Book Serendipity, April to May 2024
I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. Of course, the truer term would be synchronicity, but the branding has stuck. In Liz Jensen’s Your Wild and Precious Life, she mentions that Carl Jung coined the term “synchronicity” for what he described as “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” I like thinking that it’s not just a matter of luck.
This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. I would normally have waited until the end of June, but I had way too many coincidences stored up! Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to finding them. People frequently ask how I remember all of these incidents. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away.
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- Reading two King Lear updates at the same time: Private Rites by Julia Armfield and Daughter by Claudia Dey. The former has been specifically marketed as a “lesbian Lear,” but I had no idea that the latter also features two sisters plus a younger half-sister and their interactions with a larger-than-life father.
- Eating beans straight out of the tin in The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
- Dead mice in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
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- Cloth holding the jaw of a corpse closed in one story from Barcelona by Mary Costello and A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux.
- Others see a character’s wife as a whore but the husband is oblivious in The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
Setting up a game of solitaire in The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
- Main character called Mona in Daughter by Claudia Dey and Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin.
- Being surprised at an older man still having his natural hair colour in one story of Barcelona by Mary Costello (where he’s aged 76) and Life in the Balance by Jim Down (where it’s Alan Bennett, at 84!).
- A character named Anjali in Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan and Moral Injuries by Christie Watson.
- A character named Cherry in Daughter by Claudia Dey and one story of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things by Naomi Wood.
- My second memoir in two months in which a twentysomething son dies suddenly of a presumed heart problem: Fi by Alexandra Fuller, followed by Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen. (And a third in which his young friend died in the same way: The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater.) Also, Fuller and Jensen both see signs of their sons’ continued presence in bird sightings.
- Scratches on the inside of a coffin as proof of being buried alive in one story of Barcelona by Mary Costello and Life in the Balance by Jim Down.
- Surprise that one didn’t know the exact moment that a loved one died in one story of Barcelona by Mary Costello and Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen.
- Discussion of the meaning of brain stem death and a mention of meningococcal sepsis in Life in the Balance by Jim Down and Moral Injuries by Christie Watson.
- A scene set in a Denny’s diner in The Whole Staggering Mystery by Sylvia Brownrigg and After Dark by Haruki Murakami.
- A description of halal butchery in Barcelona by Mary Costello and Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad.
- A mention of ballet choreographer George Balanchine in Dances by Nicole Cuffy and The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater.
- A woman has an affair with a female postal worker in Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin and The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, both of which I DNFed.
- A character named Magdalena in Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream and The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz. The latter goes by Lena, which is also the name of the main character in Jungle House by Julianne Pachico. And there’s a character named Lina in Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad.
- Being presented with powdered milk in Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream and Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor.
- First I read a novel about a convent plagued by mice (Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood). Then I read a memoir about a convent plagued by feral cats (Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream).
- Buffalo, New York as a setting in Consent by Jill Ciment and The Age of Loneliness by Laura Marris. It’s also mentioned in Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad.
- Watching pigeons on one’s balcony in Keep by Jenny Haysom, Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen, and The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater.
The family’s pet chicken is cooked for dinner in Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote and The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz.
- The mother is named Gloria in Consent by Jill Ciment and Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates (and The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish, a DNF).
- A character named Anton in The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz and Jungle House by Julianne Pachico.
- A cat named Dog in The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn and a dog named Tiger in Jungle House by Julianne Pachico.
- Two nature books that feature wild cold-water swimming (though don’t they all these days?!): In All Weathers by Matt Gaw and Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen.
- Two nature books that mention W.H. Hudson: In All Weathers by Matt Gaw and North with the Spring by Edwin Way Teale.
A large anonymous donation to a church in Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue and Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (£10–11, which was much more in the 18th century of the former than in the 1950s of the latter).
- A mention of Poughkeepsie, New York in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan and Woman of Interest by Tracy O’Neill.
- A 1950s scene of perusing a lipstick display in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.
