Eleventh Blog Anniversary (& International Women’s Day)
Bookish Beck launched 11 years ago today. I find that hard to believe as I still feel like a newbie in the blogging world compared to veterans like Annabel, Kim, Laura, Liz and Simon; imposter syndrome (Imposter Foster!) strikes again. And yet I can’t really remember what it was like before I had a blog, nor can I imagine life without one.
Pratyya Ghosh, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This is my 1594th post, which means I’m maintaining an average of 2.8 posts per week. I feel like I’m posting less often these days, with most of my reviews clumping around the end of a month as I scramble to report back on library reads and finish everything I’ve started towards particular challenges.
It’s also International Women’s Day, a coincidence I would have been unaware of when I started the blog. The Women’s Prize longlist is always announced at around this time of year, with the Carol Shields Prize longlist to follow on Tuesday. I’ve read three of the Women’s Prize nominees (Castillo, Hutchinson and King) and skimmed another (Choi). I’m currently reading Wendy Erskine’s The Benefactors, which is also just right for Reading Ireland Month.
To mark the day, I’ll reproduce my review of one of the best books I’ve read by a woman recently. It’s one of my early favourites for the year.
Brawler by Lauren Groff
The nine short stories in Lauren Groff’s exceptional eighth book profile women in states of desperation and probe legacies of loss and violence.
Most of the stories employ third-person narration and originally appeared in the New Yorker. Often, inherited trauma binds mothers and daughters. The title character is high school swimmer Sara, who shoplifts and fights in frustration at her mother’s incurable illness. In “Under the Wave,” set after a natural disaster, a woman adopts an orphan as a replacement for her dead child—despite their racial differences. The title of “The Wind” symbolizes women’s fear and rage after an attempted escape from an abusive patriarch. Accidental harm and imagery of the Madonna and Child link the three mother–daughter pairs in “Annunciation.”
Themes of midlife reinvention and latent queerness (cf. Matrix) recur. Bisexuality is a secret between a dying woman and her friend in “Birdie.” In “Between the Shadow and the Soul,” a woman finds new hobbies following early retirement. Although she flirts with her female gardening teacher, she realizes her desire is not to leave her husband but to “brush up against the dazzling future again.”
“Such Small Islands” is a startling Jamesian fable; “To Sunland” a 1950s Southern gothic black comedy that would do Flannery O’Connor proud; and the masterful “What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?” a suspenseful, novella-length examination of privilege and obsession.
The prose is stellar and the endings breathtaking. Groff is a first-rate novelist, but her short stories are truly peerless.
(Reposted with permission from Shelf Awareness.)
Thanks to all who support my blog by reading and commenting. You’re stars!
Literary Wives Club: Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell (1959)
This is the best thing we’ve read in my time with the Literary Wives online book club (out of 16 books so far). In the early pages it reminded me of Richard Yates’s work, but by the end I was thinking of it as on par with Stoner by John Williams, a masterpiece I reread last year. Is Mrs. Bridge a female Stoner? In that she is an Everywoman, representative of a certain comfortable, conventional interwar life but also of common longings to be purposeful, experience novelty, and connect with others – I’d say yes. From the first line onwards, we see her as at odds with the facts of her life, which at least appear to her to be unalterable: “Her first name was India – she was never able to get used to it.” She’s never lived up to her exotic name, she feels; her parents must have expected something of her that she couldn’t be.
Connell (1924–2013) sets this portrait of a marriage in his native Kansas City, Missouri. The story is not contemporaneous to its publication but begins in the 1930s; this doesn’t become clear until two-thirds of the way through when, on a European tour that workaholic lawyer Walter Bridge arranged as a belated birthday gift to his wife, news comes that the Nazis have invaded Poland and they have to hurry home. Bear in mind that this is the man who refused to move when a tornado threatened their country club and every single other person had moved to the basement. He insisted on staying at the table and finishing his steak. (So … he expects the weather to bow to his will, if not world leaders?) It’s an astonishing scene, and occasions an astute summation of their relationship dynamic:
It did not occur to Mrs Bridge to leave her husband and run to the basement. She had been brought up to believe without question that when a woman married she was married for the rest of her life and was meant to remain with her husband wherever he was, and under all circumstances, unless he directed her otherwise. She wished he would not be so obstinate; she wished he would behave like everyone else, but she was not particularly frightened. For nearly a quarter of a century she had done as he told her, and what he had said would happen had indeed come to pass, and what he had said would not occur had not occurred. Why, then, should she not believe him now?
(That attitude of blind faith seems more appropriate in a father–daughter or God–mortal relationship than husband–wife, does it not?)
The structure of the book must have been groundbreaking for its time: it’s in 117 short, titled vignettes – a fragmentary style later popularized by writers such as Elizabeth Hardwick, Sarah Manguso and Jenny Offill – that build a picture of the protagonist and her milieu. Even though many of them seem to concern minor incidents from the Bridges’ social life (parties, gossip, the bores they’re forced to have lunch with every time they’re in town), they also reveal a lot about India’s outlook. She wears stockings even on the hottest summer days because “it was the way things were, it was the way things had always been, and so she complied.” Like many of her time and place, she is a casual racist, evidenced by comments on her children’s Black and “gypsy” friends. It pains her that she doesn’t understand her three children. To her it seems they do strange, shocking things (okay, Douglas building a tower of junk is pretty weird) when really they’re just experimenting with fashion and sexuality as any teenager would.
India is in awe of the women of her acquaintance who step out of line, like Grace Barron and Mabel Ong. Grace, in particular, is well informed and confident arguing with men. India seriously considers breaking away from Walter and voting liberal at the next election, but loses her nerve at the last minute; her viewpoint is fundamentally conservative. The novel justifies this by showing how those who flout social rules are shamed or punished in some way.
Mostly, India feels pointless. With a housekeeper around, there’s nothing for her to do. She has nothing but leisure time she doesn’t know how to fill. And yet the years fly past, propelling her into middle age. Occasionally, she’ll summon the motivation to sign up for painting classes or start learning Spanish via records, but she never follows through. So it’s just unnecessary shopping trips in a massive Lincoln she never figures out how to park properly.
She spent a great deal of time staring into space, oppressed by the sense that she was waiting. But waiting for what? She did not know. Surely someone would call, someone must be needing her. Yet each day proceeded like the one before. … Time did not move. The home, the city, the nation, and life itself were eternal; still she had a foreboding that one day, without warning and without pity, all the dear, important things would be destroyed.
