Top Ten Reads for February
Taking readers from a feminist bookshop on Charing Cross Road to the middle of the ocean and including casts that feature everything from a murderous Japanese chef to a burgeoning community of neighbours during lockdown, February’s best publishing is a globe-spanning panoply of diverse characters and unforgettable stories. Find your favourite new book now!
The Lodgers by Holly Pester
The Lodgers by Holly Pester
01/02/2024
A woman comes back to her hometown, leaving behind a rented room, entering into an insecure sub-let. She has come to watch over her erratic mother, but she can't stop thinking about her old room. Who lives there now? The début from the acclaimed poet and author of Comic Timing—The Lodgers is a whip-smart, painfully precise dark comedy on, and indeed for, generation rent. Pester perfectly captures the precarity and sense of half-life that comes with short-term living, blowing open the effects of economic injustice on the self and skewering intergenerational relationships and responsibilities.
My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld
My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld
01/02/2024
Following on from International Booker winning novel The Discomfort of Evening, Dutch author Lucas Rijneveld’s modern Lolita-esque My Heavenly Favourite treads a tightrope between the poetic and the profane in its description of transgressive desire. At the surface a story of a Dutch veterinarian’s relationship with a girl on the cusp of adolescence, Rijneveld’s writing dances gleefully into surreal landscapes—including an unmissable imagined dialogue between Freud and Hitler—for a novel that is full of surprises.
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
06/02/2024
A hugely experimental work of literature from the author of Motherhood and Pure Colour —Alphabetical Diaries is, for all intents and purposes, exactly that; Heti's diary entries from a decade of writing, rearranged into A-Z, sentence by sentence. And indeed, it is the sentence that is of most importance here, Heti conveys so much in a single sentence, out of context, that reading them is an endlessly invigorating and mesmerising experience. The alphabetical sorting lends itself to thrilling juxtapositions—the mundane with the poignant, the philosophical with the throwaway—creating an experiment in self-reflection, self-exposure and language that is both familiar and otherworldly.
Fourteen Days by Various
Fourteen Days by Various
06/02/2024
A collaborative novel that reads like a who's who of contemporary fiction. Margaret Atwood, Angie Cruz, Sylvia Day, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, John Grisham, Erica Jong, Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, Doug Preston, Ishmael Reed, Meg Wolitzer… Each author takes on a different character in this heartwarming tale of neighbours coming together during lockdown to form a community through the power of storytelling.
Change by Edouard Louis
Change by Edouard Louis
08/02/2024
Any novel by France’s literary darling Édouard Louis is worth waiting for and his latest, Change, is no exception. As with his widely acclaimed novel The End of Eddy, Change is an autobiographical novel drawing heavily on Louis’ own experiences of growing up amidst and in the shadow of the white, working-class environs of rural France. As Eddy attempts to shed his roots—moving first to Amiens and then Paris—Louis interrogates class division, what it means to forge your own identity and whether you can ever escape your past.
Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly
Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly
08/02/2024
Rebecca K Reilly's début novel is a ruthlessly authentic, hilariously sharp portal into the world of two siblings navigating life, finding their way, as queer, multiracial Māori in contemporary Auckland. This is a joyful, heart-stealing book, with characters that are as lovable as they are fallible, messy and hopelessly real. Greta and Valdin is an endlessly quotable, warm and human comedy of manners, full of everyday family dramas that are—often painfully—familiar, but written so perfectly that they jump off the page.
A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley
A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley
29/02/2024
For 20 years the Silver Moon Bookshop—founded by Jane Cholmeley and Sue Butterworth to champion literature by marginalised women—was a staple on Charing Cross Road. From the refurbishment of the crumbling premises that would become Silver Moon, to pioneering author events (Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Jeanette Winterson all visited), to the rates rises that led to its closure—and brief incorporation into Foyles—Cholmeley here sets out the compelling story of a bookshop that represented a community looking to change the face of publishing and bookselling.
Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell
Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell
29/02/2024
Perfect for readers of Edmund de Waal and Philippe Sands this is an excitingly fresh approach to history, with no contemporary commentary from Cockerell. Using a remarkable collection of source materials—letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles and interviews—Melting Point tells the fascinating story of the author's own great grandfather, David Jochelmann and his involvement with the Galveston Movement—an all but forgotten alternative to zionism in the early 20th century. 10,000 Jews emigrated to Texas as part of the movement, led by charismatic writer Israel Zangwill, with the Jochelmann family in tow. Cockerell, inspired by her familial connection, uncovers a tale of retaining identity and searching for belonging in a world of spiralling anti-Semitism.
Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst
Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst
29/02/2024
This brilliantly novelistic retelling of the true story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey—the married couple who survived being stranded at sea for 118 days—is set to be the feel-good non-fiction read of 2024. Leaving the drollery of 1970's suburban Britain behind, Maurice and Maralyn sell their house and build a boat in order to sail to New Zealand. Halfway there they are cast adrift after a whale strikes, left to preserve rain water to drink, and catch what they can to eat, it is only through sheer will, ingenuity and good-humour that they are able to survive.
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
29/02/2024
A cult legend in Japan, Asako Yuzuki has stacked up award nominations including winning the All Yomimono Prize for New Writers and the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize. A propulsive crime thriller based on the real life 'Konkatsu Killer', Butter interrogates the relationship—by turns erotic, mischievous and disturbing—between a convicted gourmet cook (with a particular penchant for buttered rice) and a journalist seduced one bite at a time.