- A woman with a broken leg worries about how her garden will fare in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
- The same silent film image of a spaceship entering the moon’s eye (from Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon) appears in Knife by Salman Rushdie and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. (I think this is the uncanniest coincidence of all this time!)
- A cleric who wears a biretta in Excellent Women by Barbara Pym and Daughters of the House by Michèle Roberts.
- A Black single mother who believes in the power of crystals in Company by Shannon Sanders and Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace.
- An older woman really doesn’t want to leave her home but is moving into a retirement facility in Keep by Jenny Haysom and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. (There’s also a young woman who refuses to leave her house in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown.)
A man throws his tie over his shoulder before eating in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Keep by Jenny Haysom.
- A mother writing a bad check becomes an important plot point in Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace.
A scene of self-induced abortion in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Sleeping with Cats by Marge Piercy.
- The Yiddish word feh (an expression of disappointment) appears in Feh by Shalom Auslander (no surprise there!) but also in A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg, both of which are pre-release books I am reading for Shelf Awareness reviews.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Carol Shields Prize Reading: Daughter and Dances
Two more Carol Shields Prize nominees today: from the shortlist, the autofiction-esque story of a father and daughter, both writers, and their dysfunctional family; and, from the longlist, a debut novel about the physical and emotional rigours of being a Black ballet dancer.
Daughter by Claudia Dey
Like her protagonist, Mona Dean, Dey is a playwright, but the Canadian author has clearly stated that her third novel is not autofiction, even though it may feel like it. (Fragmentary sections, fluidity between past and present, a lack of speech marks; not to mention that Dey quotes Rachel Cusk and there’s even a character named Sigrid.) Mona’s father, Paul, is a serial adulterer who became famous for his novel Daughter and hasn’t matched that success in the 20 years since. He left Mona and Juliet’s mother, Natasha, for Cherry, with whom he had another daughter, Eva. There have been two more affairs. Every time Mona meets Paul for a meal or a coffee, she’s returned to a childhood sense of helplessness and conflict.
I had a sordid contract with my father. I was obsessed with my childhood. I had never gotten over my childhood. Cherry had been cruel to me as a child, and I wanted to get back at Cherry, and so I guarded my father’s secrets like a stash of weapons, waiting for the moment I could strike.
It took time for me to warm to Dey’s style, which is full of flat, declarative sentences, often overloaded with character names. The phrasing can be simple and repetitive, with overuse of comma splices. At times Mona’s unemotional affect seems to be at odds with the melodrama of what she’s recounting: an abortion, a rape, a stillbirth, etc. I twigged to what Dey was going for here when I realized the two major influences were Hemingway and Shakespeare.
Mona’s breakthrough play is Margot, based on the life of one Hemingway granddaughter, and she’s working on a sequel about another. There are four women in Paul’s life, and Mona once says of him during a period of writer’s block, “He could not write one true sentence.” So Paul (along with Mona, along with Dey) may be emulating Hemingway.
And then there’s the King Lear setup. (I caught on to this late, perhaps because I was also reading a more overt Lear update at the time, Private Rites by Julia Armfield.) The larger-than-life father; the two older daughters and younger half-sister; the resentment and estrangement. Dey makes the parallel explicit when Mona, musing on her Hemingway-inspired oeuvre, asks, “Why had Shakespeare not called the play King Lear’s Daughters?”
Were it not for this intertextuality, it would be a much less interesting book. And, to be honest, the style was not my favourite. There were some lines that really irked me (“The flowers they were considering were flamboyant to her eye, she wanted less flamboyant flowers”; “Antoine barked. He was barking.”; “Outside, it sunned. Outside, it hailed.”). However, rather like Sally Rooney, Dey has prioritized straightforward readability. I found that I read this quickly, almost as if in a trance, inexorably drawn into this family’s drama. 
Related reads: Monsters by Claire Dederer, The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright, The Wife by Meg Wolitzer, Mrs. Hemingway by Naomi Wood
With thanks to publicist Nicole Magas and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the free e-copy for review.
