Book Serendipity, September through Mid-November
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. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. 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.
Thanks to Emma and Kay for posting their own Book Serendipity moments! (Liz is always good about mentioning them as she goes along, in the text of her reviews.)
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- An obsession with Judy Garland in My Judy Garland Life by Susie Boyt (no surprise there), which I read back in January, and then again in Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage by Kelly Foster Lundquist.
- Leaving a suicide note hinting at drowning oneself before disappearing in World War II Berlin; and pretending to be Jewish to gain better treatment in Aimée and Jaguar by Erica Fischer and The Lilac People by Milo Todd.
- Leaving one’s clothes on a bank to suggest drowning in The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, read over the summer, and then Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet.
- A man expecting his wife to ‘save’ him in Amanda by H.S. Cross and Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage by Kelly Foster Lundquist.
A man tells his story of being bullied as a child in Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood and Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist.
- References to Vincent Minnelli and Walt Whitman in a story from Touchy Subjects by Emma Donoghue and Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist.
- The prospect of having one’s grandparents’ dining table in a tiny city apartment in Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist and Wreck by Catherine Newman.
- Ezra Pound’s dodgy ideology was an element in The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld, which I reviewed over the summer, and recurs in Swann by Carol Shields.
- A character has heart palpitations in Andrew Miller’s story from The BBC National Short Story Award 2025 anthology and Endling by Maria Reva.
- A (semi-)nude man sees a worker outside the window and closes the curtains in one story of Cathedral by Raymond Carver and one from Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin.
- The call of the cuckoo is mentioned in The Edge of Silence by Neil Ansell and Of All that Ends by Günter Grass.
A couple in Italy who have a Fiat in Of All that Ends by Günter Grass and Caoilinn Hughes’s story from The BBC National Short Story Award 2025 anthology.
- Balzac’s excessive coffee consumption was mentioned in Au Revoir, Tristesse by Viv Groskop, one of my 20 Books of Summer, and then again in The Writer’s Table by Valerie Stivers.
- The main character is rescued from her suicide plan by a madcap idea in The Wedding People by Alison Espach and Endling by Maria Reva.
- The protagonist is taking methotrexate in Sea, Poison by Caren Beilin and Wreck by Catherine Newman.
- A man wears a top hat in Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet and one story of Cathedral by Raymond Carver.
- A man named Angus is the murderer in Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet and Swann by Carol Shields.
The thing most noticed about a woman is a hair on her chin in the story “Pluck” in Touchy Subjects by Emma Donoghue and Swann by Carol Shields.
- The female main character makes a point of saying she doesn’t wear a bra in Sea, Poison by Caren Beilin and Find Him! by Elaine Kraf.
- A home hairdressing business in one story of Cathedral by Raymond Carver and Emil & the Detectives by Erich Kästner.
- Painting a bathroom fixture red: a bathtub in The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith, one of my 20 Books of Summer; and a toilet in Find Him! by Elaine Kraf.
- A teenager who loses a leg in a road accident in individual stories from A Wild Swan by Michael Cunningham and the Racket anthology (ed. Lisa Moore).
- Digging up the casket of a loved one in the wee hours features in Pet Sematary by Stephen King, one of my 20 Books of Summer; and one story of Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link.
- A character named Dani in the story “The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea” by Sheila Heti and The Silver Book by Olivia Laing; later, author Dani Netherclift (Vessel).
Obsessive cultivation of potatoes in Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet and The Martian by Andy Weir.
- The story of Dante Gabriel Rossetti digging up the poems he buried with his love is recounted in Sharon Bala’s story in the Racket anthology (ed. Lisa Moore) and one of the stories in Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link.
- Putting French word labels on objects in Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay and Find Him! by Elaine Kraf.
A man with part of his finger missing in Find Him! by Elaine Kraf and Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl.
- In Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor, I came across a mention of the Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who is a character in The Silver Book by Olivia Laing.
- A character who works in an Ohio hardware store in Flashlight by Susan Choi and Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (two one-word-titled doorstoppers I skimmed from the library). There’s also a family-owned hardware store in Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay.
- A drowned father – I feel like drownings in general happen much more often in fiction than they do in real life – in The Homecoming by Zoë Apostolides, Flashlight by Susan Choi, and Vessel by Dani Netherclift (as well as multiple drownings in The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, one of my 20 Books of Summer).
- A memoir by a British man who’s hard of hearing but has resisted wearing hearing aids in the past: first The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus over the summer, then The Edge of Silence by Neil Ansell.
A loved one is given a six-month cancer prognosis but lives another (nearly) two years in All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert and Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl.