It may be fashionable to scorn the existential despair of the privileged, but this is a potent picture of a universal condition. It’s all too easy to get stuck in the status quo and feel helpless to change life for the better. I came across a Slightly Foxed article (Spring 2016) by William Palmer, “The Sadness of Mrs Bridge.” Palmer suggests that Connell was an oddity to his publishers because he wrote in so many genres, and never the same kind of book twice. He dubs this Connell’s finest work. I marked out a couple of passages from his appreciation:
The genius of Connell is to show that this is how most people live: first in their own minds, then in their families, then in their limited social circles; most historical novels fail to realize that most people simply do not notice whatever great moments of history are being enacted around them unless they actually impinge upon their lives.
What is truly compelling about Mrs Bridge is her very ordinariness, notwithstanding all her petty snobbery, conformism and timidity. The list is easy to make and appears to be a fairly damning indictment, but Connell is not writing a satirical portrait. His intention is to show us the utter uniqueness of this one human life, irreplaceability of body and soul that is India Bridge. Connell portrays her so tenderly that we come to sympathize with her and, more, to care for her.
{SOME SPOILERS IN THE REMAINDER}
The way Mrs. Bridge ends indicates that Mr. Bridge, which was published 10 years later, will be not a sequel but a companion piece. I’m somewhat wary of reading it, but it will be intriguing to see how events overlap and to what extent Connell is able to make Walter a more sympathetic character. (Palmer remarks, “It is terrifying how little the two portraits have in common – they might be describing two entirely different worlds.”) Connell’s work remains influential: Claire Fuller has featured the pair of novels in one of her year-end reading roundups, and the husband’s surname in Manguso’s Liars is Bridges.
I’ve written much more than I intended to about Mrs. Bridge, but wanted to do justice to what will no doubt be one of my stand-out reads of the year.
(My omnibus edition came from the free bookshop we used to have in the local mall.) 
The main question we ask about the books we read for Literary Wives is:
What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?
Based on Mrs. Bridge’s experience, one would be excused for thinking that being a wife involves the complete suppression of one’s own personality, ambitions and desires – including sexual, as dealt with very succinctly in the first chapter: Walter usually initiates; the one time she tries to do so, he gives her a patronizing hug and falls asleep. “This was the night Mrs Bridge concluded that while marriage might be an equitable affair, love itself was not.” A wry statement from Connell as marriage is certainly not equitable in this novel.
Granted, this was the 1910s–1930s. By the 1940s, when her daughters are young women, they’re determined to live differently, the one by becoming a New York City career girl, single and promiscuous. The other also vows to do things differently – “Listen, Mother, no man is ever going to push me around the way Daddy pushes you around” – yet ends up pregnant and battered. When India tries to encourage her to placate her husband through sex, she replies, “Oh no, don’t tell me that! I don’t want any part of that myth.”
So we see attitudes starting to change, but it would be another couple of decades before there were more options for both of these generations of women.
A common observation in many of the novels we’ve considered is that, even in a marriage, it is possible for the partners to be a complete mystery to each other. I’ll be interested to see whether Walter’s side of the story illuminates anything or portrays him as clueless. And a main moral I draw from most of our reads is that defining oneself by any relationship – mostly marriage, but also parenthood – sets one up for disappointment, or worse.
See the reviews by Becky, Kate, Kay and Naomi, too!
We recently welcomed a new member, Marianne, and will soon be choosing our books for the next two-plus years. Here’s the club page on Kay’s blog with the current members’ profiles plus all the books covered since 2013.
Our next selection will be Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri in June. I’ve not read Lahiri before but have always meant to, so I’m particularly looking forward to this one.
Miscellaneous for #ReadIndies: Grenville & Holman-Hunt, Trans History & Travel Poetry, Kathleen Jamie & Kristen Zory King
Squeaking in some more reviews on the last day of a challenge, as is my wont. Today I have mini-responses to a wide selection: a graphic novel companion to LGBTQ history, an exposé that will have you checking the ingredients lists on all your toiletries and other household cleaning products, a memoir of an eccentric Edwardian childhood, poems about modes of travel and the states of mind they produce, superb nature essays blending personal and environmental writing, and a mini collection of flash fiction about young women.
Trans History: From Ancient Times to the Present Day by Alex L. Combs and Andrew Eakett (2025)
Queer people of all varieties have always been with us; they just might have understood their experience or talked about it in different terms. So while Combs and Eakett are careful not to apply labels retrospectively, they feature a plethora of people who lived as a different gender to that assigned at birth. Apart from a few familiar names like Lili Elbe and Marsha P. Johnson, most were new to me. For every heartening story of an emperor, monk or explorer who managed to live out their true identity in peace, there are three distressing ones of those forced to conform. Many Indigenous cultures held a special place for gender-nonconforming individuals; colonizers would have seen this as evidence of desperate need of civilizing. Even doctors who were willing to help with early medical transitions retained primitive ideas about gender and its connection to genitals. The structure is chronological, with a single colour per chapter. Panes reenact scenes and feature talking heads explaining historical developments and critical theory. A final section is devoted to modern-day heroes campaigning for trans rights and seeking to preserve an archive of queer history. This was a little didactic, but ideal for teens, I think, and certainly not just one for gender studies students.
Readalike: Meg-John Barker’s Sexuality: A Graphic Guide
(Read via Edelweiss) [Candlewick Press]
The Case Against Fragrance by Kate Grenville (2017)
File this with other surprising nonfiction books by well-known novelists. In 2015, Grenville started struggling while on a book tour: everything from a taxi’s air freshener and a hotel’s cleaning products to a fellow passenger’s perfume was giving her headaches. She felt like a diva for stipulating she couldn’t be around fragrances, but as she started looking into it she realized she wasn’t alone. I thought this was just going to be about perfume, but it covers all fragranced products, which can list “parfum” on their ingredients without specifying what that is – trade secrets. The problem is, fragrances contain any of thousands of synthetic chemicals, most of which have never been tested and thus are unregulated. Even those found to be carcinogens or endocrine disruptors in rodent studies might be approved for humans because it’s not taken into account how these products are actually used. Prolonged or repeat contact has cumulative effects. The synthetic musks in toiletries and laundry detergents are particularly bad, acting as estrogen mimics and likely associated with prostate and breast cancer. I tend to buy whatever’s on offer in Boots, but as soon as my Herbal Essences bottle is empty I’m going back to Faith in Nature (look for plant extracts). The science at the core of the book is a little repetitive, but eased by the social chapters to either side, and you can tell from the footnotes that Grenville really did her research.