Also from the shortlist:
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan – The only novel that is on both the CSP and Women’s Prize shortlists. I dutifully borrowed a copy from the library, but the combination of the heavy subject matter (Sri Lanka’s civil war and the Tamil Tigers resistance movement) and the very small type in the UK hardback quickly defeated me, even though I was enjoying Sashi’s quietly resolute voice and her medical training to work in a field hospital. I gave it a brief skim. The author researched this second novel for 20 years, and her narrator is determined to make readers grasp what went on: “You must understand: that word, terrorist, is too simple for the history we have lived … You must understand: There is no single day on which a war begins.” I know from Laura and Marcie that this is top-class historical fiction, never mawkish or worthy, so I may well try it some other time when I have the fortitude.
Longlisted:
Dances by Nicole Cuffy
This was a buddy read with Laura (see her review); I think we both would have liked to see it on the shortlist as, though we’re not dancers ourselves, we’re attracted to the artistry and physicality of ballet. It’s always a privilege to get an inside glimpse of a rarefied world, and to see people at work, especially in a field that requires single-mindedness and self-discipline. Cuffy’s debut novel focuses on 22-year-old Celine Cordell, who becomes the first Black female principal in the New York City Ballet. Cece marvels at the distance between her Brooklyn upbringing – a single mother and drug-dealing older brother, Paul – and her new identity as a celebrity who has brand endorsements and gets stopped on the street for selfies.
Even though Kaz, the director, insists that “Dance has no race,” Cece knows it’s not true. (And Kaz in some ways exaggerates her difference, creating a role for her in a ballet based around Gullah folklore from South Carolina.) Cece has always had to work harder than the others in the company to be accepted:
Ballet has always been about the body. The white body, specifically. So they watched my Black body, waited for it to confirm their prejudices, grew ever more anxious as it failed to do so, again and again.
A further complication is her relationship with Jasper, her white dance partner. It’s an open secret in the company that they’re together, but to the press they remain coy. Cece’s friends Irine and Ryn support her through rocky times, and her former teachers, Luca and Galina, are steadfast in their encouragement. Late on, Cece’s search for Paul, who has been missing for five years, becomes a surprisingly major element. While the sibling bond helps the novel stand out, I most enjoyed the descriptions of dancing. All of the sections and chapters are titled after ballet terms, and even when I was unfamiliar with the vocabulary or the music being referenced, I could at least vaguely picture all the moves in my head. It takes real skill to render other art forms in words. I’ll look forward to following Cuffy’s career. 
With thanks to publicist Nicole Magas and One World for the free e-copy for review.
Currently reading:
(Shortlist) Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote
(Longlist) Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad
Up next:
(Longlist) You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy
I’m aiming for one more batch of reviews (and a prediction) before the winner is announced on 13 May.
Book Serendipity, March to April 2024
I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. The following are in roughly chronological order.
- I encountered quotes from “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats on the same day in Immanuel by Matthew McNaught and Waiting for the Monsoon by Rod Nordland. A week or so later, I found another allusion to it – a “rough _________ slouching toward ________” – in Mothership by Greg Wrenn.
- Reading my second memoir this year in which the author’s mother bathed them until they were age 17 (in other words, way past when it ceased to be appropriate): I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy was followed by Mothership by Greg Wrenn.
- Quoting a poem with the word “riven” in it (by Christian Wiman) in Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown and (by a character in the novel) in Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson. The word “riven” (which is really not a very common one, is it?) also showed up in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs. And then “riving” in one of the poems in The Intimacy of Spoons by Jim Minick.
- East Timor as a destination in Waiting for the Monsoon by Rod Nordland and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.
- Quoting John Donne in Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (to which a Donne line is the epigraph); mimicking Donne in one poem of Fields Away by Sarah Wardle.
- “Who do you think you are?” as a question an abusive adult asks of a child in The Beggar Maid (aka Who Do You Think You Are?) by Alice Munro and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.
- Sylvia Plath is mentioned in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray … and Katherine Mansfield in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro.
