspoken connection between the pair sees them drift and be drawn back together like magnets. What I loved most about this book was it wasn’t scared to highlight the characters’ flaws and tackle the difficult inner emotions of young people trying to find their passion and their place. They are real and honest and most importantly, so relatable. Rooney encapsulates the fear of so many ‘firsts’ from first love to first job as well as highlighting the issues young people face in their attempts to be seen as ‘normal’.
“You should go, she says. I’ll always be here. You know that.”
I wish I could describe this book better for you, but the thing about this book is it’s all in the detail, the magic of it is in every individual word, every minor movement every character makes. Every sentence is a masterpiece. The only way I can capture the magic of this book is for you to read it yourself and then you’ll feel how special it is.
5) The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
So let’s get serious for a sec. The Book Thief is an incredible book that details the horrors of WW2; recounting bombings, the beating of Jewish people on streets and the everyday fear of Nazi soldiers -- all told through the narrative voice of death. An omnipresent narrator who complains about how busy his day has been, how hard he works and promoting the inevitability of death itself.
“It’s lucky I was there.
Then again, who am I kidding? I’m in most places at least once, and in 1943 I was just about everywhere.”
The main focus of this novel, however, is nine-year-old Liesel who is separated from family when her parents are placed into a Concentration Camp. Liesel’s desire to read and learn in this complicated world perfectly executes the innocence of those caught up in WW2. Liesel is a thief, she starts with apples but slowly progresses to stealing books and finally steals the heart of the reader. This book teaches you about compassion, innocence and horror all at once, revealing the life of the average family during WW2.
6) You’re The One That I Want – Giovanna Fletcher
A proper chick-lit (sorry, I know it’s a controversial term but it’s an accurate description). Another one of my lockdown reads, this book was so comforting. The perfect escapism, it opened the door into my memories as I re-lived my small town childhood, teenage years and university life through the three main characters Maddy, Ben and Robert. The complicated relationships of these young people, attempting to figure out life, is splashed across the pages as I sat reading on my windowsill basking in that lovely sunshine we had in April.
“Maddy caught my attention on the very first day I clapped eyes on her. She looked adorable with her scruffily wild bob and red cheeks.”
The dual narrative lets us into the minds of both Maddy and Ben as they explore the world in their own little bubbles. While the inserts of a wedding speech dotted throughout the novel guides the reader forward and keeps us guessing as to who blushing bride Maddy will pick. This book was the perfect feel-good read well needed when the world was going a little bit mad.
7) Feminine Gospels – Carol-Ann Duffy
Last, but by no means least, a bit of poetry. I studied this anthology back in sixth form and love the way Duffy writes. My copy is cluttered with notes in various coloured pens I convinced myself I was using to help me learn not just because I thought it looked pretty. Duffy has a way of drawing us in, picking apart our inner thoughts and relaying them in such a beautiful way. She uses the past as a basis for commenting on the present creating Herstory rather than History.
“or to kneel, best of all, first woman there, on the Moon and gaze at the beautiful faraway earth- what I think to myself is this:”
Duffy takes us through poems of protest such as Beautiful and Sub to more personal issues as in White Writing. This anthology has something for everyone.
Let me know if you’ve read any of these or have any book recommendations for me!
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