Readalike: Chris van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People
(Secondhand – gift from my wish list) [Text Publishing]
My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt (1960)
The author was the granddaughter of Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt (The Light of the World et al.). While her father was away in India, she was shunted between two homes: Grandmother and Grandfather Freeman’s Sussex estate, and the mausoleum-cum-gallery her paternal grandmother, “Grand,” maintained in Kensington. The grandparents have very different ideas about the sorts of foodstuffs and activities that are suitable for little girls. Both households have servants, but Grand only has the one helper, Helen. Grand probably has a lot of money tied up in property and paintings but lives like a penniless widow. Grand encourages abstemious habits – “Don’t be ruled by Brother Ass, he’s only your body and a nuisance” – and believes in boiled milk and margarine. The single egg she has Helen serve Diana in the morning often smells off. “Food is only important as fuel; whether we like it or not is quite immaterial,” Grand insists. Diana might more naturally gravitate to the pleasures of the Freeman residence, but when it comes time to give a tour of the Holman Hunt oeuvre, she does so with pride. There are some funny moments, such as Diana asking where babies come from after one of the Freemans’ maids gives birth, but this felt so exaggerated and fictionalized – how could she possibly remember details and conversations at the distance of several decades? – that I lost interest by the midpoint.
Readalike: Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece
(Secondhand – Community Furniture Project) [Slightly Foxed]
In Transit: Poems of Travel, ed. Sarah Jackson and Tim Youngs (2018)
Some methods of transport are just more romantic than others. The editors’ introduction notes that “Trains were by far the most popular … followed by aeroplanes and then boats.” Walks and car journeys were surprisingly scarce, they observed, though there are a couple of poems about wandering in New York City. Often, the language is of maps, airports, passports and long flights; of trading one place for another as exile, expatriate or returnee. The collection circuits the globe: China, the Middle East, Greece, Scandinavia, the bayous of the American South. France and Berlin show up more than once. The Emma Press anthologies vary and this one had fewer standout entries than average. However, a few favourites were Nancy Campbell’s “Reading the Water,” about a boy launching out to sea in a kayak; Simon Williams’s “Aboard the Grey Ghost,” about watching for dolphins on a wartime voyage from England to the USA; and Vicky Sparrow’s “Dual Gauge,” which follows a train of thought – about humans as objects moving, perhaps towards death – during a train ride.
(New purchase from publisher) [The Emma Press]
Findings by Kathleen Jamie (2005)
As I found when I reread Sightlines in 2022, Jamie’s topics couldn’t be better suited to my interests: Scottish islands, seabirds, medical history, and the meaning we derive from mortality. She visits the Orkney Islands just before the winter solstice, which draws a faithful few to the tomb of Maes Howe. From her attic room in Fife, she watches peregrine falcons on a cliff face. A gannet’s skull is her prized souvenir from a boat tour to an uninhabited Hebridean island. Vigilance pays off when she hears, then sees, corncrake on the Isle of Coll. Although she has a penchant for empty places, she also writes about cityscapes and hospitals. “Skylines” looks out over Edinburgh, also the setting for “Surgeons’ Hall,” about the pathology museum on the Royal College of Surgeons campus (my 2018 visit). In “Fever” her husband has a scary bout of pneumonia. Jamie is one of our wisest writers on nature and human culture. She asks whether any creatures are truly wild given the pervasiveness of human influence. Even as she seeks out the ancient, she knows we are all ephemeral. “Sabbath” is the best single essay, combining a visit to Lewis with her worry for her mother, who’s had a stroke, and her grandmother, who is to move into a care home. She explores the island “relishing the movement of my body, its own small continuing strength. It wouldn’t last forever – that was the truth of it – but today I could cycle along a road, to see where it led.”
(University library) [Sort Of Books]
My rating in 2012:
My rating now: 
Ladies, Ladies, Ladies by Kristen Zory King (2025)
I’d never encountered “chapbook” being used for prose rather than poetry, but it’s an apt term for this 61-page paperback containing 18 stories. It’s remarkable how much King can pack into just a few pages: a voice, a character, a setting and situation, an incident, a salient backstory, and some kind of epiphany or resolution. Fifteen of the pieces focus on one named character, with another three featuring a set (“Ladies,” hence the title). Laura-Jean wonders whether it was a mistake to tell her ex’s mother what she really thinks about him in a Christmas card. A love of ice cream connects Margot’s past and present. A painting in a museum convinces Paige to reconnect with her estranged sister. Alice is sure she sees her double wandering around, and Mary contemplates stealing other people’s cats. The women are moved by rage or lust; stymied by loneliness or nostalgia. Is salvation to be found in scripture or poetry? Each story is distinctive, with no words wasted. I’ll look out for future work by King.
(Duplicate copy passed on by Marcie – thank you!) [Stanchion Books]
Which of these do you fancy reading?
Six more indie publishers spotlighted, for a total of 19 books and 18 publishers this month – job done!
Also covered:
Ansell, Farrier, Febos, Hoffman, Orlean, Stacey
Chevillard, Hopkins & Bateman, McGrath, Richardson
Victorian-Themed Novels by Annie Elliot and Livi Michael
There are plenty more indie books that I’m in the middle of, or picked out but didn’t get to in February. As much as possible, I’ll continue reading (indie) books from my shelves this year.
Victorian-Themed Novels by Annie Elliot and Livi Michael (#ReadIndies)
I’m going back to my roots as a Victorianist (I completed an MA in Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds in 2006) with these two new novels, the one about Charles Dickens’s turbulent marriage and the other about the real-life inspiration for Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth. Both redress the balance of Victorian literature by placing women at the centre of the action, and both were comfortably in the 200–300-page range: turns out that’s how I like my Victoriana these days; none of your triple-decker nonsense.
Mr & Mrs Charles Dickens: Her Story by Annie Elliot
I used to proclaim Dickens my favourite author yet haven’t managed to read one of his novels in 15+ years; I seem to be allergic to all that verbiage. He managed to write all those millions of words thanks to his increasing status and wealth, but also thanks to his long-suffering wife, Catherine. Kate sacrificed her health and ambitions to bear and raise his nine children (along with one who died) and – along with sisters and servants – keep a house calm and quiet enough to enable his work.
On her deathbed, Kate begged her daughter to give her love letters from Charles to the British Museum “so the world may know he loved me once.” Annie Elliot has used that phrase as the tagline for her absorbing and vigilantly researched debut novel. The structure perfectly mimics romantic illusions ceding to disenchantment. The framing story is set on 10 June 1870 – the day Kate, the estranged wife, learns of Charles’s death. Sections alternate between the bereaved Kate’s fragile state of mind (depicted in the third person) and first-person flashbacks to their relationship, from first meeting in 1834 to infamous separation in 1858.
