Author Archive: Rebecca Foster

May Releases, Part II (Fiction): Le Blevennec, Lynch, Puchner, Stanley, Ullmann, and Wald

By Rebecca Foster on June 1, 2025 | 19 Comments

A cornucopia of May novels, ranging from novella to doorstopper and from Montana to Tunisia; less of a spread in time: only the 1980s to now. Just a paragraph on each to keep things simple. I’ll catch up soon with May nonfiction and poetry releases I read.

Friends and Lovers by Nolwenn Le Blevennec (2023; 2025)

[Translated from French by Madeleine Rogers]

Armelle, Rim, and Anna are best friends – the first two since childhood. They formed a trio a decade or so ago when they worked on the same magazine. Now in their mid-thirties, partnered and with children, they’re all gripped by a sexual “great awakening” and long to escape Paris and their domestic commitments – “we went through it, this mutiny, like three sisters,” poised to blow up the “perfectly executed choreography of work, relationships, children”. The friends travel to Tunisia together in December 2014, then several years later take a completely different holiday: a disaster-prone stay in a lighthouse-keeper’s cottage on an island off the coast of Brittany. They used to tolerate each other’s foibles and infidelities, but now resentment has sprouted up, especially as Armelle (the narrator) is writing a screenplay about female friendship that’s clearly inspired by Rim and Anna. Armelle is relatably neurotic (a hilarious French blurb for the author’s previous novel is not wrong: “Woody Allen meets Annie Ernaux”) and this is wise about intimacy and duplicity, yet I never felt invested in any of the three women or sufficiently knowledgeable about their lives.

With thanks to Peirene Press for the free copy for review.

A Family Matter by Claire Lynch

“The fluke of being born at a slightly different time, or in a slightly different place, all that might gift you or cost you.” At events for Small, Lynch’s terrific memoir about how she and her wife had children, women would speak up about how different their experience had been. Lesbians born just 10 or 20 years earlier didn’t have the same options. Often, they were in heterosexual marriages because that’s all they knew to do; certainly the only way they thought they could become mothers. In her research into divorce cases in the UK in the 1980s, Lynch learned that 90% of lesbian mothers lost custody of their children. Her aim with this earnest, delicate debut novel, which bounces between 2022 and 1982, is to imagine such a situation through close portraits of Heron, an ageing man with terminal cancer; his daughter, Maggie, who in her early forties bears responsibility for him and her own children; and Dawn, who loved Maggie desperately but felt when she met Hazel that she was “alive at last, at twenty-three.” How heartbreaking that Maggie knew only that her mother abandoned her when she was little; not until she comes across legal documents and newspaper clippings does she understand the circumstances. Lynch made the wise decision to invite sympathy for Heron from the start, so he doesn’t become the easy villain of the piece. Her compassion, and thus ours, is equal for all three characters. This confident, tender story of changing mores and steadfast love is the new Carol for our times. (Such a lovely but low-key novel was liable to make few ripples, so I’m delighted for Lynch that the U.S. release got a Read with Jenna endorsement.)

With thanks to Chatto & Windus (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.

Dream State by Eric Puchner

If it starts and ends with a wedding, it must be a comedy. If much of the in between is marked by heartbreak, betrayal, failure, and loss, it must be a tragedy. If it stretches towards 2050 and imagines a Western USA smothered in smoke from near-constant forest fires, it must be an environmental dystopian. Somehow, this novel is all three. The first 163 pages are pure delight: a glistening romantic comedy about the chaos surrounding Charlie and Cece’s wedding at his family’s Montana lake house in the summer of 2004. First half the wedding party falls ill with norovirus, then Charlie’s best friend, Garrett (who’s also the officiant), falls in love with the bride. Do I sound shallow if I admit this was the section I enjoyed the most? The rest of this Oprah’s Book Club doorstopper examines the fallout of this uneasy love triangle. Charlie is an anaesthesiologist, Cece a bookstore owner, and Garrett a wolverine researcher in Glacier National Park, which is steadily losing its wolverines and its glaciers. The next generation comes of age in a diminished world, turning to acting or addiction. There are still plenty of lighter moments: funny set-pieces, warm family interactions, private jokes and quirky descriptions. But this feels like an appropriately grown-up vision of idealism ceding to a reality we all must face. I struggled with a lack of engagement with the children, but loved Puchner’s writing so much on the sentence level that I will certainly seek out more of his work. Imagine this as a cross between Jonathan Franzen and Maggie Shipstead.

With thanks to Sceptre (Hodder) for the proof copy for review.

Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley

Coralie is nearing 30 when her ad agency job transfers her from Australia to London in 2013. Within a few pages, she meets Adam when she rescues his four-year-old, Zora, from a lake. That Adam and Coralie will be together is never really in question. But over the next decade of personal and political events, we wonder whether they have staying power – and whether Coralie, a would-be writer, will lose herself in soul-destroying work and motherhood. Adam’s job as a political journalist and biographer means close coverage of each UK election and referendum. As I’ve thought about some recent Jonathan Coe novels: These events were so depressing to live through, who would want to relive them through fiction? I also found this overlong and drowning in exclamation points. Still, it’s so likable, what with Coralie’s love of literature (the title is from The Group) and adjustment to expat life without her mother; and secondary characters such as Coralie’s brother Daniel and his husband, Adam’s prickly mother and her wife, and the mums Coralie meets through NCT classes. Best of all, though, is her relationship with Zora. This falls solidly between literary fiction and popular/women’s fiction. Given that I was expecting a lighter romance-led read, it surprised me with its depth. It may well be for you if you’re a fan of Meg Mason and David Nicholls.

With thanks to Hutchinson Heinemann for the proof copy for review.

Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullmann (2021; 2025)

[Translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken]

Ullmann is the daughter of actress Liv Ullmann and film director Ingmar Bergman. That pedigree perhaps accounts for why she got the opportunity to travel to Paris in the winter of 1983 to model for a renowned photographer. She was 16 at the time and spent the whole trip disoriented: cold, hungry, lost. Unable to retrace the way to her hotel and wearing a blue coat and red hat, she went to the only address she knew – that of the photographer, K, who was in his mid-forties. Their sexual relationship is short-lived and unsurprising, at least in these days of #MeToo revelations. Its specifics would barely fill a page, yet the novel loops around and through the affair for more than 250. Ullmann mostly pulls this off thanks to the language of retrospection. She splits herself both psychically and chronologically. There’s a “you” she keeps addressing, a childhood imaginary friend who morphs into a critical voice of conscience and then the self dissociated from trauma. And there’s the 55-year-old writer looking back with empathy yet still suffering the effects. The repetition made this something of a sombre slog, though. It slots into a feminist autofiction tradition but is not among my favourite examples.

With thanks to Hamish Hamilton (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.

The Bayrose Files by Diane Wald

In the 1980s, Boston journalist Violet Maris infiltrates the Provincetown Home for Artists and Writers, intending to write a juicy insider’s exposé of what goes on at this artists’ colony. But to get there she has to commit a deception. Her gay friend Spencer Bayrose has a whole sheaf of unpublished short stories drawing on his Louisiana upbringing, and he offers to let her submit them as her own work to get a place at PHAW. Here Violet finds eccentrics aplenty, and even romance, but when news comes that Spence has AIDS, she has to decide how far she’ll go for a story and what she owes her friend. At barely over 100 pages, this feels more like a long short story, one with a promising setting and a sound plot arc, but not enough time to get to know or particularly care about the characters. I was reminded of books I’ve read by Julia Glass and Sara Maitland. It’s offbeat and good-natured but not top tier.

Published by Regal House Publishing. With thanks to publicist Jackie Karneth of Books Forward for the advanced e-copy for review.

A Family Matter was the best of the bunch for me, followed closely by Dream State.

Which of these do you fancy reading?

Posted in: Doorstopper of the Month, Fiction Reviews | Tagged: addiction, AIDS, autofiction, Books Forward, Brexit, Brittany, Chatto & Windus, Claire Lynch, custody, David Nicholls, Diane Wald, doorstoppers, dystopian, Eric Puchner, female friendship, fire, French, French literature, glaciers, Hamish Hamilton, Hutchinson Heinemann, Ingmar Bergman, Jessica Stanley, Jonathan Coe, Jonathan Franzen, Julia Glass, lesbian, Linn Ullmann, Liv Ullmann, Madeleine Rogers, Maggie Shipstead, Martin Aitken, Mary McCarthy, Massachusetts, Meg Mason, Montana, motherhood, Nolwenn Le Blevennec, Norway, Norwegian literature, novella, Oprah’s Book Club, Paris, Patricia Highsmith, Peirene Press, politics, Provincetown, Read with Jenna, Regal House Publishing, Sara Maitland, Sceptre, trauma, Tunisia, UK politics, wedding, wolverines

May Graphic Novels by Alison Bechdel, Peter Kuper & Craig Thompson

By Rebecca Foster on May 30, 2025 | 24 Comments

May has been chock-full of new releases for me! For this first batch of reviews, I’m featuring three fantastic graphic novels that have made it onto my Best of 2025 (so far) list. I don’t read graphic books as often as I’d like to – my library tends to major on superhero comics and manga, which aren’t my cup of tea – but I sometimes get a chance to access them for paid review purposes. (The first two below are ones I was sent for potential Shelf Awareness reviews, but I missed the deadlines.) Reading these took me back to the early 2010s when I worked for a university library in South London and would walk to Lambeth Library on my lunch breaks to borrow huge piles of books, mostly taking advantage of their excellent graphic novel selection. That was where my education and fascination began.

Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel

I’ve read all but one of Bechdel’s works now. Fun Home was among the first graphic books I read and is a great choice if you’re new to this form of storytelling. It’s a family memoir about her father’s funeral home business and closeted lifestyle, which emerged shortly after her own coming-out – and shortly before his accidental death. In Spent, Alison and her handy wife Holly live on a Vermont pygmy goat farm. Alison has writer’s block and is struggling financially despite her famous memoir about her taxidermist father having been made into a successful TV series, Death & Taxidermy. Mostly, she’s consumed with anxiety about the state of the world, what with the ongoing pandemic, her sister’s right-wing opinions, and the litany of awful headlines. “Who can draw when the world is burning?” she exclaims.

Then Alison has an idea for a book – or maybe a reality TV series – called $UM that will wean people off of capitalism. That creative journey is mirrored in Spent, which is composed of 12 “episodes” titled after Marxist terminology. Through Alison’s ageing hippie friends and their kids, Bechdel showcases alternative ways of living: a commune, a throuple, nonbinary identity, unpaid internships, Just Stop Oil demos, and the influencer lifestyle versus rejection of technology. It’s (auto)fiction exaggerated to the brink of absurdity, with details changed enough to mock but not enough to hide (e.g., she’s published by “Megalopub,” the hardware store is “Home Despot,” her show airs on “Schmamazon”).

Tiny details in the drawings reward close attention, such as Alison and Holly’s five cats’ antics during their morning routine, and a stuffed moose head rolling its eyes. It’s the funniest I can remember Bechdel being, with much broad humour derived from the outrageous screen mangling of her book – cannibalism, volcanoes and dragons come out of nowhere – and her middle-class friends’ hand-wringing over their liberal credentials. Even the throwaway phrases are hilarious. It’s a gleeful and zeitgeist-y satire, yet draws to a touching close as Alison has the epiphany that she can’t fix everything herself so must simply do what she can, “with a little help from her annoying, tender-hearted, and utterly luminous friends.”

Accessed as an e-book from Mariner Books. Published in the UK by Jonathan Cape (Penguin).

