Fiction
The Satisfaction Café by Kathy Wang is published in hardback by Abacus
Joan Liang, born in Taiwan, never imagined her life would lead to falling in love and marrying a wealthy American, on his fourth marriage, and raising his young children. Yet, through a series of unexpected events, that’s where she finds herself. She constantly questions what it means to be fully satisfied and what brings true happiness as she negotiates the highs and lows of life’s journey. As she gets older and wiser it culminates in the creation of The Satisfaction Café, a place where people go to be heard and connect through conversation. This novel offers an intimate portrait of a woman navigating life’s many complexities. Wonderfully written, with real depth and empathy, it reveals the strengths and flaws of its characters with warmth and honesty. A captivating, thought-provoking read.
Havoc by Rebecca Wait is published in hardback by riverrun
Rebecca Wait has a glorious turn of phrase and a dazzling ability to go on peculiar tangents that never detract, but only ever add to a character’s experience. Her last book, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, tackled an odd, strained relationship between a mother and her three children, and Havoc begins with another disastrous mother-daughter relationship. It’s one that pushes 16-year-old Ida to flee the remote Scottish island she lives on with her mum and bolshy sister Charlotte, for a scholarship at a ramshackle girls’ boarding school perched on a cliff in Eighties England. Once there though, neither the students nor the teachers create the peaceful sanctuary Ida hoped to settle into, and then a bizarre sickness of seizures begins to spread through the school. Not laugh-out-loud funny, Wait’s writing is dry and droll, her characters twisty, thoughtful and highly specific, and Havoc is a total blast of a read, perfectly pinpointing where tragedy and wryness meet.
Bitter Honey by Caryl Lewis is published in hardback by Doubleday
Bitter Honey is a story about three women, who have been forced together by grief, dealing with a harsh Welsh winter in a secluded orchard house. They slowly open up and learn to understand one another’s varied experiences of womanhood and emerge in the spring with a new appreciation for each other and the living world around them. Caryl Lewis roots the novel in the static location of the orchard and lets time unfold around her characters. Although the letter interludes and extended beehive metaphor are a little pretentious at times, they create a looming presence that is successfully felt throughout. While Bitter Honey is a story built on loss, identity is at its heart, alongside a simple reassurance that it is never too late to find yourself, and let others find you, too.
Non-fiction
The World Within by Guy Stagg is published in hardback by Scribner UK
In The World Within, Guy Stagg – author of The Crossway – explores the lives of three 20th-century thinkers: philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, poet and painter David Jones, and writer Simone Weil. Travelling to Klosterneuburg, Austria, Caldey Island, Wales, and Solesmes, France, Stagg visits the places where they found quiet solace in times of crisis and examines how their solitude influenced their work and genius. Stagg’s curiosity gives us a fresh perspective on their lives as he draws connections between place, mental health and creativity. Yet the book should not be viewed solely as research. At times, it feels as if we are reading Stagg’s diary while he searches for parts of himself through the paths of his three subjects. In an age riddled with noise and distraction, The World Within feels timely. It reminds us that silence and solitude are vital for self-discovery.
Children’s book of the week
Skipshock by Caroline O’Donoghue is published in paperback by Walker Books
Skipshock is so clever and novel. When Margot curls up on the train to boarding school in Dublin, she is utterly bewildered to wake up on an ornate train where the staff’s faces have been inlaid with metal plates to make them look like pigs. With no ticket and Ireland not appearing on any map in this place, a curious boy with a salesman’s suitcase, luminous skin and a crescent scar on his face steps in to help. As Moon instructs Margot in this new dimension where travel is banned but for the select few, and each world has a different number of hours in a day, determining how quickly you age, it dawns on them that there must be a reason Margot has slipped into this parallel timeline outside of her own. Brilliantly detailed, packed with peril and fraught with first love, it’s young adult fiction at its best. The (multiple) world building is superb (especially one where the buildings move, so you don’t have to), the pacing lively and the themes – of migration made illegal, communities obliterated, families separated and life being cut short – draw on news headlines without being preachy. Book two can’t come soon enough.
English