It’s all narrated in the present tense, which creates an eternal now: nothing can be dated when it’s all happening at once for Kate. To start with, the Dickens marriage seems to be based on real love and physical passion. But before long it’s clear that he’s using Kate as ego boost and sexual outlet. She walks on eggshells lest anything shake his confidence. While the death of their baby daughter Dora nearly breaks her, he keeps up a frenzy of writing, travel, property acquisition, and new ventures such as public speaking and the theatre. And, of course, it’s through dramatics that he meets young Nelly Ternan and finds his excuse to push Kate aside.
Though much of this material was familiar to me from Claire Tomalin’s biographies as well as Gaynor Arnold’s novel about Kate, Girl in a Blue Dress, I appreciated the recreation of Kate’s perspective, the glimpses of their children’s lives, and the flashes of humour such as the proliferation of Pickwick memorabilia and a visit from Hans Christian Andersen. This is – yes, still – a necessary corrective to Dickens’s image as the dutiful husband and paterfamilias. And such a beautifully presented book, too. I wish Elliot well for next year’s McKitterick Prize race.
To be published on 1 March. With thanks to the author and EnvelopeBooks for the free copy for review.
Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael
The Manchester of 1849 is a sordid complex of sweatshops, brothels and workhouses – if you’re Pasley, an Irish teenager abandoned by her mother and shunted from one bad situation to another. Or the Manchester of 1849 is a rarefied colloquium of forward-thinking authors, ministers and politicians – if you’re Elizabeth Gaskell, who’s been revealed as the mind behind the anonymously published sensation Mary Barton.
The two worlds collide when Elizabeth visits Pasley at the New Bailey Prison. She feels for this young woman who’s been a victim of deception, trafficking, and rape and narrowly escaped death by suicide only to end up imprisoned for theft when she made a desperate bid for freedom. There’s only so much that Pasley can bear to tell Mrs Gaskell on these short visits, though; her past would shock a preacher’s wife. Through euphemisms and evasions, Pasley is able to convey that she was taken advantage of by a doctor. Elizabeth suspects that there was a baby, but only readers know the whole truth.
Chapters alternate between Elizabeth’s experience – in an omniscient third person cleverly reminiscent of Victorian prose – and Pasley’s first-person recollections. Elizabeth wants to follow through on her do-gooder reputation and truly help Pasley, who reminds her of her own infant and pregnancy losses. Achieving justice for the girl would be a bonus. All she knows to do is use her pen to change hearts and minds, as she has before (including for Dickens’s magazine) to draw attention to the plight of the poor. Thus, Ruth was born.
This is a riveting and touching novel about the rigidity of convention and the limits of compassion. Livi Michael is a prolific author of whom I’d not heard before Salt sent me this surprise, perfectly suited parcel. Her vivid scenes bring the two-tiered Manchester society to life and reminded me of my visit to the Gaskell House in 2015. My only small complaint would be that the blurb makes it sound as if Gaskell’s correspondence with Dickens will be a central element, when in fact it only appears once, two-thirds of the way through, with one cameo appearance by Dickens right at the end. He’s the better-known author, but after reading this you’ll agree that Gaskell was the subtler, more elegant chronicler.
Published on 9 February. With thanks to Salt Publishing for the proof copy for review.
#ReadIndies Review Catch-Up: Chevillard, Hopkins & Bateman, McGrath, Richardson
Quick thoughts on some more review catch-up books, most of them from 2025. It’s a miscellaneous selection today: absurdist flash fiction by a prolific French author, a self-help graphic novel about surviving heartbreak, a blend of bird photography and poetry, and a debut poetry collection about life and death as encountered by a parish priest.
Museum Visits by Éric Chevillard (2024)
[Trans. from French by David Levin Becker]
I’d not heard of Chevillard, even though he’s published 22 novels and then some. This appealed to me because it’s a collection of micro-essays and short stories, many of them witty etymological or historical riffs. “The Guide,” a tongue-in-cheek tour of places where things may have happened, reminded me of Julian Barnes: “So, right here is where Henri IV ran a hand through his beard, here’s where a raindrop landed on Dante’s forehead, this is where Buster Keaton bit into a pancake” and so on. It’s a clever way of questioning what history has commemorated and whether it matters. Some pieces elaborate on a particular object – Hegel’s cap, a chair, stones, a mass attendance certificate. A concertgoer makes too much of the fact that they were born in the same year as the featured harpsichordist. “Autofiction” had me snorting with laughter, though it’s such a simple conceit. All Chevillard had to do in this authorial rundown of a coming of age was replace “write” with “ejaculate.” This leads to such ridiculous statements as “It was around this time that I began to want to publicly share what I was ejaculating” and “I ejaculate in all the major papers.” There are some great pieces about animals. Others outstayed their welcome, however, such as “Faldoni.” Most feel like intellectual experiments, which isn’t what you want all the time but is interesting to try for a change, so you might read one or two mini-narratives between other things.
With thanks to the University of Yale Press for the free copy for review.
What to Do When You Get Dumped: A Guide to Unbreaking Your Heart by Suzy Hopkins; illus. Hallie Bateman (2025)
Discovered through Molly Wizenberg’s excellent author interview (she did a series on her Substack, “I’ve Got a Feeling”) with illustrator Hallie Bateman. It’s a mother–daughter collaboration – their second, after What to Do When I’m Gone, a funny advice guide that’s been likened to Roz Chast’s work (I’ve gotta get that one!). Hopkins’s husband of 30 years left her for an ex-girlfriend. (Ironic yet true: the girlfriend was a marriage counselor.) Composed while deep in grief, this is a frank look at the flood of emotions that accompany a breakup and gives wry but heartfelt suggestions for what might help: journaling, telling someone what happened, cleaning, making really easy to-do lists. Hopkins interviewed six others who had been dumped to get some extra perspective. Bateman describes her mother’s writing process: she made notes and stuck them in a shoebox with a hole in the lid, then went on a retreat to combine it all into a draft. At this point Bateman started illustrating. It was complicated for her, of course, because the dumper is her dad. She notes in the interview that she couldn’t just say “He’s an asshole” and dismiss him. But she could still position herself as a girlfriend to her mother, listening and commiserating. The vignettes are structured as a countdown starting with day 1,582 – it took over four years for Hopkins to come to terms with her loss and embrace a new life. This is a cute and gentle book that I wish had been around for my mom; it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than therapy.
