The sentence by Louise Erdrich

Set in Minneapolis at the beginning of the pandemic, including the time when George Floyd was murdered, The Sentence is about Tookie, who discovered reading whilst in gaol, and came to work at a book shop after she was released. The shop’s most annoying customer has died, and begins to haunt Tookie and the shop, so Tookie and her colleagues have to find a way to move her on, while coping with all that life in Minneapolis in 2020 involves, particularly for First Nations people. It’s a funny, moving, and cathartic reminder of the importance of culture, strength, hope, and love. A whole star goes to the book shop setting (it’s a real shop, owned by the author who is also in the book!) and all the books mentioned – there are lists!

The woman in the purple skirt by Natsuko Imamura

The Woman in the Purple Skirt falls beautifully into the ‘women who are not okay” sub-genre of recent years – My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Sorrow and Bliss, Everyone in this Room Will Someday Be Dead, Beautiful World Where Are You – that sort of book, with bonus creepiness. Translated from the Japanese it is about a woman in a purple skirt as seen, intensely, by a woman in a yellow cardigan. It’s an understated but unsettling tale of single women’s lives, workplace dynamics, community, loneliness, and obsession. It starts quietly but builds up to pack a real punch, and the audiobook is well done, though the accent is not my favourite.

It ends with us by Colleen Hoover

This was quite an emotional read, it was a dive into a love story that ends with domestic violence. Lily meets Ryle and they fall deeply in love. As she does, we are taken on the journey of her first love Atlas. When these two stories meet, it changes everything. The author explores how complicated relationships can be, especially when the person you love hurts you. The characters stay with you after the last page is turned, a sign of a good story.

Lillian Boxfish takes a walk by Kathleen Rooney

Once the highest-paid woman in advertising, Lillian Boxfish is now 85 years old, and it is New Year’s Eve in 1984. As Lillian heads out into New York City for the evening, we think back over her extraordinary life in the city – her career, friendships, marriage, motherhood, and divorce – interacting with its people and lamenting its changes. It’s a New York novel (with a map!), gloriously nostalgic, tender, moving, and gently hopeful. It’s about the power of human connection, and what might be gained when we take risks and connect.

My struggle. Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard

The first of a six part series of autobiographical novels, this is for fans of minute detail, the inner life, and musings on death, memory, relationships, and self. The first part is about his adolescence; his relationship with his father, one New Year’s Eve party, and the second about his father’s death. It flows, like our own thoughts, back and forwards in time, from one subject to another, focusing at length on actions, and then on philosophical musings. I didn’t always like young Karl Ove very much, but then I remember myself at that age – beyond irritating. He offers up his thoughts, motivations, and his actions without judgement or obvious artifice. I listened to the audio version and it was well done. Do all Americans pronounce the word shone, as shown? That word was used often – perhaps a pointless detail, but does there need to be a point? I’m not sure if I will make it through all six, but I will be back for the second, at least.

Double blind by Edward St Aubyn

I won’t lie to you, this was probably a bit too clever for me, but somehow I didn’t mind. Francis, whose job is to rewild a property in Sussex, meets Olivia at a conference and they become lovers. Olivia’s friend Lucy returns to London after some years in New York to work for the super-rich Hunter on one of his scientific projects before receiving some unexpected news that binds them all together. The settings are glorious, the characters engaging, sometimes over the top, and the language complex and lyrical. Richly detailed, Double Blind ruminates on the environment, the brain, genetics, and relationships, and is darkly humorous, thought-provoking, touching, and marvel-inducing.

Double blind by Edward St Aubyn

I won’t lie to you, this was probably a bit too clever for me, but somehow I didn’t mind. Francis, whose job is to rewild a property in Sussex, meets Olivia at a conference and they become lovers. Olivia’s friend Lucy returns to London after some years in New York to work for the super-rich Hunter on one of his scientific projects before receiving some unexpected news that binds them all together. The settings are glorious, the characters engaging, sometimes over the top, and the language complex and lyrical. Richly detailed, Double Blind ruminates on the environment, the brain, genetics, and relationships, and is darkly humorous, thought-provoking, touching, and marvel-inducing.

Victoria Park by Gemma Reeves

We follow the lives of different people who live around a park in London, for a year. Each chapter tells a different character’s perspective, in a different month. Through an older married couple coming to terms with the wife’s Alzheimer’s, the couple trying to conceive through IVF, the teenagers working out who they are, the older woman no longer able to care for herself, and more, we reflect on life; what makes it worthwhile, how our choices affect others, the struggles of marriage, parenthood, love, making a living. The way the stories interconnect highlights the power of connection and community, and the beauty in ordinary things.

Maggie’s going nowhere by Rose Hartley

I grabbed this book thinking it would be a fun, heartwarming read, unfortunately my expectations were not met and because of this I did not enjoy the story so much. Maggie is a 29 year old whose solution to her problems is either booze or sex which continue to derail her life. Maggie is quite a disaster – her mother refuses to support her any more and she spontaneously buys a caravan to live in. Luckily by the end of the story Maggie begins to sort her life out.

Kokomo by Victoria Hannan

Mina works in advertising in London, having left behind a mother who won’t leave the house in Melbourne. When she hears that her mother has been seen out of the house, she drops everything and rushes home. An introspective novel with a leisurely pace, Kokomo is about complicated families, love, longing, misogyny , sex, and modern life for women. A little bit Sally Rooney, I didn’t really connect with the motivations and emotions of the main characters, but found it to be a thought-provoking story with a great sense of place.