This goes deep, what a powerful read. It has all the accuracy and sharpness of brilliant relationship dissection but set in a bigger context of terrible injustice and the burdens that creates. It is tender and dignified and beautifully told.
View An American Marriage
Children's author, Olive Wellwood, creates a golden Edwardian story book world for her children at Todefright where the adults discuss socialism, free love and emancipation. But life is not as it seems. Olive's personality crushes her children and the parents' unconventional sexual lives rupture the family's security. The children become casualties of parental selfishness and the horrors of war. A rich book for serious-minded readers to relish.
View The Children's Book
This is no easy read, and knowing it’s based on the author’s own experiences of domestic abuse makes it even harder. Watching her gradual alienation from society, and from her family and friends, you wonder if she can ever possibly manage to escape her powerful, domineering husband. The writing manages to be both poetic and beautiful, yet also desperately dark and disturbing. Raw and honest, domestic and political; you can’t help but be moved.
View When I Hit You
A love story in an unusual setting, told from three perspectives. Harry is wrapped up in his role in the peace movement against the war in Iraq and doesn't pay enough attention to the women in his life. You will be kept guessing until the last pages as to where his true feelings lie.
View Snow White Turtle Doves
A claustrophobic and gripping read with an intense combination of pace and beauty which really worked for me. As the temperature rises, the threat of collateral damage radiates from every page. This book grabbed my moral certainties and bounced them off the walls. Rachel spoke directly to me - but could I trust her - and what would I have done in her situation - as a mother, as a teacher?
A middle-aged woman reflects on the summer she hung out at a hippie commune in the late 1960s. Inspired by the Manson family murders, this slow-burning book is gripping and thought-provoking stuff, yet infused with a dream-like quality. Evie Boyd's startling voice is still echoing round my head days after turning the final page.
View The Girls
This island in the West Indies - a paradise for some, mainly white tourists. An opportunity for the residents who try to make a living - and a hell for Wilma and her granddaughter Lala who suffer at the hands of their criminal, violent men. There also is love - but heartbreak and danger too. Beautifully written, but an emotionally draining read. I had to have a break from it before finishing.
View How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House
Prisoner torture and the violence of war is juxtaposed against the increasingly strained social niceties of a 1950s' marriage. With parallels to more recent conflicts this is a sometimes shocking, yet also moving story about following orders or following your conscience, carrying out one's duty amidst the disintegration of love.
View Small Wars
This powerful and challenging story seriously threw me off-kilter. Vanessa Wye is a complex character, not always easy to like or get a handle on. Graphic scenes of sexual abuse made me recoil, but I still read compulsively late into the night. A sure-footed debut which makes you appreciate the lasting effect abuse has on the victim and the courage it takes for them to acknowledge it.
View My Dark Vanessa
Ghosts from her Sri Lankan past haunt photographer, Eva. An assignment to cover the civil unrest there gives her a chance to heal some old wounds. Her passionate love affair with an American journalist, conducted under the islanders disapproving eyes, holds this book together like a vice. The contrast between the lush tropical island and the casual, opportunistic brutality of the authorities was painful to read but worth the effort.
View Serpent in ParadiseYou won’t find the biggest bestsellers on Whichbook as everyone knows about them already. But you can use your enjoyment of a current bestseller to see titles with a similar mood that you might try next.