Insectopolis: A Natural History by Peter Kuper

Nearly a decade ago, I reviewed Peter Kuper’s Ruins, which features monarch migration and has as protagonist a laid-off Natural History Museum entomologist. Here insects have even more of a starring role. The E. O. Wilson epigraph sets the stage: “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” We follow an African American brother-and-sister pair, the one dubious and the other eager, as they walk downtown to the New York Public Library. The sister, who holds a PhD in entomology, promises that its exhibition on insects is going to be amazing. But just before they reach the building, a red alert flashes up on every smartphone and sirens start blaring. A week later, the city is a ruin of overturned cabs and debris. Only insects remain and, group by group, they guide readers through the empty exhibit, interacting within and across species.

It’s a sly blend of science, history, stories and silliness. I loved the scenes of mosquitoes and ants railing against how they’ve been depicted as villainous, and dignified dung beetles resisting scatological jokes and standing up for their importance in ecosystems. There are interesting interludes about insects in literature (not just Kafka and Nabokov, but the Japanese graphic novel The Book of Human Insects by Osamu Tezuka), and unsung heroines of entomology get their moment in the sun. The pages in which Margaret Collins, an African American termite researcher in the 1950s, and Rachel Carson appear to a dragonfly as ghosts and tell their stories of being dismissed by male researchers were among my favourites. Informative and entertaining at once; what could be better? Welcome our insect overlords!

Accessed as an e-book from W. W. Norton & Company.

Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson

I’d read several of Thompson’s works and especially enjoyed his previous graphic memoir, Blankets, about his first love and loss of faith. When I read this blurb, I worried the niche subject couldn’t possibly sustain my attention for nearly 450 pages. But I was wrong; this is a vital book about everything, by way of ginseng. It begins with childhood summers working on American ginseng farms with his siblings in Marathon, Wisconsin. Theirs was a blue collar and highly religious family, but Thompson and his little brother Phil were allowed to spend their earnings from the back-breaking labour of weeding and picking rocks as they pleased. Each hour, each dollar, meant a new comic from the pharmacy. “Comics helped me survive my childhood. But what will help me survive my adulthood?” Thompson asks.

Together with Phil, he travels first to Midwest ginseng farms and festivals and then through China and Korea to learn about the plant’s history, cultivation practices, lore, and medicinal uses. As he meets producers – including a Hmong man whose early life mirrors his own – he feels sheepish about how he makes a living: “I carry this working-class guilt – what I do isn’t real work.” When his livelihood is threatened by worsening autoimmune conditions, he tries everything from acupuncture to psychotherapy to save his hands and his creativity.

This chunky book has an appealing earth-tones palette and shifts smoothly between locations and styles, memories and research. When interviewing growers and Chinese medicine practitioners, the depictions are almost photorealistic, but there are also superhero pastiche panels and a cute ginseng mascot who pops up throughout the book. Like Spent, this pulls in class and economic issues in a lighthearted way and also explores its own composition process.

The story of ginseng is often sobering, involving the exploitation of immigrants (in the Notes, Thompson regrets that he was unable to speak with any of the Mexican migrant workers on whom the American ginseng harvest now depends), soil degradation, and pesticide pollution. The roots of the title are both literal and symbolic of the family story that unfolds in parallel. Both strands are captivating, but especially the autobiographical material: Thompson’s relationship with Phil, his new understanding but ongoing frustration with his parents, and the way all three siblings exhibit the damage of their upbringing – Phil’s marriage is crumbling; their sister Sarah, who has moved 26 times as an adult, wonders what she’s running from. A conversation with a Chinese herbal pharmacist gets to the heart of the matter: “I learned home is not WHERE I am. Home is HOW I am.”

Both expansive and intimate, this is a surprising gem from one of the best long-form graphic storytellers out there.

With thanks to Faber for the free copy for review. Published in the USA by Pantheon (Penguin).

Posted in: Doorstopper of the Month, Fiction Reviews, Nonfiction Reviews | Tagged: acupuncture, Alison Bechdel, autofiction, autoimmune diseases, China, Craig Thompson, doorstoppers, dystopian, E.O. Wilson, Faber, family memoirs, farming, Franz Kafka, ginseng, graphic memoirs, graphic novels, history, history of science, insects, Karl Marx, Margaret Collins, Marxism, medicine, metafiction, New York City, Osamu Tezuka, Peter Kuper, popular science, Rachel Carson, satire, science, South Korea, Vermont, Vladimir Nabokov, Wisconsin

Spring Reading: Simon Barnes, Jackie Kay, and Michael Morpurgo

By Rebecca Foster on May 28, 2025 | 14 Comments

With all the roses in full bloom and the swifts back and nesting in the corner of our eaves, it’s been feeling more like summer than high spring as we approach the end of May. I didn’t amass many spring-themed books this year, but managed to piece together the below trio of library books. They feel quite England- (and Scotland-) specific; I wonder how well these authors are known outside the UK. All:

May Day by Jackie Kay (2024)

May Day is a traditional celebration for the first day of May, but it’s also a distress signal – as the megaphone and stark font on the cover reflect. Aptly, there are joyful verses as well as calls to arms here. Kay devotes poems to several of her role models, such as Harry Belafonte, Paul Robeson, Peggy Seeger and Nina Simone. But the real heroes of the book are her late parents, who were very politically active, standing up for workers’ rights and socialist values. Kay followed in their footsteps as a staunch attendee of protests. Her mother’s death during the Covid pandemic looms large. There is a touching triptych set on Mother’s Day in three consecutive years; even though her mum is gone for the last two, Kay still talks to her. Certain birds and songs will always remind her of her mum, and “Grief as Protest” links past and future. The bereavement theme resonated with me, but much of the rest made no mark (especially not the poems in dialect) and I don’t find much to admire poetically. I love Kay’s memoir, Red Dust Road, which has been among our most popular book club reads so far, but I’ve not particularly warmed to her poetry despite having read four collections now.