With thanks to Bloomsbury for the free e-copy for review.
The Beauty of Vultures by Wendy McGrath; photos by Danny Miles (2025)
I enjoyed McGrath’s Santa Rosa trilogy and was keen to try her poetry, so I’m pleased that Marcie’s review pointed me here. McGrath came to collaborate with Miles, a musician, after her son told her of Miles’s newfound love of bird photography. She writes in her introduction that she wanted to go “beyond a simple call-and-response,” to instead use the photos as “portals” into art, history, memory, mythology, wordplay. The form varies to suit the topic: “sonnet, pantoum, acrostic, ghazal, concrete poem, … even a mini-play.” (I didn’t identify all of these on a first read, to be honest.) One poem imitates a matchbox cover and another is printed sideways. Most of the images are black-and-white close-ups, with a handful in colour. There are a few mammals as well as birds. One notable flash of colour is the recipient of the first poem, the sassy rebuttal “A Message from the Peahen to the Peacock.” The hen tells him to quit with the fancy displays and get real: “I’ve seen that gaudy display too often.”
Other poems describe birds, address them directly, or take on their perspectives. Birds are a reassuring presence (cf. Ted Hughes on swifts): “I counted on our robins to return every spring” as a balm, the anxious speaker reports in “Air raid siren.” A nest of gape-mouthed baby swallows in an outhouse is the prize at the end of a long countryside walk. With its alliteration and repetition, “The Goldfinch Charm” feels like an incantation. Birds model grace (or at least the appearance of grace):
Assume a buoyancy, lightness, as though you were about to fly.
That yellow rubber duck is my surreal mythology.
Head above water. Stay calm. Paddle like crazy.
They link the natural world and the human in these gorgeous poems that interact with the images in ways that both lead and illuminate.
A female swan is a pen and eyes open
I try to write this dream:
a moment stolen or given.
Published by NeWest Press. With thanks to the author for the free e-copy for review.
Dirt Rich by Graeme Richardson (2026)
Dirt poor? Nah. Miners, gravediggers and archaeologists will tell you that dirt is precious. It’s where lots of our food and minerals come from; it’s what we’ll return to – our bodies as well as the material traces of what we loved and cared for. Richardson, the poetry critic for the Sunday Times, comes from Nottinghamshire mining country and has worked as a chaplain and parish priest. He writes of church interiors and cemeteries, funerals and crumbling faith. There’s a harsh reminder of life’s unpredictability in the juxtaposition of “For the Album,” about the photographic evidence of a wedding day; and, beginning on the facing page, “After the Death of a Child.” It opens with “A Pastoral Heckle”: “The dead live on in memory? Not true. / They lodge there dead, and yours not theirs the hell.” Richardson now lives in Germany, so there are continental scenes as well as ecclesial English ones. The elegiac tone of standouts such as “Last of the Coalmine Choirboys” (with its words drawn from scripture and hymns) is tempered by the chaotic joy of multiple poems about parenthood in the final section. Throughout, the imagery and language glisten. I loved the slant rhyme, assonance and sibilance in “Rewilding the Churchyard”: “Cedars and self-seeders link / with the storm-forked sycamore.” I highly recommend this debut collection.
With thanks to Carcanet Press for the advanced e-copy for review.
Which of these do you fancy reading?
(Goodbye to) Winter Reads by Sylvia Plath (#ReadIndies) & Kathleen Winter
The sunshine, temperatures and flora suggest that spring is here to stay, though I wouldn’t be surprised by a return of the cold and wet in March. We live in the wrong part of the UK for snow lovers; we didn’t get any snow this winter, apart from some early-morning flurries one day when I was fast asleep. My seasonal reading consisted of a lesser-known posthumous poetry collection, a record of a sea voyage past Greenland, and a silly children’s book.
Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath (1971)
A prefatory note from Ted Hughes explains that these poems “are all out of the batch from which the Ariel poems were more or less arbitrarily chosen and they were all composed in the last nine months of Sylvia Plath’s life.” Ariel is much the stronger collection. There are only 19 poems here; the final one, “Three Women,” is more of a play (subtitled “A Poem for Three Voices”) set on a maternity ward. Motherhood is a central concern throughout. There’s harsh, unpleasant language around womanhood in general. The opening title poem is a marvel of artistic imagery, assonance and internal rhyme, but also contains a metaphor that made me cringe: “Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery, / Truer than women, / They seed so effortlessly!”
That paints motherhood as hard won, as “Childless Woman” reinforces by turning purposeless menstruation into a horror story with its vocabulary of “a child’s shriek” — “Spiderlike” — “Uttering nothing but blood— / Taste it, dark red!” — “My funeral” — “the mouths of corpses”. Plath was certainly ambivalent about babies (“Thalidomide” is particularly frightening) but I bristled at childlessness being linked with living only for oneself. Then again, pretty much everything – men, God, travel, animals – is portrayed negatively here. “Winter Trees” is the single poem I’d anthologize. (University library)
Published by Faber, so counts for #ReadIndies
Boundless: Adventures in the Northwest Passage by Kathleen Winter (2015)
I read this excellent travel book slowly, over most of the winter, including during that surreal period when He Who Shall Not Be Named was threatening to annex Greenland. Winter was invited to be a writer-in-residence aboard an icebreaker travelling through the Northwest Passage, past southwest Greenland and threading between the islands of the Canadian Arctic. She was prepared: a friend had taught her that the only thing to say in these sorts of lucky, unexpected scenarios is “My bags are already packed.” Her ‘getaway bag’ of two pairs of underwear, a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a LBD wasn’t exactly Arctic-ready, but she still had a head start. She adds an old concertina and worn hiking boots that resemble “lobes of some mushroom cracked off the bole of an old warrior tree.”