- A man’s brain tumour is diagnosed by accident while he’s in hospital after an unrelated accident in Flashlight by Susan Choi and Saltwash by Andrew Michael Hurley.
- Famous lost poems in What We Can Know by Ian McEwan and Swann by Carol Shields.
- A description of the anatomy of the ear and how sound vibrates against tiny bones in The Edge of Silence by Neil Ansell and What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher.
- Notes on how to make decadent mashed potatoes in Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist, Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry, and Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl.
- Transplant surgery on a dog in Russia and trepanning appear in The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov and the poetry collection Common Disaster by M. Cynthia Cheung.
- Audre Lorde, whose Sister Outsider I was reading at the time, is mentioned in Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl. Lorde’s line about the master’s tools never dismantling the master’s house is also paraphrased in Spent by Alison Bechdel.
- An adult appears as if fully formed in a man’s apartment but needs to be taught everything, including language and toilet training, in The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov and Find Him! by Elaine Kraf.
Two sisters who each wrote a memoir about their upbringing in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Vessel by Dani Netherclift.
- The fact that ragwort is bad for horses if it gets mixed up into their feed was mentioned in Ghosts of the Farm by Nicola Chester and Understorey by Anna Chapman Parker.
- The Sylvia Plath line “the O-gape of complete despair” was mentioned in Vessel by Dani Netherclift, then I read it in its original place in Ariel later the same day.
- A mention of the Baba Yaga folk tale (an old woman who lives in the forest in a hut on chicken legs) in Common Disaster by M. Cynthia Cheung and Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda. [There was a copy of Sophie Anderson’s children’s book The House with Chicken Legs in the Little Free Library around that time, too.]
- Coming across a bird that seems to have simply dropped dead in Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, Vessel by Dani Netherclift, and Rainforest by Michelle Paver.
- Contemplating a mound of hair in Vessel by Dani Netherclift (at Auschwitz) and Year of the Water Horse by Janice Page (at a hairdresser’s).
- Family members are warned that they should not see the body of their loved one in Vessel by Dani Netherclift and Rainforest by Michelle Paver.
- A father(-in-law)’s swift death from oesophageal cancer in Year of the Water Horse by Janice Page and Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry.
- I saw John Keats’s concept of negative capability discussed first in My Little Donkey by Martha Cooley and then in Understorey by Anna Chapman Parker.
- I started two books with an Anne Sexton epigraph on the same day: A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan and Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth.
- Mentions of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff and Sister Outsider for Audre Lorde, both of which I was reading for Novellas in November.
- Mentions of specific incidents from Samuel Pepys’s diary in Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff and Gin by Shonna Milliken Humphrey, both of which I was reading for Nonfiction November/Novellas in November.
- Starseed (aliens living on earth in human form) in Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino and The Conspiracists by Noelle Cook.
- Reading nonfiction by two long-time New Yorker writers at the same time: Life on a Little-Known Planet by Elizabeth Kolbert and Joyride by Susan Orlean.
- The breaking of a mirror seems like a bad omen in The Spare Room by Helen Garner and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
The author’s husband (who has a name beginning with P) is having an affair with a lawyer in Catching Sight by Deni Elliott and Joyride by Susan Orlean.
- Mentions of Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift in Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl and The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer; I promptly ordered the Hyde secondhand!
- The protagonist fears being/is accused of trying to steal someone else’s cat in Minka and Curdy by Antonia White and Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen by P.G. Wodehouse, both of which I was reading for Novellas in November.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
R.I.P. Reads, Part II: Feito, King, Link, Paver & Taylor
Soon it’ll be all novellas, all the time around here. But first I have a few more October reads to review.
A belated Happy Halloween! As a kid in the U.S. suburbs, I loved Halloween. It was such fun planning costumes – pumpkin, cowgirl and picnic table are a few memorable ones that I remember thanks to photographs – and my hoard of candy would last me for months. But these days, I tend to be pretty grumpy about the holiday. It never used to be a thing in the UK, but it has been creeping in year on year. I don’t mind a creatively carved jack o’ lantern, tasteful decoration or clever homemade costume. What does get my goat is plastic tat, gratuitous gore and the dozens of sodden sweets and wrappers littering the streets after last night’s rain and wind.
Anyway, we enjoyed the stormy evening because we spent it at friends’ having delicious autumnal lasagne and parkin, playing instruments and board games and eavesdropping on the trick-or-treaters. I had to laugh when J said “Take a couple” and one little girl replied, “That’s okay, I don’t really like sweeties.” These friends were keeping some ancient traditions alive: carving a turnip, wearing one’s clothes inside out and walking between two fires to ward off fairies. They also put potatoes in the treats bowl, which definitely confused the kids. (One did take a spud!)
