Lizzy Stewart, author and illustrator
I’m in the early draft stages of a new book so my reading lately has been, at best, scattered and, more often, fraught. It’s especially frustrating as summer is the time I most want to be lounging around with a book. As a result, I’ve found that I’m veering towards shorter books I can chuck down in one greedy burst. Cheri by Jo Ann Beard is a perfect example of this. A tiny gem of a book that tells the story of the final weeks of a terminally ill woman as she takes a last loving look at the world. Beard communicates, quietly and almost plainly, a breathless desperation for life and all its terrible beauty and drab, daily profundity.
If it’s not a tiny, perfectly formed novella then the other thing I’m craving is something sweeping and absorbing that helps me recapture something of the rabid desperation of my teenage reading habits. A friend handed me a copy of The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert which absolutely fits this mould. It’s the story of Alma Whittaker, a woman born at the turn of the 19th century into a strange and brilliant botanical dynasty. It’s a beautiful adventure story (even though most of it takes place in the grounds of a single house) that celebrates curiosity and science through the eye of a unique and compelling narrator.
I’ve just started reading A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankau, a coming-of-age novel from the 50s recently repackaged by Daunt. So far the first narrator, 14-year-old Penelope, is delighting me with her frank and precocious voice. She refers to her ongoing “Anthology of hates” which speaks to the dormant adolescent in me. More enticingly, the novel takes place on the French Riviera in a bohemian hotel run by Penelope’s parents, helping me to imagine a delicious summer by the sea.
Alison by Lizzy Stewart is out in paperback on 3 August (Serpent’s Tail £12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
***
Adrian, Guardian reader
Lessons by Ian McEwan is the best novel I’ve read in the past few years. It surveys the life of Roland Baines from his first piano lesson at boarding school to his old age. In this wide-ranging novel and richly detailed book, Baines’s personal journey through life is informed by politics and world events from the Cuban missile crisis to Brexit and Covid.
As there are many parallels between the protagonist’s biography and the author’s, this book appears to be McEwan’s summation work, in which the author’s views on art, politics, religion, medical ethics, climate change, life’s choices and so on are discussed via the protagonist.
***
Ruweyda Ahmed, Guardian editorial intern
Post-Traumatic by Chantal V Johnson is about a woman in her 20s who is morally flawed in a way that felt realistic. The novel follows a complex heroine, Vivian, who navigates dating, her career and family trauma. I liked the way Johnson articulates the psychological chatter that is usually kept to oneself.
Another favourite read this month was Stoner by John Williams, a story that spans William Stoner’s life over decades in the 20th century. Exploring love, passion and failure, this novel shows how easily it is to fall into a life that is not what you want despite doing it all “the right way”.
There seems to be a theme in the books I’ve enjoyed lately: they are all stories that reveal the inner thoughts of a person. Natasha Brown’s slight novel Assembly is no exception. The unnamed character, a young Black woman, materially has what everyone strives for, but she struggles with assimilation and control. Brown narrates the subtleties of the Black female experience in a truly absorbing way. The protagonist’s wealthy, white boyfriend is the physical manifestation of not only social differences but covert expressions of discomfort. An unmissable, powerful novella.
***
Louise, Guardian reader
After a reading drought, I decided to try Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell – and I absolutely adored it. I loved the big Irish family and was intrigued by their giant mess of inextricable love, secrets and exasperation. What do we really know about our family members? What do they know about us? And what do we withhold from them? I thought O’Farrell made the reader kind of complicit, because she ends all of the characters’ stories without tying up the loose ends. Yet I didn’t feel like I’d been robbed; I felt I knew each of the characters well enough to be able to guess what would happen to them. I admire O’Farrell’s bravery in ending this great story by continuing to present the family as an untidy Gordian knot.