- Mosquitoes are mentioned in a poem in Rapture’s Road by Seán Hewitt and Divisible by Itself and One by Kae Tempest.
- Reading two memoirs that quote a Rumi poem (and that released on 9 April and that I reviewed for Shelf Awareness): Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller and Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott. (Rumi was also quoted as an epigraph in Viv Fogel’s poetry collection Imperfect Beginnings.)
- Bereavement memoirs that seek significance in eagle sightings (i.e. as visitations from the dead): Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller.
- Snyder’s pretzels as a snack in Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott and Come and Get It by Kiley Reid.
- Reading two C-PTSD memoirs at the same time: A Flat Place by Noreen Masud and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.
Information about coral reefs dying in Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.
- The gay slang term “twink” appears in The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.
- Assisting a mother who reads tarot cards in Intervals by Marianne Brooker and The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. (Tarot is also read in First Love by Lilly Dancyger and The Future by Catherine Leroux.)
- An Asian American character who plays poker in a graphic novel: Advocate by Eddie Ahn and Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang.
- Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments, which I was also reading at the time, is mentioned in Intervals by Marianne Brooker.
An Uncle Frank in an Irish novel with no speech marks: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.
- Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is quoted in Some Kids I Taught & What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy and How to Raise a Viking by Helen Russell.
- Using quarters for laundry in Come and Get It by Kiley Reid and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.
- A scene of someone watching from a lawn chair as someone else splits wood in Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray.
Quotes from cultural theorist Sara Ahmed in Intervals by Marianne Brooker and A Flat Place by Noreen Masud.
- I read about windows being blocked up because of high taxes on the same evening in Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.
- I saw Quink ink mentioned in The Silence by Gillian Clarke and Trespasses by Louise Kennedy on the same evening.
- The song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” is mentioned in You’re on Your Own, Snoopy by Charles M. Schulz and Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal.
- A pet magpie in George by Frieda Hughes and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.
- A character tests to see what will happen (will God strike them down?) when they mess with the Host (by stealing the ciborium or dropping a wafer on the floor, respectively) in A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.
- Marrying the ‘wrong’ brother in The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.
Indigenous author, Native versus Catholic religion, and descriptions of abuse and cultural suppression at residential schools in Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.
- Teen girls obsessed with ‘sad girl’ poetry, especially by Sylvia Plath, in First Love by Lilly Dancyger and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.
- “Hyacinth” is a poem in Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space by Catherine Barnett, and “Hyacinth Girl” a story in Cocktail by Lisa Alward. (Hyacinths are also mentioned in a poem in The Iron Bridge by Rebecca Hurst.)
- A character named Sissy in A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
- Harming amphibians, whether deliberately or accidentally, in a story in Barcelona by Mary Costello, a poem in Baby Schema by Isabel Galleymore, and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.
- A significant character called Paul in Dances by Nicole Cuffy, Daughter by Claudia Dey (those two were both longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize), and Moral Injuries by Christie Watson.
- Out of Africa (the film and then the book), which I was looking through for the #1937Club, is mentioned in The Whole Staggering Mystery by Sylvia Brownrigg – her writer grandfather lived in Nairobi’s “Happy Valley” in the 1930s.
- Reading two novels at the same time in which a teen girl’s plans to study medicine are derailed by war: Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan and The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Thoughts on the Women’s Prize and Carol Shields Prize Longlists
Yesterday was my 9th blog anniversary! I love that it coincides with International Women’s Day.
It’s traditionally also been the day of the Women’s Prize longlist announcement, but the past two years they’ve brought it forward to pre-empt news of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction longlist. It’s hard not to see these prizes as being in competition, though the CSP is only for U.S. and Canadian residents; also considers short story collections, graphic novels, and work in translation; and is more deliberate about including trans and nonbinary authors.
Like last year, their lists are extremely different. In 2023 there was no crossover; this year only one novel appears on both (Brotherless Night). Although it’s easier for me to feel engaged with the WP, I’m drawn to reading much more from the CSP list.