Spring: The Story of a Season by Michael Morpurgo (2025)

I’d not read Morpurgo before. He’s known primarily as a children’s author; if you’ve heard of one of his works, it will likely be War Horse, which became a play and then a film. This is a small hardback, scarcely 150 pages and with not many words to a page, plus woodcut illustrations interspersed. As revered English nature authors such as John Lewis-Stempel and Richard Mabey have also done, he depicts a typical season through a diary of several months of life on his land. For nearly 50 years, his Devon farm has hosted the Farms for City Children charity he founded. He believes urban living cuts people off from the rhythm of the seasons and from nature generally; “For so many reasons, for our wellbeing, for the planet, we need to revive that connection.” Now in his eighties, he lives with his wife in a small cottage and leaves much of the day-to-day work like lambing to others. But he still loves observing farm tasks and spotting wildlife (notably, an otter and a kingfisher) on his walks. This is a pleasant but inconsequential book. I most appreciated how it captures the feeling of seasonal anticipation – wondering when the weather will turn, when that first swallow will return.

And a skim:

Spring Is the Only Season: How It Works, What It Does, and Why It Matters by Simon Barnes (2025)

This 400+-page tome has an impressive scope. Like Mark Cocker does in One Midsummer’s Day, Barnes retreats all the way back to the Big Bang and then slowly zooms in, via the evolution of plants and the phenology of birds and insects. He also covers every possible topic you could think of relating to spring: religious festivals, mythology, literature, art, farming, and so on. Had I never read another book on spring, perhaps I would find this compendium satisfying, but it is rather meandering and too many of its points of reference are familiar. Moreover, the overall project is too similar to Tim Dee’s extraordinary Greenery. Alas, Barnes isn’t half the writer Dee is, so this ends up being a rather workmanlike survey. I most enjoyed the chapter-ending “Signs of Spring” lists from his Norfolk home. These more than illustrate how seasonality has gone awry due to climate change; a whole chapter wasn’t necessary to spell it out.

Posted in: Nonfiction Reviews, Poetry Reviews | Tagged: COVID-19, Devon, grief, Jackie Kay, John Lewis-Stempel, Mark Cocker, nature books, nature writing, Peggy Seeger, poetry, protests, Richard Mabey, Simon Barnes, spring, Tim Dee

Love Your Library, May 2025

By Rebecca Foster on May 26, 2025 | 21 Comments

Thanks to Eleanor and Skai for posting about their recent library reading! Marina Sofia also recently posted about public libraries in China.

My library had a display coinciding with Dying Matters Awareness Week (5–11 May), an initiative of Hospice UK. I read a lot around illness, death and dying and am pleased to see books on these topics featured. I hadn’t heard of this weeklong celebration before, but I hope that it and the library display will get people talking.

I appreciated this quote from Women by Chloe Caldwell, whose narrator works in a library: “Books are like doctors and I am lucky to have unlimited access to them during this time. A perk of the library.” Bibliotherapy works!

My library use over the last month:

(links are to books not already reviewed on the blog)

READ

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (for book club)
Women by Chloe Caldwell
All Fours by Miranda July
The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please
Stoner by John Williams (a reread for book club)

SKIMMED

Spring Is the Only Season: How It Works, What It Does and Why It Matters by Simon Barnes

CURRENTLY READING

Good Girl by Aria Aber
Bellies by Nicola Dinan
May Day by Jackie Kay
Spring: The Story of a Season by Michael Morpurgo
The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson & Matt Eversmann

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier
Day by Michael Cunningham
Looking After: A Portrait of My Autistic Brother by Caroline Elton
Rebel Bodies: A Guide to the Gender Health Gap Revolution by Sarah Graham
Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working for You by Maisie Hill
Self-Portrait with Family by Amaan Hyder
Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo
The Forgotten Sense: The Nose and the Perception of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
Horse by Rushika Wick
Top Doll by Karen McCarthy Woolf

ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

The Most by Jessica Anthony
Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion by Lamorna Ash
The Interpretation of Cats: And Their Owners by Claude Béata; translated by David Watson
Fulfillment by Lee Cole
A Sharp Scratch by Heather Darwent
I Think I Like Girls by Rosie Day
The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
To the Edge of the Sea: Schooldays of a Crofter’s Child by Christina Hall
The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince
The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
Enchanted Ground: Growing Roots in a Broken World by Steven Lovatt
Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie
Wife by Charlotte Mendelson
Ripeness by Sarah Moss
The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far by Suzanne O’Sullivan
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Three Weeks in July by Adam Wishart & James Nally

The top four books are from the Jhalak Poetry Prize shortlist.

RETURNED UNFINISHED

The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Space and Deep Time by Helen Gordon – I enjoyed her previous book well enough, but found I wasn’t interested enough in the subject matter here.

RETURNED UNREAD

I Am Not a Tourist by Daisy J. Hung – The writing style was not enticing.
Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb – This was requested off of me but I will get it out another time.

What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?

Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.

Posted in: Love Your Library | Tagged: Bibliotherapy, Chloé Caldwell, death, dying, Dying Matters Awareness Week, hospice, Hospice UK, libraries, library books, Library Checkout, Love Your Library

The 2025 McKitterick Prize Shortlist

By Rebecca Foster on May 21, 2025 | 18 Comments

For the fourth year in a row, I’ve been involved in judging the McKitterick Prize (for a first novel, published or unpublished, by a writer over 40). However, after three years of helping to assess the unpublished manuscripts, this was my first time as a judge for the published submissions. It has been a great experience! Today the shortlists for all of the 2025 Society of Authors Awards have been announced, so I can share our finalists below.

My three fellow judges and I were all asked for 50-word blurbs about each book and about the shortlist as a whole. I’m honoured that my overall blurb was chosen to accompany the McKitterick rundown in the press release:

Each of these six novels has a fully realized style. So confident and inviting are they that it’s hard to believe they are debuts. With nuanced characters and authentic settings and dilemmas, they engage the mind and delight the emotions. I will be following these authors’ careers with keen interest.