It’s not a long or gruelling trip, so there’s not much of the bellyaching that bores me in trekking books. Winter is interested in everything: birds, folk music, Indigenous arts and crafts, her fellow passengers’ stories, the infamous lost Arctic expeditions, and her family’s history in England and Canada. She collects her scraps of notes in a Ziploc, and that’s what this book is – a grab bag. Winter is enthusiastic yet prioritizes quiet epiphanies about the sacredness of land and creatures over thrills – though their vessel does get stranded on rocks and requires a Coast Guard rescue. It would be interesting to reread her Orange Prize-shortlisted novel about an intersex person, Annabel. (If you hanker to go deeper about Greenland, read This Cold Heaven by Gretel Ehrlich and Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg.) (Secondhand – Bas Books)
& A bonus children’s book:
The Snow Womble by Elisabeth Beresford; illus. Margaret Gordon (1975) – I thought this would be a cute one to read even though I’m unfamiliar with the Wombles. But it’s just a one-note extended joke about the creatures not being able to tell their snowman version of Great-Uncle Bulgaria apart from the real one. The best thing about reading this was the frontispiece’s juxtaposition of elements: the computer-printed bookplate, the nominal secondhand price (withdrawn from London Borough of Sutton Public Libraries), and the wholly inappropriate inscription Grandad Nick chose from King Lear! (Little Free Library)
Three on a Theme (Valentine’s Day): “Love” Books by Amy Bloom, George Mackay Brown & Hilary Mantel
Every year I say it: I’m really not a Valentine’s Day person and yet it’s become a tradition to put together a themed post featuring one or more books with “Love” or “Heart” in the title. This is the tenth year in a row, in fact – after 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. As you might expect, none of the three below contains a straightforward love story. The relationships portrayed tend to be unequal, creepy or doomed, but the solid character work and use of setting and voice was enough to keep me engaged with all of the books.
Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom (1997)
I’ve found Bloom’s short stories more successful than her novels. This is something of a halfway house: linked short stories (one of which was previously published in Come to Me; another that gives the title line to her 2000 collection A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You) about Elizabeth Taube. When we first meet her on Long Island in the 1960s, she’s a rebellious and sexually precocious Jewish girl; by the time we’ve journeyed through several decades of vignettes, she’s a flighty and psychologically scarred single mother. Stories of her Lolita-esque attractiveness to grown salesmen and teachers, her shoplifting, her casual work for elderly African American Mrs. Hill, and her great love for Horace, nicknamed Huddie, a Black basketball player, are in the first person. The longer second part – about the aftermath of her physical affair with Huddie and her ongoing emotional entanglement with her English teacher, Max Stone – is in the third person yet feels more honest. Liz seems like bad news for everyone she meets. Bloom shows us some of the reasons for what she does, but I still couldn’t absolve her protagonist. I’d also reverse the title: We Invent Love. Liz is responsible for irrevocably altering two lives besides her own based on what she needs to feel secure. This is very much Lorrie Moore territory, but Moore leaves less of a bitter taste. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project) 
A Calendar of Love and Other Stories by George Mackay Brown (1967)
The title story opens a collection steeped in the landscape and history of Orkney. Each month we check in with three characters: Jean, who lives with her ailing father at the pub they run; and her two very different suitors, pious Peter and drunken Thorfinn. When she gives birth in December, you have to page back to see that she had encounters with both men in March. Some are playful in this vein or resemble folk tales: a boy playing hooky from school, a distant cousin so hapless as to father three bairns in the same household, and a rundown of the grades of whisky available on the islands. Others with medieval time markers are overwhelmingly bleak, especially “Witch,” about a woman’s trial and execution – and one of two stories set out like a play for voices. I quite liked the flash fiction “The Seller of Silk Shirts,” about a young Sikh man who arrives on the islands, and “The Story of Jorfel Hayforks,” in which a Norwegian man sails to find the man who impregnated his sister and keeps losing a crewman at each stop through improbable accidents. This is an atmospheric book I would have liked to read on location, but few of the individual stories stand out. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel (1995)
Mantel is best remembered for the Wolf Hall trilogy, but her early work includes a number of concise, sharp novels about growing up in the north of England. Carmel McBain attends a Catholic school in Manchester in the 1960s before leaving to study law at the University of London in 1970. In lockstep with her are a couple of friends, including Karina, who is of indeterminate Eastern European extraction and whose tragic Holocaust family history, added to her enduring poverty, always made her an object of pity for Carmel’s mother. But Karina as depicted by Carmel is haughty, even manipulative, and over the years their relationship swings between care and competition. As university students they live on the same corridor and have diverging experiences of schoolwork, romance, and food. “Now, I would not want you to think that this is a story about anorexia,” Carmel says early on, and indeed, she presents her condition as more like forgetting to eat. But then you recall tiny moments from her past when teachers and her mother shamed her for eating, and it’s clear a seed was sown. Carmel and her friends also deal with the results of the new-ish free love era. This is dark but funny, too, with Carmel likening roast parsnips to “ogres’ penises.” Further proof, along with Every Day Is Mother’s Day, that it’s well worth exploring authors’ back catalogue. (Public library)
Plus a DNF:
Unexpected Lessons in Love by Bernardine Bishop (2013): I loved Bishop’s The Street, and this posthumous novel initially drew me in with its medical detail (two friends who both had stoma operations) and the exploration of different forms of love – romantic, parental, grandparental – before starting to feel obvious (two adoptions, one historical and one recent), maudlin and overlong. With some skimming, I made it to page 120. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com)
Other relevant reading on the go:
I would have tried spinning this one into another thematic trio, but ran out of time…
A Rough Guide to the Heart by Pam Houston (1999): A mix of personal essays and short travel pieces. The material about her dysfunctional early family life, her chaotic dating, and her thrill-seeking adventures in the wilderness is reminiscent of the highly autobiographical Waltzing the Cat. Amusingly, this has a previous price label from Richard Booth’s Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye, where it was incorrectly classed as Romance Fiction – one could be excused the mistake based on the title and cover! (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project)
And three books about marriage…
The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier – A pleasant year’s diary of rural living and adjusting to her husband’s new diagnosis of neurodivergence.- Strangers by Belle Burden – A high-profile memoir about her husband’s strange and marriage-ending behaviour (his affair was only part of it) during the 2020 lockdown.
- Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell – For Literary Wives Club in March. I’m in the early pages but it seems comparable to Richard Yates.
January Novels by Alix E. Harrow & Patricia Highsmith
The month of January was named for the Roman god Janus, known for having two faces: one looking backward, the other forward. “He presided not over one particular domain but over the places between – past and present, here and there, endings and beginnings,” as Alix E. Harrow writes. In her novel, the door is a prevailing metaphor for liminal times and spaces; Highsmith’s work, too, focuses on the way life often pivots on tiny accidents or decisions.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (2019)
“I didn’t want to be safe … I wanted to be dangerous, to find my own power and write it on the world.”
As the mixed-race ward of a wealthy collector, January Scaller grows up in a Vermont mansion with a dual sense of privilege and loss. She barely sees her brown-skinned father, who travels the world amassing treasures for Mr. Locke and his archaeological society; and her mother’s absence is an unexplained heartbreak. But when her father also disappears in 1911 – to be apparently replaced by an African governess named Jane Irimu (it’s her quote above) and an enticing scholarly manuscript entitled The Ten Thousand Doors – 17-year-old January discovers the power of words to literally open doors to new worlds, and sets off on a quest to reunite her family. At every turn, though, she’s thwarted by evil white men who, after plundering foreign cultures, intend to close the doors of opportunity behind them.