I really leaned into the Readers Imbibing Peril reading this year. I had a somewhat lacklustre first batch, but these five were great!
Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito (2025)
This was among my Most Anticipated titles of the year – for the bonkers blurb but also because of how much I’d enjoyed Feito’s debut, Mrs. March. Both novels go deep with mentally disturbed protagonists. The first channeled Patricia Highsmith with its stylish psychological suspense; here we have a full-on blend of slasher horror and sadistic humour, wrapped up in a Victorian pastiche. Winifred Notty (naughty girl indeed) is the new governess at Ensor House on the Yorkshire moors. She couldn’t care less about her charges, Andrew and Drusilla. No, she’s here to exact revenge on the master of the house, Mr. Pounds. But not before she’s dispatched many a random servant and baby. “Bodies pile up in the attic.” Her brutal fantasies are so realistic that at times it’s difficult to separate them from what she actually carries out. Miss Notty is also a highly sexual being whose fixations could certainly be interpreted in Freudian ways. Feito spins a traumatic backstory for her antiheroine but doesn’t make it any excuse for her gleeful reign of terror. It’s delicious fun, especially for a Victorianist, but don’t attempt if you’re squeamish. (Read via NetGalley)
Misery by Stephen King (1987)
All these years I’d had two 1989–1990 films conflated: Misery and My Left Foot. I’ve not seen either but as an impressionable young’un I made a mental mash-up of the posters’ stills into a film featuring Daniel Day-Lewis as a paralyzed writer and Kathy Bates as a madwoman wielding an axe. (Turns out the left foot is relevant!)
Paul Sheldon wakes in a fog of pain, his legs shattered from a one-car accident on a snowy Colorado backroad. He’s famous for his historical potboilers about Misery Chastain but, like Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, has killed off his most beloved character. Except now he’s in the home of Annie Wilkes, his rescuer and biggest fan, and she demands he resurrect Misery. Annie is a former nurse who left the profession after numerous suspicious deaths on her watch. She keeps Paul dependent on her – and on Novril, a fictional opiate. In a case of ‘Scheherazade complex’, he’ll be her prisoner until he’s completed a sequel that’s to her satisfaction. Compared to Pet Sematary, the only other King novel I’ve read, this was slow to draw me in because of the repetitive scenes in a claustrophobic setting, and I wearied of the excerpts from Paul’s manuscript. But eventually I was riveted, desperate to know how Paul was going to get out of this predicament and what the final showdown could be. Extremes of pain and obsession make this an intense study of the psychology of a wretched pair. (Public library)
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link (2008)
This is a reissue edition geared towards young adults. All but one of the 10 stories were originally published in literary magazines or anthologies. The stories are long, some approaching novella length, and took me quite a while to read. I got through the first three and will save the rest for next year. In “The Wrong Grave,” a teen decides to dig up his dead girlfriend’s casket to reclaim the poems he rashly buried with her last year – as did Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which Link makes a point of mentioning. A terrific blend of spookiness and comedy ensues.
“The Wizards of Perfil” and the title story are 50-some and 60-some pages, respectively, which allows a lot of space for intriguing weirdness and side plots. In the former, Onion’s cousin Halsa is purchased to be a servant to a wizard. The cousins both have the gift of foresight but can’t get the wizards to take them seriously when they beg that something to be done to prevent human disasters. It’s a brilliant allegory of the danger of waiting for an external force – God, the government, whatever – to solve everything versus getting on with it yourself. In the title story, a group of teens are obsessed with a mysterious Doctor Who-esque television show called The Library, which colours all their interactions. The main character Jeremy’s father is an eccentric sci-fi novelist named Gordon Strangle Mars who has written his son into his latest plot in a disturbing way. Jeremy recently inherited a gas station and phone box in Las Vegas and occasionally calls the phone box to air his grievances and solicit supernatural aid. My only other experience of Link was a standalone story I was once sent for review, “The Summer People,” which I didn’t get on with, so I was surprised to encounter such top-notch fantasy/horror tales. (Little Free Library)
Rainforest by Michelle Paver (2025)
I’d read all three of Paver’s previous horror novels for adults (Thin Air, Dark Matter and Wakenhyrst) and found them easy, atmospheric reading but not nearly as scary as billed. This is her best yet. Set in 1973 on an expedition to Mexico, it has as its unreliable narrator Dr. Simon Corbett, an English entomologist. Adding to the findings of the archaeological dig he’s accompanying, he’ll be hunting for mantids (praying mantises, stick insects and the like) by fogging sacred trees with pesticides. He also experiments with taking a hallucinogenic plant extract used by the Indigenous shamans, hoping to be reunited with his lost love, Penelope.