Notably, Tom Newlands’s Only Here, Only Now is a finalist for two of the prizes this year, the other being the ACDI Literary Prize, which is awarded to “a disabled or chronically ill writer, for an outstanding novel containing a disabled or chronically ill character or characters.” (A worthy successor to the Barbellion Prize, which, unfortunately, only ran for three years, 2020–22.) His teenage protagonist grows up in working-class Scotland in the 1990s with undiagnosed ADHD.

The winner and runner-up will be announced in advance of the SoA Awards ceremony in London on 18 June. In previous years, I have stayed home and watched the livestream, but this year I’ll attend in person and hope to meet Southwark Cathedral’s resident cat, Hodge!

Have you read anything from the McKitterick shortlist, or one of the other prize lists?

Posted in: Literary Prizes | Tagged: ACDI Literary Prize, ADHD, Alan Murrin, debut novels, Ewan Gass, Lara Haworth, Lauren Elkin, McKitterick Prize, prize judging, Susie Dent, Tom Newlands

20 Books of Summer 2025 Plans

By Rebecca Foster on May 12, 2025 | 35 Comments

It’s my eighth year participating in the 20 Books of Summer challenge, this year co-hosted by Annabel and Emma after Cathy stepped down. #20BooksofSummer2025 starts on 1 June and runs through 31 August. In some previous years I have chosen a theme, even something as simple as “books by women.” Last year I combined two criteria and managed to get through 20 hardback books I owned by women. The problem with setting even simple boundaries like that is that I seem to almost immediately lose interest. Even more dangerous to pick 20 specific books, lest I go off them right away. Nonetheless, that’s what I’ve done. Expect substitutions galore, however; most years I read only half (or less) of what I’ve earmarked.

My only firm rule is that all 20 books must be from my own shelves. Ideally, they wouldn’t overlap with my usual reviewing commitments, book club reads, or other themed challenges (e.g., June: Reading the Meow, Father’s Day, Scotland holiday; August: Women in Translation), though it would be no problem if they did. I’m the only one enforcing this!

Books I acquired new this year:

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Hungerford Bookshop) – I pre-ordered this, a super-rarity for me, and read the first 20-some pages before petering out. I think it’s fair to say it won’t be a favourite of hers for me, but I’d still like to read it in its publication year.

The Hotel by Daisy Johnson (Hungerford Bookshop with Christmas gift token) – Creepy short stories by an author whose long-form fiction I’ve really enjoyed. Also counts toward my low-key goal of reducing the list of authors by whom I own two or more unread books.

Girl by Ruth Padel (Hungerford Bookshop with Christmas gift token) – A poetry collection about girlhood through history and in myth. A repeat appearance on my summer reading list; I reviewed her Emerald in 2021. Good to add it in for variety, and a quick win length-wise.

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters (Bookshop.org) – I bought this to show solidarity with trans women after a short-sighted legal ruling here in the UK. Detransition, Baby was awesome but I haven’t managed to get into this yet. It contains three long short stories plus a novella.

How I Won a Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto (Hungerford Bookshop with Christmas gift token) – I believe it was Susan’s review that put this on my radar, though the title and the fact that it’s an academic satire would have been enough to get it onto my TBR.

Catch-up review copies:

A couple of these date back to 2023…

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino – “At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space … , a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno … recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives.” Quirky; well received by blog and Goodreads friends.

The Sleep Watcher by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan – I’ve read her other two novels but for some reason didn’t pick this up when it was first sent to me. “When she is sixteen, Kit suffers a summer of sleeplessness that isn’t quite what it seems; her body lies in bed while she wanders through her family home, the streets of her run-down seaside town and into the houses of friends and strangers.” Bonus points for being set during summer.

Museum Visits by Éric Chevillard – My one selection in translation. This hybrid collection of short pieces might be deemed essays or stories. “This ensemble of comic miniatures compiles reflections on chairs, stairs, stones, goldfish, objects found, strangers observed, scenarios imagined, reasonable premises taken to absurd conclusions, and vice versa.”

Storm Pegs by Jen Hadfield – New in paperback. I knew I had to read a Shetland-set memoir, and had enjoyed Hadfield’s piece in the Antlers of Water anthology. “In prose as rich and magical as Shetland itself, Hadfield transports us to the islands as a local; introducing us to the remote and beautiful archipelago where she has made her home”.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese – Cutting for Stone is brilliant but I was daunted by the even greater heft of this follow-up. I hope I’ll find just the right time to sink into it. “Spanning the years 1900 to 1977,” set “on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere.”

Summer-themed books / four in a row on the Bingo card:

I’d be aiming to complete the second row with this quartet:

(Book set in a vacation destination)

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (40th birthday gift from my husband, purchased from Hungerford Bookshop) – “the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces fifty years later in Hollywood. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the backlots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.”

(Book from a genre you rarely read)

Pet Sematary by Stephen King (Little Free Library) – I’ve only ever read King’s book on writing, which of course is not representative of his oeuvre. Sounds like this could be a good introduction to his horror work. Rural Maine + dead animals in the woods + grief theme. A chunky but lightweight paperback; I fancy it for my solo train ride home from Edinburgh.

(Book featuring ice cream or summer foods)

Ice Cream by Helen Dunmore (Community Furniture Project) – A short story collection, facing out because the spine is faded to illegibility rather than to show off the naked lady. I’ve enjoyed Dunmore’s stories before (Love of Fat Men). The plots are described as “ranging from … the death of a lighthouse keeper’s wife to the birth of babies from the Superstock catalogue.”

(Book published in summer)

The Stirrings by Catherine Taylor (Bookshop.org with Christmas gift token) – This was originally published in August 2023, and it’s also set mostly during two pivotal summers: “the scorching summer of 1976 – the last Catherine Taylor would spend with both her parents in their home in Sheffield” and “1989’s ‘Second Summer of Love’, a time of sexual awakening for Catherine, and the unforeseen consequences that followed it.”