This was an unlikely book for me to pick up: I didn’t get on with that whole wave of books with books and keys on the cover (Bridget Collins et al.) and wouldn’t willingly pick up romantasy – yet this features two meant-to-be romances fought for across worlds and eras. I grow impatient with a book-within-the-book format. But The Chronicles of Narnia, which no doubt inspired Harrow, were my favourite books as a child. Especially early on, I found this as thrilling as The Absolute Book and The End of Mr. Y. Whereas those doorstoppers held my interest all the way through, though, this became a trudge at a certain point. Harrow is maybe a little too pleased with her own imagination and turns of phrase, like T. Kingfisher. (Bad the dog is also in peril far too often.) In the end, this reminded me most of Babel by R.F. Kuang with its postcolonial conscience and words as power. I enjoyed this enough that I think I’ll propose her The Once and Future Witches for book club. (Little Free Library)
The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith (1964)
Three American vacationers meet in a hotel in Greece one January. But the circumstances are far from auspicious. Conman Chester MacFarland is traveling with his 15-years-younger wife, Colette. Rydal Keener is a stranger who, seemingly on a whim, helps them cover up the accidental death of a Greek police investigator who came to ask Chester some questions. From here on in, they’re in lockstep, moving around Greece together, obtaining fake passports and checking the headlines obsessively to outrun consequences. Colette takes a fancy to Rydal, and the jealousy emanating from the love triangle is complicated by Chester’s alcoholism and Rydal’s hurt over earning a police record for a consensual teenage relationship. I have a dim memory of seeing the 2014 Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen film, but luckily I didn’t recall any major events. A climactic scene takes place at the palace of Knossos, and the chase continues until an unavoidably tragic end.
I’ve read several Ripley novels and a few standalone psychological mysteries by Highsmith and enjoyed them well enough, but murders aren’t really my thing. (Carol is the only work of hers that I’ve truly loved.) My specific issue here was with the central trio of characters. Colette is thinly drawn and doesn’t get enough time on the page. Chester seems much older than his 42 years and is an irredeemable swindler. It’s only because of our fondness for Rydal that we want them all to get away with it. But even Rydal doesn’t get the in-depth portrayal one might hope for. There’s the injustice of his backstory and the fact that he’s a would-be poet, true, but we never understand why he helped the MacFarlands, so have to conclude that it was the impulse of a moment and committed him to a regrettable course. This is pacey enough to keep the pages turning, but won’t stick with me. (Public library)
I’m turning my face forward: Good riddance to January 2026, during which I’ve mostly felt rubbish; here’s hoping for a better rest of the year. I’m off to the opera tonight – something I’ve only done once before, in Leeds in 2006! – to see Susannah, a tale from the Apocrypha transplanted to the 1950s U.S. South.
January Releases by Julian Barnes and Stewart O’Nan
These two novels by literary lions (of the UK and USA, respectively) share themes of ageing, loss, and memory, as well as a wry and gently melancholy tone. I’ve read 23 books by Julian Barnes, some of them twice; Stewart O’Nan has also published twenty-some books, but was a new author for me.
Departure(s) by Julian Barnes (2026)
“That’s what I’ve been after all my writing life: the whole story.”
Julian Barnes has been a favourite author of mine since my early twenties. He insists this novella will be his final book. It’s a coy fiction–autofiction mixture featuring the same fixations as much of his work: how time affects relationships and memory, how life gets translated into written evidence, and how we make peace with death. The narrator is one Julian Barnes, a writer approaching age 80 and adjusting to a recent diagnosis of a non-life-threatening blood cancer. The ostensible point is to retell his Oxford University friends Stephen and Jean’s two-stage romance: they were college sweethearts but married other people; then Julian reintroduced them in their sixties and they married – but it didn’t last.
He parcels out bits of this story in between pondering involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM), his “incurable but manageable” condition, and his possible legacy. He hopes he’ll be exonerated due to waiting until Stephen and Jean were dead to write about them and adopting Jean’s old Jack Russell terrier, Jimmy. His late wife, Pat Kavanagh, is never far from his thoughts, and he documents other losses among his peers, including Martin Amis (d. 2023 – for a short book, this is curiously dated, as if it hung around for years unfinished). There are also, as one would expect from Barnes, occasional references to French literature. Confident narration gives the sense of an author in full control of his material. Yet I found much of it tedious. He’s addressed subjectivity much more originally in other works, and the various strands here feel like incomplete ideas shoehorned into one volume.
It’s a shame that I had just reread Talking It Over, a glistening voice-led novel of his from 1991, because it showed up the thinness and repetition of much of his recent work. (I even thought I spotted a reference to Talking It Over as Jean is warning Julian not to write about her and Stephen. “I’ll tell you the truth, and don’t you ever fucking use it, not even deeply disguised in some novel where I appear as Jeanette [Gillian?] and Stephen is Stuart.”) I see his oeuvre as a left-skewed bell curve: three of the first four novels are not worth reading and five of the last seven have also been dubious, but with much excellent material in between. It’s been a case of diminishing returns from The Sense of an Ending onwards, but I have many excellent rereads to look forward to. My next two will be A History of the World in 10½ Chapters – a typically playful take on documented history and legend – and Nothing to Be Frightened Of, his forthright memoir about mortality. If you’ve not read Barnes before, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start as you’ll get a taster of his trademark topics and dry wit, but delving into his back catalogue may well prove more rewarding.
With thanks to Jonathan Cape (Penguin) for the free copy for review.
Evensong by Stewart O’Nan (2025)
The comparisons to Kent Haruf and Elizabeth Strout in the press materials and pre-publication reviews are spot on: this is the kind of quiet American novel that appeals for its small-town ambience and cosy community of lovably quirky people with everyday problems. O’Nan grew up in Pittsburgh, the setting for this fourth book in a loose series based around the character Emily Maxwell – I did have a slight feeling of having wandered into a variant of Olive, Again partway through, but it wasn’t a major stumbling block for me. The generally elderly, female members of the Humpty Dumpty Club form a constellation of care: they help each other out by driving to hospital appointments, picking up prescriptions and groceries – and, when worst comes to worst, planning funeral services.