We know that Corbett’s employment is tenuous and that he’s seeing a therapist. Paver authentically reproduces the casual racism and sexism of the time and seeds little hints that this protagonist may not be telling the whole truth about his relationship with Penelope. The long sequence where he’s lost in the jungle is fantastic. Corbett seems fated to repeat ancient masochistic rites, as if in penance for what he’s done wrong. My husband is an entomologist, so I was interested to read about period collecting practices. The novelty of the setting is a bonus to this high-quality psychological thriller and ghost story. (Public library)
Bone Broth by Alex Taylor (2025)
Ash is a trans man who starts working at a hole-in-the-wall ramen restaurant underneath a London railway arch. All he wants is to “pay for hormones, pay rent, [and] make enough to take a cutie on a date.” Bug’s Bones is run by an irascible elderly proprietor but staffed by a young multicultural bunch: Sock, Blue, Honey and Creamy. They quickly show Ash the ropes and within a month he’s turning out perfect bowls. He’s creeped out by the restaurant’s trademark bone broth, though, with its reminders of creatures turning into food. At the end of a drunken staff party, they find Bug lying dead and have to figure out what to do about it.
This storyline is in purple, whereas the alternating sequences of flashbacks are in a fleshy pinkish-red. As the two finally meet and meld, we see Ash trying to imitate the masculinity he sees on display while he waits for the surface to match what’s inside. I didn’t love the drawing style – though the full-page tableaux are a lot better than the high-school-sketchbook small panes – so that was an issue for me throughout, but this was an interesting, ghoulish take on the transmasc experience. Taylor won a First Graphic Novel Award.
With thanks to SelfMadeHero for the free copy for review.
And one DNF: Saltwash by Andrew Michael Hurley. (I was warned!) It had no menace or momentum at all…
Any stand-out creepy reading for you this year?
Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2025
As I said the other week, I sometimes wonder if designating a book as “Most Anticipated” is a curse – if the chosen books are doomed to fail to meet my expectations. Nonetheless, I can’t resist compiling such a list at least once each year.
Also on my radar: fiction by Claire Adam, Amy Bloom, Emma Donoghue, Sarah Hall, Michelle Huneven, Eowyn Ivey, Rachel Joyce, Heather Parry and Torrey Peters; nonfiction by Melissa Febos, Robert Macfarlane, Lucy Mangan, Suzanne O’Sullivan and Sophie Pavelle. (Further ahead, I’ll seek out I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays by Maris Kreizman and The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley in July, The Savage Landscape by Cal Flyn in Oct. and Tigers between Empires by Jonathan C. Slaght in Nov.)
However, below I’ve narrowed it down to the 25 books I’m most looking forward to for the first half of 2025, 15 fiction and 10 nonfiction. I’m impressed that 4 are in translation! And 22/25 are by women (all the fiction is). In release date order, with UK publication info given first if available. The blurbs are adapted from Goodreads. I’ve taken the liberty of using whichever cover is my favourite (almost always the U.S. one).
Fiction
Live Fast by Brigitte Giraud (trans. from the French by Cory Stockwell) [Feb. 11, Ecco]: I found out about this autofiction novella via an early Shelf Awareness review. It “follows one woman’s quest to comprehend the motorcycle accident that took the life of her partner Claude at age 41. The narrator … recounts the chain of events that led up to the fateful accident, tracing the tiny, maddening twists of fate that might have prevented its tragic outcome. Each chapter asks the rhetorical question, ‘what if’ … A sensitive elegy to her husband”.
The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica (trans. from the Spanish by Sarah Moses) [13 Feb., Pushkin; March 4, Scribner]: I wasn’t enamoured of the Argentinian author’s short stories, but Tender Is the Flesh was awesome. This is a short dystopian horror set in a convent. “In the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, the unworthy live in fear of the Superior Sister’s whip. … Risking her life, one of the unworthy keeps a diary in secret. Slowly, memories surface from a time before the world collapsed, before the Sacred Sisterhood became the only refuge. Then Lucía arrives.” (PDF copy for Shelf Awareness review)
Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito [13 Feb., Fourth Estate; Feb. 4, Liveright]: Feito’s debut, Mrs March, was deliciously odd, and I love the (U.S.) cover for this one. It sounds like a bonkers horror take on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, “a gruesome and gleeful new novel that probes the psyche of a bloodthirsty governess. Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children.”