Plus my one reread of the challenge:

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (Little Free Library) – “From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life.”

I have a number of other potential summery reads, too.

“Just because” books

At the start of the year, I pulled out two huge piles of books I had no particular excuse to read yet was keen to get to. My plan was to pick up one per week or so. Of course, I’ve not so much as opened one yet. Three of these are from that stack, with two more from my BIPOC shelf.

Kingdomtide by Rye Curtis (passed on by Laura T. – thank you!) – I’ve meant to read this for ages, plus it sounds like a good readalike for Heartwood. “The sole survivor of a plane crash, seventy-two-year-old Cloris Waldrip finds herself lost and alone in the unforgiving wilderness of Montana’s rugged Bitterroot Range … Intertwined with her story is Debra Lewis, a park ranger struggling with addiction, a recent divorce, and a new mission: to find and rescue Cloris.”

Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez (new from Amazon some years back) – I love Nunez and aim to read all of her books. This sounds very different from the four I know! “His family’s sole survivor after a flu pandemic …, Cole Vining is lucky to have found refuge with the evangelical Pastor Wyatt and his wife in a small town in southern Indiana. As the world outside has grown increasingly anarchic, Salvation City has been spared much of the devastation, and its residents have renewed their preparations for the Rapture.”

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (charity shop, possibly a decade ago?) – One I’ve always meant to read. My token classic for this challenge, though there are plenty more to choose from on the bookcase in the lounge, e.g. an Austen for Brona’s #ReadAusten25 challenge. “Through six turbulent months of 1934, 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain keeps a journal, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries about her home, a ruined Suffolk castle, and her eccentric and penniless family.”

Names of the Women by Jeet Thayil (gift from my wish list several years ago) – A novella on the stack will be welcome; this is “about the women whose roles were suppressed, reduced or erased in the Gospels. … Together, the voices of the women dare us to reimagine the story of the New Testament in a way it has never before been told.”

Moving Mountains, ed. Louise Kenward (gift from my wish list last year) – “A first-of-its-kind anthology of nature writing by authors living with chronic illness and physical disability. Through 25 pieces, the writers … offer a vision of nature that encompasses the close up, the microscopic, and the vast.” It will be nice to have a book of short nature pieces on the go.

The above list is more fiction-heavy than usual for me, with a number of chunksters – but also four short fiction collections and a poetry collection to balance out the length. Inspired by Eleanor, I decided to ensure at least 25% were by authors of colour.

If I need to draw on back-ups, I have many more between my “just because” stack, my Women’s Prize nominees shelf, and the rest of my BIPOC authors area.

This happens to be my 1,500th blog post!!

What do you make of my lists? See any options that I should prioritize instead?

Posted in: Book lists, memes | Tagged: reading goals, summer, summer reading

April Releases by Chung, Ellis, Gaige, Lutz, McAlpine and Rubin

By Rebecca Foster on May 3, 2025 | 15 Comments

April felt like a crowded publishing month, though May looks to be twice as busy again. Adding this batch to my existing responses to books by Jean Hannah Edelstein & Emily Jungmin Yoon plus Richard Scott, I reviewed nine April releases. Today I’m featuring a real mix of books by women, starting with two foodie family memoirs, moving through a suspenseful novel about a lost hiker, a sparse Scandinavian novella, and a lovely poetry collection with themes of nature and family, and finishing up with a collection of aphorisms. I challenged myself to write just a paragraph on each for simplicity and readability.

Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You: A memoir of saying the unsayable with food by Candice Chung

“to love is to gamble, sometimes gastrointestinally … The stomach is a simple animal. But how do we settle the heart—a flailing, skittish thing?”

I got Caroline Eden (Cold Kitchen) and Nina Mingya Powles (Tiny Moons) vibes from this vibrant essay collection spotlighting food and family. The focus is on 2019–2021, a time of huge changes for Chung. She’s from Hong Kong via Australia, and reconnects with her semi-estranged parents by taking them along on restaurant review gigs for a Sydney newspaper. Fresh from a 13-year relationship with “the psychic reader,” she starts dating again and quickly falls in deep with “the geographer.” Sharing meals in restaurants and at home kindles closeness and keeps their spirits up after Covid restrictions descend. But when he gets a job offer in Scotland, they have to make decisions about their relationship sooner than intended. Although there is a chronological through line, the essays range in time and style, including second-person advice column (“Faux Pas”) and choose-your-own adventure (“Self-Help Meal”) segments alongside lists, message threads and quotes from the likes of Deborah Levy. My favourite piece was “The Soup at the End of the Universe.” Chung delicately contrasts past and present, singleness and being partnered, and different mental health states. The essays meld to capture a life in transition and the tastes and bonds that don’t alter.

With thanks to Elliott & Thompson for the free copy for review.

Chopping Onions on My Heart: On Losing and Preserving Culture by Samantha Ellis

Ellis was distressed to learn that her refugee parents’ first language, Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, is in danger of extinction. Her own knowledge of it is piecemeal, mostly confined to its colourful food-inspired sayings – for example, living “eeyam al babenjan (in the days of the aubergines)” means that everything feels febrile and topsy-turvy. She recounts her family’s history with conflict and displacement, takes a Zoom language class, and ponders what words, dishes, and objects she would save on an imaginary “ark” that she hopes to bequeath to her son. Along the way, she reveals surprising facts about Ashkenazi domination of the Jewish narrative. “Did you know the poet [Siegfried Sassoon] was an Iraqi Jew?” His great-grandfather even invented a special variety of mango pickle. All of the foods described sound delicious, and some recipes are given. Ellis’s writing is enthusiastic and she braids the book’s various strands effectively. I wasn’t as interested in the niche history as I wanted to be, but I did appreciate learning about an endangered culture and language.

With thanks to Chatto & Windus (Vintage/Penguin) for the proof copy for review.