Often, the short chapters are vignettes starring one or more of the central characters. When Joan has a fall down her stairs and lands in rehab, Kitzi takes over as de facto HDC leader. A musical couple’s hoarding and cat colony become her main preoccupation. Emily deals with family complications I didn’t fully understand for want of backstory, and Arlene realizes dementia is affecting her daily life. Susie, the “baby” of the group at 63, takes in Joan’s cat, Oscar, and meets someone through online dating. The novel covers four months of 2022–23, anchored by a string of holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas); events such as John Fetterman’s election and ongoing Covid precautions; and the cycle of the Church year.
O’Nan encourages affection for his salt-of-the-earth folk who vote Democrat, support the Steelers and attend liberal Protestant churches as a matter of course. They lead simple lives and cope with failing health with as much dignity as they can. There’s something to be said for celebrating older, ordinary people, who don’t often get a look-in in contemporary fiction. But I struggled with the ensemble nature of the cast – well over halfway through I was still trying to work out who everyone was; it doesn’t help that there are a Gene, a Jean and a Joan – and the extreme verisimilitude. The Humpty Dumpty Club exists in real life, but these women could be your aunt or choir director from Any Town, USA. Were my mother still around, this would be her, running errands and helping neighbours in suburban Pittsburgh, and I would be visiting the area annually. That combination of the mundane and the too close to home conspired to make this more of a slog than expected. I also feel I gleaned no distinct understanding of O’Nan as a writer – especially as other novels of his that I own (The Night Country and A Prayer for the Dying) are classed under horror. I’ll just have to try more.
First published in November 2025 by Atlantic Monthly Press in the USA. With thanks to Grove Press UK for the free copy for review.
While these were much anticipated reads for me, I ultimately found them a little underwhelming. I think I wanted a bit more raging against the dying of the light.
Have you read either or both of these authors? What can you recommend by them, or what will you seek out?
The 2026 Releases I’ve Read So Far
I happen to have read a number of pre-release books, generally for paid reviews for Foreword and Shelf Awareness. (I already previewed six upcoming novellas here.) Most of my reviews haven’t been published yet, so I’ll just give brief excerpts and ratings here to pique the interest. I link to the few that have been published already, then list the 2026 books I’m currently reading. Soon I’ll follow up with a list of my Most Anticipated titles.
Simple Heart by Cho Haejin (trans. from Korean by Jamie Chang) [Other Press, Feb. 3]: A transnational adoptee returns to Korea to investigate her roots through a documentary film. A poignant novel that explores questions of abandonment and belonging through stories of motherhood.
The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging by Noelle Cook [Broadleaf Books, Jan. 6]: An in-depth, empathetic study of “conspirituality” (a philosophy that blends conspiracy theories and New Age beliefs), filtered through the outlook of two women involved in storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The Reservation by Rebecca Kauffman [Counterpoint, Feb. 24]: The staff members of a fine-dining restaurant each have a moment in the spotlight during the investigation of a theft. Linked short stories depict character interactions and backstories with aplomb. Big-hearted; for J. Ryan Stradal fans.
Taking Flight by Kashmira Sheth (illus. Nicolo Carozzi) [Dial Press, April 21]: A touching story of the journeys of three refugee children who might be from Tibet, Syria and Ukraine. The drawing style reminded me of Chris Van Allsburg’s. This left a tear in my eye. 
Currently reading:
(Blurb excerpts from Goodreads; all are e-copies apart from Evensong)
Visitations: Poems by Julia Alvarez [Knopf, April 7]: “Alvarez traces her life [via] memories of her childhood in the Dominican Republic … and the sisters who forged her, her move to America …, the search for mental health and beauty, redemption, and success.”
Our Numbered Bones by Katya Balen [Canongate, 12 Feb. / HarperVia, Feb. 17]: Her “adult debut [is] about a grieving author who heads to rural England for a writer’s retreat, only to stumble upon an incredible historical find” – a bog body!
Let’s Make Cocktails!: A Comic Book Cocktail Book by Sarah Becan [Ten Speed Press, April 7]: “With vivid, easy-to-follow graphics, Becan guides readers through basic techniques such as shaking, stirring, muddling, and more. With all recipes organized by spirit for easy access, readers will delight in the panelized step-by-step comic instructions.”
Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Caroline Bicks [Hogarth/Hodder & Stoughton, April 21]: “A fascinating, first of its kind exploration of Stephen King and his … iconic early books, based on … research and interviews with King … conducted by the first scholar … given … access to his private archives.”
Men I Hate: A Memoir in Essays by Lynette D’Amico [Mad Creek Books, Feb. 17]: “Can a lesbian who loves a trans man still call herself a lesbian? As D’Amico tries to engage more deeply with the man she is married to, she looks at all the men—historical figures, politicians, men in her family—in search of clear dividing lines”.
See One, Do One, Teach One: The Art of Becoming a Doctor: A Graphic Memoir by Grace Farris [W. W. Norton & Company, March 24]: “In her graphic memoir debut, Grace looks back on her journey through medical school and residency.”
Nighthawks by Lisa Martin [University of Alberta Press, April 2]: “These poems parse aspects of human embodiment—emotion, relationship, mortality—and reflect on how to live through moments of intense personal and political upheaval.”
Evensong by Stewart O’Nan [published in USA in November 2025; Grove Press UK, 1 Jan.]: “An intimate, moving novel that follows The Humpty Dumpty Club, a group of women of a certain age who band together to help one another and their circle of friends in Pittsburgh.”
This Is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith by Darcey Steinke [HarperOne, Feb. 24]: “In chapters that trace the body—The Spine, The Heart, The Knees, and more—[Steinke] introduces sufferers to new and ancient understandings of pain through history, philosophy, religion, pop culture, and reported human experience.”
American Fantasy by Emma Straub [Riverhead, April 7 / Michael Joseph (Penguin), 14 May]: “When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous 1990s boyband, and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them for thirty years.”
Additional pre-release review books on my shelf:
Shooting Up by Jonathan Tepper [Constable, 19 Feb.]: “Born into a family of American missionaries driven by unwavering faith … Jonathan’s home became a sanctuary for society’s most broken … AIDS hit Spain a few years after it exploded in New York and, like an invisible plague, … claimed countless lives – including those … in the family rehabilitation centre.”
Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael [Salt Publishing, 9 Feb.]: “Based on the real correspondence between Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens … [Gaskell] visits a young Irish prostitute in Manchester’s New Bailey prison. … [A] story of hypocrisy and suppression, and how Elizabeth navigates the … prejudice of the day to help the young girl”.
Will you look out for one or more of these?
Any other 2026 reads you can recommend?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 