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler [13 Feb., Chatto & Windus (Penguin) / Feb. 11, Knopf]: I’m not a Tyler completist, but she’s reliable and this is a novella! “It’s the day before her daughter’s wedding and things are not going well for Gail Baines. First …, she loses her job … Then her ex-husband Max turns up at her door expecting to stay for the festivities. He doesn’t even have a suit. Instead, he’s brought memories, a shared sense of humour – and a cat looking for a new home. … [And] daughter Debbie discovers her groom has been keeping a secret.” Susan vouches for this. (Edelweiss download / on order from library)
The Swell by Kat Gordon [27 Feb., Manilla Press (Bonnier Books UK)]: I got vague The Mercies (Kiran Millwood Hargrave) vibes from the blurb. “Iceland, 1910. In the middle of a severe storm two sisters, Freyja and Gudrun, rescue a mysterious, charismatic man from a shipwreck near their remote farm. Sixty-five years later, a young woman, Sigga, is spending time with her grandmother when they learn a body has been discovered on a mountainside near Reykjavik, perfectly preserved in ice.” (NetGalley download)
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [4 March, Fourth Estate/Knopf]: This is THE book I’m most looking forward to; I’ve read everything Adichie has published and Americanah was a 5-star read for me. So I did something I’ve never done before and pre-ordered the signed independent bookshop edition from my local indie, Hungerford Bookshop. “Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets.” The focus is on four Nigerian American women “and their loves, longings, and desires.” (New purchase)
Kate & Frida by Kim Fay [March 11, G.P. Putnam’s Sons]: “Frida Rodriguez arrives in Paris in 1991 … But then she writes to a bookshop in Seattle … A friendship begins that will redefine the person she wants to become. Seattle bookseller Kate Fair is transformed by Frida’s free spirit … [A] love letter to bookshops and booksellers, to the passion we bring to life in our twenties”. Sounds like a cross between The Paris Novel and 84 Charing Cross Road – could be fab; could be twee. We shall see! (Edelweiss download)
The Antidote by Karen Russell [13 March, Chatto & Windus (Penguin) / March 11, Knopf]: I love Russell’s Swamplandia! but haven’t gotten on with her other work I’ve tried, so I’m only tentatively enthusiastic about the odd Wizard of Oz-inspired blurb: “a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression … but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a ‘Prairie Witch,’ … a Polish wheat farmer …; his orphan niece, a … witch’s apprentice …; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer”. (Requested from publisher)
Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts [13 March, ONE (Pushkin) / Feb. 18, Simon & Schuster]: Watts’s debut, The Inland Sea, was a hidden gem. Given the news from L.A., this seems all the more potent: “In November 2018, Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest … [w]hile wildfires rage. … Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River … [and] beginning to suspect she might be pregnant”. (Edelweiss download)
O Sinners! by Nicole Cuffy [March 18, One World (Random House)]: Cuffy’s Dances, which was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize, was very good. The length of this sophomore novel (464 pages) gives me pause, but I do generally gravitate towards stories of cults. “Faruq Zaidi, a young journalist reeling from the recent death of his father, a devout Muslim, takes the opportunity to embed in a cult called The Nameless [b]ased in the California redwoods and shepherded by an enigmatic [Black] Vietnam War veteran.”
The Accidentals: Stories by Guadalupe Nettel (trans. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey) [10 April, Fitzcarraldo Editions / April 29, Bloomsbury]: I really enjoyed Nettel’s International Booker-shortlisted novel Still Born. “When an albatross strays too far from its home, or loses its bearings, it becomes an ‘accidental’, an unmoored wanderer. The protagonists of these eight stories each find the ordinary courses of their lives disrupted by an unexpected event. … Deft and disquieting, oscillating between the real and the fantastical”. (PDF copy for Shelf Awareness review)
Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin [24 April, Manilla Press (Bonnier Books UK)]: “Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself.” Winner of the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize Discoveries Award.
Heartwood by Amity Gaige [1 May, Fleet / April 1, Simon & Schuster]: I loved Gaige’s Sea Wife. “In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. … At the centre of the search is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who is managing the search on the ground. While Beverly is searching, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective.”
Are You Happy?: Stories by Lori Ostlund [May 6, Astra House]: Ostlund is not so well known, especially outside the USA, but I enjoyed her debut novel, After the Parade, back in 2015. “Nine masterful stories that explore class, desire, identity, and the specter of violence in America–and in American families–against women and the LGBTQ+ community. … [W]e watch Ostlund’s characters as they try—and often fail—to make peace with their pasts while navigating their present relationships and responsibilities.” (Edelweiss download)
Ripeness by Sarah Moss [22 May, Picador / Sept. 9, Farrar, Straus and Giroux]: Though I was disappointed by her last two novels, I’ll read anything Moss publishes and hope for a return to form. “It is the [19]60s and … Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy … to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will seal this baby’s fate, and his mother’s.” Promises to be “about migration and new beginnings, and about what it is to have somewhere to belong.”