Heartwood by Amity Gaige

This was on my Most Anticipated list after how much I’d enjoyed Sea Wife when we read it for Literary Wives club. In July 2022, 42-year-old nurse Valerie Gillis, nicknamed “Sparrow,” goes missing in the Maine woods while hiking the Appalachian Trail. An increasingly desperate search ensues as the chances of finding her alive diminish with each day. The shifting formats – letters, transcripts, news reports, tip line messages – hold the interest. However, the chapters voiced by Lt. Bev, the warden who heads the mission, are much the most engaging, and it’s a shame that her delightful interactions with her sisters and nieces are so few and come so late. The third-person passages about Lena Kucharski in her Connecticut retirement home are intriguing but somehow feel like they belong in a different book. Gaige attempts to bring the threads together through three mother–daughter pairs, which struck me as heavy-handed. Mostly, this hits the sweet spot between mystery and literary fiction (apart from some red herrings), but because I wasn’t particularly invested in the characters, even Valerie, this fell a little short of my expectations. (Read via Edelweiss)

Wild Boar by Hannah Lutz (2016; 2025)

[Translated from Swedish by Andy Turner]

“I have seen them, the wild boar, they have found their way into my dreams!” Ritve travels from Finland to the forests of southern Sweden to track the creatures. Glenn, who appraises project applications for the council, has boar wander onto his property in the middle of the night. Mia, recipient of a council grant for her Recollections of a Sigga Child proposal, brings her ailing grandfather to record his memories for the local sound archive. As midsummer approaches, these three characters plus a couple of their partners will have encounters with the boar and with each other. Short sections alternate between their first-person perspectives. There is a strong sense of place and how migration poses challenges for both the human and more-than-human worlds. But it’s over before it begins. I found myself frustrated by how little happens, how stingily the characters reveal themselves, and how the boar, ultimately, are no more than a metaphor or plot device – a frequent complaint of mine when animals are central to a narrative. This might appeal to fans of Melissa Harrison’s fiction. In any case, I congratulate The Emma Press on their first novel, which won an English PEN Award.

With thanks to The Emma Press for the free copy for review.

Small Pointed Things by Erica McAlpine

McAlpine is an associate professor of English at Oxford. Her second poetry collection is full of flora and fauna imagery. The title phrase comes from the opening poem, “Bats and Swallows” – in the “gloaming,” it’s hard to tell the difference between the flying creatures. The verse is bursting with alliteration and end rhymes, as just this first one shows (emphasis mine): “we couldn’t see / from where we stood in soft shadows / any signs that they were swallows // or bats”; “One seemed almost iridescent / as I tried to track / its crescent / flight across the hill.” Other poems consider moths, manatees, bees, swans and ladybirds; snowdrops and a cedar tree. Part II expands the view through conversations, theories and travel. What-ifs, consequences and regrets seep in. Parts III and IV incorporate mythical allusions, elegies and the concerns of motherhood. Sometimes the rhyme scheme adheres to a particular form. For instance, I loved “Triolet on My Mother’s 74th Birthday” – “You cannot imagine one season in another. … You cannot imagine life without your mother.” This is just my sort of poetry, sweet on the ear and rooted in nature and the everyday. A sample poem:

“Clementines”

New Year’s Day – another turning

of the sphere, with all we planned

in yesteryear as close to hand

as last night’s coals left unmanned

in the fire, still orange and burning.

It is the season for clementines

and citrus from Seville

and whatever brightness carries us until

leaves and petals once more fill

the treetops and the vines.

If ever you were to confess

some cold truth about love’s

dwindling, now would be the time – less

in order for things to improve

than for the half-bitter happiness

of peeling rinds

during mid-winter

recalling days that are behind

us and doors we cannot re-enter

and other doors we couldn’t find.

With thanks to Carcanet Press for the advanced e-copy for review.

Secrets of Adulthood: Simple Truths for Our Complex Lives by Gretchen Rubin

Rubin is one of the best self-help authors out there: Her books are practical, well-researched and genuinely helpful. She understands human nature and targets her strategies to suit different personality types. If you know her work, you’re likely aware of her fondness for aphorisms. “Sometimes, a single sentence can provide all the insight we need,” she believes. Here she collects her own pithy sayings relating to happiness, self-knowledge, relationships, work, creativity and decision-making. Some of the aphorisms were familiar to me through her previous books or her social media. They’re straightforward and sensible, distilling down to a few words truths we might be aware of but hadn’t truly absorbed. Like the great aphorists throughout history, Rubin relishes alliteration, repetition and contrasts. Some examples:

Accept yourself, and expect more from yourself.

I admire nature, and I am also nature. I resent traffic, and I am also traffic.

Work is the play of adulthood. If we’re not failing, we’re not trying hard enough.

Don’t wait until you have more free time. You may never have more free time.

This is not as meaty as her other work, and some parts feel redundant, but that’s the nature of the project. It would make a good bedside book for nibbles of inspiration. (Read via Edelweiss)

Which of these appeal to you?

Posted in: Fiction Reviews, Nonfiction Reviews, Poetry Reviews | Tagged: Amity Gaige, Andy Turner, aphorisms, Appalachian Trail, Arabic, Australia, Candice Chung, Carcanet Press, Chatto & Windus, COVID-19, Deborah Levy, Edelweiss, Elliott & Thompson, Erica McAlpine, essays, family memoirs, foodie, foodoirs, Gretchen Rubin, Hannah Lutz, Jewish, Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, languages, Melissa Harrison, mental health, mystery, nature writing, Nina Mingya Powles, novella, nursing, poetry, Samantha Ellis, second person, self-help, Siegfried Sassoon, Sweden, Swedish, The Emma Press, wild boar

