At the Pond; Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond

Land-locked in a Lock-down (and probably kidding myself I’m brave enough anyway), this is the book I needed to read this week. It is such a joyous collection about the impact of swimming outdoors – and about the body – that I’m going to be pushing it at friends at every opportunity. And next time …

This Mournable Body – Tsitsi Dangarembga #BookerPrize

This is undoubtedly a powerful novel, the conclusion to a trilogy which captures women's experiences in Zimbabwe in the final decades of the Twentieth Century, as political tensions bubble away, and the violent upheavals of the past two decades are still very much in the consciousness of the characters. But I struggled with it, largely …

The Lost Spells – Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris

This little book is becoming something of a talisman for me – I’ve taken to carrying it around and dipping into it when I need a moment to just stop. I really love The Lost Words, but that’s a book to pour over at the kitchen table with others. The much smaller Lost Spells feels …

Charlie Laidlaw’s Being Alert!

As the title suggests, Laidlaw, author of The Things We Learn When We’re Dead and The Space Between Time, has now turned his eye to our current situation, and has written an extremely strong satire on the UK Government's response to the pandemic in the first half of this year. I loved Spitting Image the …

Tea is So Intoxicating – Mary Essex

To my shame, this is the first time I’ve read Ursula Bloom in any of her many authorial guises. As Mary Essex, Bloom wrote at least eight books (that I can find) and here provides us with a somewhat spiky rural village comedy. Not many of her characters are particularly likeable, and she has a …

The New Wilderness – Diane Cook

This took me a little while to get into – the premise of a group of volunteers becoming nomads in The Wilderness State as part of an experiment as escape polluted city life is really quite challenging from the outset – but Cook’s been clever with her tale, and I was caught up in this …

The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman

I'm half way through my annual self-imposed task of reading the Booker shortlist - but then this appeared and I had to put everything else aside. I have really enjoyed Osman's first foray into fiction - it was the perfect thing for a rainy weekend and confirmed my feeling that Osman is one of those …

Father – Elizabeth von Arnim

Literature is full of overbearing or manipulative fathers - Dr Sloper in Henry James' Washington Square springs to mind - and Richard Dodge, the father of this 1931 novel, is up there with the finest. From a young age, Jennifer has looked after and supported her widowed father, typing up his manuscripts and maintaining his …

Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020

They're all excellent novels - but I do think Hamnet should win the Women's Prize for Fiction this evening. As a piece of fictionalised biography, this is such a moving and beautiful account of marriage, motherhood, and grief that it stands head and shoulders even above giants such as Mantel and Evaristo. It'll be fascinating …

Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart

Oh man – this is a tough but brilliant read. Shuggie’s childhood is so bleak that there were times when I had to have a breather from the novel, mired as it is in deep-set poverty and cruelty. But I became so involved in the endless cycle of unhappiness and glimmers of hope that I …