Nonfiction
The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell by Jonas Olofsson [Out now! 7 Jan., William Collins / Mariner]: Part of a planned deep dive into the senses. “Smell is … one of our most sensitive and refined senses; few other mammals surpass our ability to perceive scents in the animal kingdom. Yet, as the millions of people who lost their sense of smell during the COVID-19 pandemic can attest, we too often overlook its role in our overall health. … For readers of Bill Bryson and Steven Pinker”. (On order from library)
Bread and Milk by Karolina Ramqvist (trans. from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel) [13 Feb., Bonnier Books / Feb. 11, Coach House Books]: I think I first found about this via the early Foreword review. “Bread and Milk traces a life through food, from carefully restricted low-fat margarine to a bag of tangerines devoured in one sitting to the luxury of a grandmother’s rice pudding. In this radiant memoir from one of Northern Europe’s most notable literary stylists, we follow several generations of women and their daughters as they struggle with financial and emotional vulnerability, independence, and motherhood.”
My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle by Rebe Huntman [Feb. 18, Monkfish]: I found out about this from Rebecca Moon Ruark and by the time the publisher offered it to me I’d already downloaded it. The themes of bereavement and religion are right up my street. “As she explores the memory of her own mother, interlacing it with her search for the sacred feminine, Huntman leads us into a world of séance and sacrifice, pilgrimage and sacred dance, which resurrect her mother and bring Huntman face to face with a larger version of herself.” (Edelweiss download)
Mother Animal by Helen Jukes [27 Feb., Elliott & Thompson]: This may be the 2025 release I’ve known about for the longest. I remember expressing interest the first time the author tweeted about it; it’s bound to be a good follow-up to Lucy Jones’s Matrescence. “When Helen Jukes falls pregnant, … she widens her frame of reference, looking beyond humans to ask what motherhood looks like in other species. … As she enters the sleeplessness, chaos and intimate discoveries of life with a newborn, these animal stories become … companions and guides.” (Requested from publisher)
Alive: An Alternative Anatomy by Gabriel Weston [6 March, Vintage (Penguin) / March 4, David R. Godine]: I’ve read Weston’s Direct Red and appreciate her perspective. “As she became a surgeon, a mother, and ultimately a patient herself, Weston found herself grappling with the gap between scientific knowledge and unfathomable complexity of human experience. … Focusing on our individual organs, not just under the intense spotlight of the operating theatre, but in the central role they play in the stories of our lives.”
The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street by Mike Tidwell [March 25, St. Martin’s Press]: A must-read for me because it’s set in Takoma Park, Maryland, where I was born. “A love letter to the magnificent oaks and other trees dying from record heat waves and bizarre rain, [activist] Tidwell’s story depicts the neighborhood’s battle to save the trees and combat climate change. … Tidwell chronicles people on his block sick with Lyme disease, a church struggling with floods, and young people anguishing over whether to have kids, … against the global backdrop of 2023’s record heat domes and raging wildfires and hurricanes.”
Breasts: A Relatively Brief Relationship by Jean Hannah Edelstein [3 April, Phoenix (W&N)]: I loved Edelstein’s 2018 memoir This Really Isn’t About You, and I regularly read her Substack. “As [Edelstein] comes of age, she learns that breasts are a source of both shame and power. In early motherhood, she sees her breasts transform into a source of sustenance and a locus of pain. And then, all too soon, she is faced with a diagnosis and forced to confront what it means to lose and rebuild an essential part of yourself.”
Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courtney Gustafson [8 May, Fig Tree (Penguin) / April 29, Crown]: Gustafson became an Instagram and TikTok hit with her posts about looking after a feral cat colony in Tucson, Arizona. The money she raised via social media allowed her to buy her home and continue caring for animals. “[Gustafson] had no idea about the grief and hardship of animal rescue, the staggering size of the problem in neighborhoods across the country. And she couldn’t have imagined how that struggle … would help pierce a personal darkness she’d wrestled for with much of her life.” (Proof copy from publisher)
Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece by Julian Hoffman [15 May, Elliott & Thompson]: Hoffman’s Irreplaceable was my book of 2019. “In the summer of 2000, Julian Hoffman and his wife Julia found themselves disillusioned with city life. Overwhelmed by long commutes, they stumbled upon a book about Prespa, Greece – a remote corner of Europe filled with stone villages, snow-capped mountains and wildlife. What began as curiosity soon transformed into a life-changing decision: to make Prespa their home.” I know next to nothing about Greece and this is a part of it that doesn’t fit the clichés.
Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel [22 May, Jonathan Cape (Penguin) / May 20, Mariner Books]: Bechdel’s Fun Home is an absolute classic of the graphic memoir. I’ve lost track of her career a bit but like the sound of this one. “A cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, is existentially irked by a climate-challenged world and a citizenry on the brink of civil war.” After her partner’s wood-chopping video goes viral, she decides to create her own ethical-living reality TV show. Features cameos from some characters from her Dykes to Watch Out For series.
Other lists of anticipated books:
Clare – we overlap on a couple of our picks
Kate – one pick in common, plus I’ve already read a couple of her others
Laura – we overlap on a couple of our picks
Paul (mostly science and nature)
What catches your eye here? What other 2025 titles do I need to know about?
Literary Wives Club: Mrs. March by Virginia Feito (2021)
{SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!}
What a deliciously odd debut novel, reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith’s work for how it places a neurotic outsider at the heart of an unlikely murder investigation. George March is a popular author whose latest novel stars Johanna, a prostitute so ugly that men feel sorry for her and can’t bear to sleep with her. Meanwhile, the news cycle is consumed with the strangling of a young woman named Sylvia Gibbler in Gentry, Maine, where George goes on hunting trips with his editor. Mrs. March takes two misconceptions – that George modeled Johanna on her, and that he was somehow involved in Sylvia’s death because he kept newspaper clippings about it on his desk – and runs with them, to catastrophic effect.
Mrs. March’s usual milieu is the New York City apartment she shares with George and their son, Jonathan. Martha, the housekeeper, keeps the daily details under control, leaving Mrs. March with little to do. She doesn’t seem very interested in her son, and resents George. Each morning she walks to the bakery to buy olive bread. Every so often she’ll host an extravagant dinner party. But there is plenty of time in between to fill with flashbacks to shameful memories (having an imaginary friend, wetting the bed, her mother’s favoritism towards her sister, being raped in Cádiz) and hallucinations (a dead pigeon in the bathtub, cockroaches scuttling around the apartment). She decides to travel to Maine herself to investigate Sylvia’s death; it’s not what she finds there but what she returns to that changes things forever.
There are so many intriguing factors. One is the nebulous time period: what with Mrs. March’s fur coat and head scarf, the train cars and payphone calls, it could be the 1950s; but then there are more modern references (a washing machine, holiday flights) that made me inclined to point to the 1980s. It couldn’t be the present day unless Feito is deliberately setting the story in an alternative world without much tech. As in Highsmith, we get mistaken identity and disguises. Feito really ramps up the psychological elements, interrogating how trauma, paranoia and extreme body issues may have led to dissociation in her protagonist. Mrs. March is both obsessed with and repulsed by bodily realities. It’s only through other characters’ reactions, though, that we see just how mentally disturbed she is. Worryingly, patterns seem to be repeating with her son, who is suspended for ‘doing something’ to a girl.
I can see how this would be a divisive read: the characters are thoroughly unlikable and it can be difficult to decide what is real and what is not. Incidents I took at face value may well be symbolic, or psychological manifestations of trauma. But I found it morbidly fascinating. I never knew what was going to happen next. (Public library/NetGalley) 
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?
In terms of Literary Wives reads, this reminded me most of The Harpy by Megan Hunter because of its eventual focus on adultery and revenge. Notably, until the very last sentence, we only know Mrs. March’s identity through her relationship to her husband. (Her first name is finally revealed to be Agatha, which of course made me think of Agatha Christie and detection, but its meaning is “good” or “honorable” – there was a martyred saint by the name.) What I took from that is that defining oneself primarily through marriage is dangerous because personality and control can be lost. This character was in need of a wider purpose to take her outside of her home and family – though those would always be her refuge to return to. Even setting Mrs. March’s mental problems aside, it is frighteningly easy to indulge in delusions about oneself or one’s spouse, so getting a reality check via communication is key.
See Kay’s and Naomi’s reviews, too!
We’ve recently acquired a new member – welcome to Kate of Books Are My Favourite and Best! – and chosen our books for the next two and a bit years. Anyone is welcome to join us in reading them. Here’s the club page on Kay’s blog, and our schedule through the end of 2026:
June 2024 Recipe for a Perfect Marriage by Karma Brown
Sept. 2024 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Dec. 2024 Euphoria by Elin Culhed
March 2025 Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
June 2025 The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham
Sept. 2025 Novel about My Wife by Emily Perkins
Dec. 2025 The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor
March 2026 Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
June 2025 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Sept. 2026 Family Family by Laurie Frankel
Dec. 2026 The Eden Test by Adam Sternbergh
Book Serendipity, January to February 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 finished two poetry collections by a man with the surname Barnett within four days in January: Murmur by Cameron Barnett and Birds Knit My Ribs Together by Phil Barnett.