Carol Shields Prize Reads: Pale Shadows & All Fours

By Rebecca Foster on May 1, 2025 | 11 Comments

Later this evening, the Carol Shields Prize will be announced at a ceremony in Chicago. I’ve managed to read two more books from the shortlist: a sweet, delicate story about the women who guarded Emily Dickinson’s poems until their posthumous publication; and a sui generis work of autofiction that has become so much a part of popular culture that it hardly needs an introduction. Different as they are, they have themes of women’s achievements, creativity and desire in common – and so I would be happy to see either as the winner (more so than Liars, the other one I’ve read, even though that addresses similar issues). Both:

Pale Shadows by Dominique Fortier (2022; 2024)

[Translated from French by Rhonda Mullins]

This is technically a sequel to Paper Houses, which is about Emily Dickinson, but I had no trouble reading this before its predecessor. In an Author’s Note at the end, Fortier explains how, during the first Covid summer, she was stalled on multiple fiction projects and realized that all she wanted was to return to Amherst, Massachusetts – even though her subject was now dead. The poet’s presence and language haunt the novel as the characters (which include the author) wrestle over her words. The central quartet comprises Lavinia, Emily’s sister; Susan, their brother Austin’s wife; Mabel, Austin’s mistress; and Millicent, Mabel’s young daughter. Mabel is to assist with editing the higgledy-piggledy folder of handwritten poems into a volume fit for publication. Thomas Higginson’s clear aim is to tame the poetry through standardized punctuation, assigned titles, and thematic groupings. But the women are determined to let Emily’s unruly genius shine through.

The short novel rotates through perspectives as the four collide and retreat. Susan and Millicent connect over books. Mabel considers this project her own chance at immortality. At age 54, Lavinia discovers that she’s no longer content with baking pies and embarks on a surprising love affair. And Millicent perceives and channels Emily’s ghost. The writing is gorgeous, full of snow metaphors and the sorts of images that turn up in Dickinson’s poetry. It’s a lovely tribute that mingles past and present in a subtle meditation on love and legacy.

Some favourite lines:

“Emily never writes about any one thing or from any one place; she writes from alongside love, from behind death, from inside the bird.”

“Maybe this is how you live a hundred lives without shattering everything; maybe it is by living in a hundred different texts. One life per poem.”

“What Mabel senses and Higginson still refuses to see is that Emily only ever wrote half a poem; the other half belongs to the reader, it is the voice that rises up in each person as a response. And it takes these two voices, the living and the dead, to make the poem whole.”

With thanks to The Carol Shields Prize Foundation for the free e-copy for review.

All Fours by Miranda July (2024)

Miranda July’s The First Bad Man is one of the first books I ever reviewed on this blog back in 2015, after an unsolicited review copy came my way. It was so bizarre that I didn’t plan to ever read anything else by her, but I was drawn in by the hype machine and started this on my Kindle in September, later switching to a library copy when I got stuck at 65%. The narrator sets off on a road trip from Los Angeles to New York to prove to her husband, Harris, that she’s a Driver, not a Parker. But after 20 minutes she pulls off the highway and ends up at a roadside motel. She blows $20,000 on having her motel room decorated in the utmost luxury and falls for Davey, a younger man who works for a local car rental chain – and happens to be married to the decorator. In his free time, he’s a break dancer, so the narrator decides to choreograph a stunning dance to prove her love and capture his attention.

I got bogged down in the ridiculous details of the first two-thirds, as well as in the kinky stuff that goes on (with Davey, because neither of them is willing to technically cheat on a spouse; then with the women partners the narrator has after she and Harris decide on an open marriage). However, all throughout I had been highlighting profound lines; the novel is full to bursting with them (“maybe the road split between: a life spent longing vs. a life that was continually surprising”). I started to appreciate the story more when I thought of it as archetypal processing of women’s life experiences, including birth trauma, motherhood and perimenopause, and as an allegory for attaining an openness of outlook. What looks like an ending (of career, marriage, sexuality, etc.) doesn’t have to be.

Whereas July’s debut felt quirky for the sake of it, showing off with its deadpan raunchiness, I feel that here she is utterly in earnest. And, weird as the book may be, it works. It’s struck a chord with legions, especially middle-aged women. I remember seeing a Guardian headline about women who ditched their lives after reading All Fours. I don’t think I’ll follow suit, but I will recommend you read it and rethink what you want from life. It’s also on this year’s Women’s Prize shortlist. I suspect it’s too divisive to win either, but it certainly would be an edgy choice. (NetGalley/Public library)

(My full thoughts on both longlists are here.) The other two books on the Carol Shields Prize shortlist are River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure and Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin, about which I know very little. In its first two years, the Prize was awarded to women of South Asian extraction. Somehow, I can’t see the jury choosing one of three white women when it could be a Black woman (Lubrin) instead. However, Liars and All Fours feel particularly zeitgeist-y. I would be disappointed if the former won because of its bitter tone, though Manguso is an undeniable talent. Pale Shadows? Pure literary loveliness, if evanescent. But honouring a translation would make a statement, too. I’ll find out in the morning!

Posted in: Fiction Reviews, Literary Prizes | Tagged: adultery, autofiction, bisexuality, Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, dance, Dominique Fortier, Emily Dickinson, French, historical fiction, Los Angeles, marriage, menopause, Miranda July, motels, poetry, predictions, Quebec, Rhonda Mullins, sequels, Women’s Prize, Women’s Prize for Fiction

Love Your Library, April 2025

By Rebecca Foster on April 28, 2025 | 20 Comments

Thanks to Eleanor, Laura, Marcie, and Skai for posting about their recent library reading!

Sadly, my library system’s Mobile Library service closed down recently.

New at the library, however, is a digital piano, which can only be played with headphones on.

I was delighted to come across Lucy Mangan’s paean to Bromley Library in Bookish: “it was ugly as sin. Unlike my beloved Torridon, it was modern. Its cold, stark, straight lines, metal bookshelves and thin polyester carpeting … amplified every sound. … But it had more books than Torridon. Lots more books. More books in one place than I had ever seen. … And it had a secret. Behind a set of unassuming double doors was hiding a silent reading room and a reference library.” It was a sacred space for her even when she wasn’t borrowing books.