Women’s Prize
Of my predictions, only 1 was correct, compared to last year’s 4. I got none of my personal wishes, as in 2023. I guess making a wish list is a kiss of death! Once again, we have a mix of new and established authors, with a full half of the list being debut work. Nine of the authors are BIPOC. I’ve read 2 of the nominees and would be agreeable to reading up to 6 more. My library always buys the entire longlist, so I’ll eventually get the chance to read them, but not soon enough to add to the conversation.
Read:
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (CORRECT PREDICTION): Enright’s astute eighth novel traces the family legacies of talent and trauma through the generations descended from a famous Irish poet. The novel switches between Nell’s funny, self-deprecating narration and third-person vignettes about her mother, Carmel. Cycles of abandonment and abuse characterize the McDaraghs. Enright convincingly pinpoints the narcissism and codependency behind their love-hate relationships. 
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo: Easy to warm to even if you’ve never played and know nothing about squash. A debut novella that is illuminating on what is expected of young Gujarati women in England; on sisterhood and a bereaved family’s dynamic; but especially on what it is like to feel sealed off from life by grief. This offbeat, delicate coming-of-age story eschews literary fireworks. In place of stylistic flair is the sense that each word and detail has been carefully placed. 
Will read:
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad – requested from the library
8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee – on my Kindle from NetGalley
Interested in reading:
In Defence of the Act by Effie Black – queer novella, suicide theme
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott – Indigenous Canadian, postpartum depression theme
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy – Irish author, new motherhood theme
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord – Black sci-fi author
Maybe:
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan – see below
Not interested in reading:
Hangman by Maya Binyam – meh
The Maiden by Kate Foster – not keen on historical mysteries, and this looks very commercial
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville – will read more Grenville, but not this one any time soon
River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure – have read mixed reviews
Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie – disliked her debut novel
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan – enjoyed her first novel, but DNFed this
A Trace of Sun by Pam Williams – nah
See also the reactions posts from Eric and Laura.
Predictions:
I’d expect to see two or three of the Irish writers on the shortlist, plus probably Western Lane, Enter Ghost, and a couple of other wildcards (but not the SF novel). Enter Ghost, set in Palestine, would certainly be a timely winner…
What comes next:
Shortlist (6 titles) on 24 April and winner on 13 June.
Carol Shields Prize
After I badgered the administrators for six months about Q&A responses that never materialized, they kindly offered me digital review copies of any of the nominees that I’m not able to easily access in the UK. This is, in general, a more rigorous list of highbrow literary fiction, with some slight genre diversity thanks to Catton and Makkai (plus a mixture of historical and contemporary fiction, three story collections, and one book in translation); 10 of 15 authors are BIPOC. There are further details about all the nominees on the website.
Read:
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai – When an invitation comes from her boarding school alma mater, Granby, to teach a two-week course on podcasting, Bodie indulges her obsession with the 1995 murder of her former roommate. Makkai has taken her cues from the true crime genre and constructed a convincing mesh of evidence and theories. She so carefully crafts her pen portraits, and so intimately involves us in Bodie’s psyche, that it’s impossible not to get invested. This is timely, daring, intelligent, enthralling storytelling. (Delighted to see this nominated as I hoped the WP would recognize it last year.)
Skimmed and didn’t care for:
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Loot by Tania James
Will read:
Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang – requested from the library
Know little or nothing about but will happily read if I get a chance:
Cocktail: Stories by Lisa Alward
Dances by Nicole Cuffy
Daughter by Claudia Dey
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad
You Were Watching from the Sand: Short Stories by Juliana Lamy
The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou – has just won Canada Reads
A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power
Chrysalis: Stories by Anuja Varghese
Less interested in reading:
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan – Sri Lankan civil war setting
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote – Fictionalized family memoir with 9 POVs
A History of Burning by Janika Oza – Big Indian-Ugandan multigenerational story
Predictions:
Not the first clue. Come back to me after I’ve read a few more.
What comes next:
Shortlist (5 titles) on 9 April and winner on 13 May.
What have you read, or might you read, from the longlists?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 