- I came across the person or place name Courtland in The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty, then Cortland in a story from The Orange Fish by Carol Shields, then Cotland (but where? I couldn’t locate it again! Was it in Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey?).
- The Manet painting Olympia is mentioned in Christmas Holiday by W. Somerset Maugham and The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl (both of which are set in Paris).
- There’s an “Interlude” section in Babel by R.F. Kuang and The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez.
- The Morris (Minor) car is mentioned in Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey and Various Miracles by Carol Shields.
- The “flour/flower” homophone is mentioned in Babel by R.F. Kuang and Various Miracles by Carol Shields.
- A chimney swift flies into the house in Cat and Bird by Kyoko Mori and The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty.
- A character named Cornelius in The Fruit Cure by Jacqueline Alnes and Wellness by Nathan Hill.
- Reading two year challenge books at the same time, A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans and Local by Alastair Humphreys, both of which are illustrated with frequent black-and-white photos by and of the author.
- A woman uses a bell to summon children in one story of Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories by Elizabeth Bruce and The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty.
- Apple turnovers get a mention in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans and Wellness by Nathan Hill.
- A description of rolling out pie crust in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans and Cat and Bird by Kyoko Mori.
- The idea of a house giving off good or bad vibrations in Wellness by Nathan Hill and a story from Various Miracles by Carol Shields.
- Emergency C-sections described or at least mentioned in Brother Do You Love Me by Manni Coe, The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan, Wellness by Nathan Hill, and lots more.
- Frustration with a toddler’s fussy eating habits, talk of “gentle parenting” methods, and mention of sea squirts in Wellness by Nathan Hill and Matrescence by Lucy Jones.
- The nickname “Poet” in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and My Friends by Hisham Matar.
- A comment about seeing chicken bones on the streets of London in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe.
- Swans in poetry in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick.
- A mention or image of Captcha technology in Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick and Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe.
- An animal automaton in Loot by Tania James and Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick.
- A mention of Donna Tartt in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley, Looking in the Distance by Richard Holloway, and Matrescence by Lucy Jones.
- Cathy Rentzenbrink appears in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe.
Dialogue is given in italics in the memoirs The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan.
- An account of a man being forced to marry the sister of his beloved in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans, Wellness by Nathan Hill, and The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht.
- Saying that one doesn’t want to remember the loved one as ill (but really, not wanting to face death) so not saying goodbye (in Cat and Bird by Kyoko Mori) or having a closed coffin (Wellness by Nathan Hill).
- An unhappy, religious mother who becomes a hoarder in Wellness by Nathan Hill and I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
- Characters called Lidija and Jin in Exhibit by R. O. Kwon and Lydia and Jing in the first story of This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara.
- Distress at developing breasts in Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere and I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
- I came across mentions of American sportscaster Howard Cosell in Heartburn by Nora Ephron and Stations of the Heart by Richard Lischer (two heart books I was planning on reviewing together) on the same evening. So random!
- Girls kissing and flirting with each other (but it’s clear one partner is serious about it whereas the other is only playing or considers it practice for being with boys) in Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere and Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell.
- A conversion to Catholicism in Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown and Stations of the Heart by Richard Lischer.
- A zookeeper is attacked by a tiger when s/he goes into the enclosure (maybe not the greatest idea!!) in Tiger by Polly Clark and The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht.
- The nickname Frodo appears in Tiger by Polly Clark and Brother Do You Love Me by Manni Coe.
- Opening scene of a parent in a coma, California setting, and striking pink and yellow cover to Death Valley by Melissa Broder and I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
- An Englishman goes to Nigeria in Howards End by E.M. Forster and Immanuel by Matthew McNaught.
The Russian practice of whipping people with branches at a spa in Tiger by Polly Clark and Fight Night by Miriam Toews.
- A mother continues washing her daughter’s hair until she is a teenager old enough to leave home in Mrs. March by Virginia Feito and I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
- Section 28 (a British law prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools) is mentioned in A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy, and Brother Do You Love Me by Manni Coe.
- Characters named Gord (in one story from Various Miracles by Carol Shields, and in Fight Night by Miriam Toews), Gordy (in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie), and Gordo (in Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce).
- Montessori and Waldorf schools are mentioned in Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere and When Fragments Make a Whole by Lory Widmer Hess.
- A trailer burns down in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 