Reading Radar 18th - 24th august 2024
Fresh of the Press - Discover the newly published novels that have caught my eye this week!
This week's reading radar is brimming with historical, feminist fiction. From Jodi Picoult’s insightful examination of literary legend Shakespeare to debut author Gina Maria Balibrera’s haunting tale, The Volcano Daughters, which whisks us away to El Salvador with its enchanting magic and lyrical prose.
Interestingly, most of this week’s picks center around women - introspective stories that provoke thought on what it means to be a woman and how history, society, and culture have shaped our identities and relationships.
Like what you see? Help me keep creating our bookish content by treating me to a coffee. You’ll get really good karma 😉😘
By Any Other Name By Jodi Picoult
A poignant and feminist historical fiction that delves into the theory that Shakespeare was not the true author of his works, but rather, they were penned by a woman named Emilia Bassano.
This novel invites readers into a richly layered world, uncovering the possibility that some of our most beloved plays and sonnets were, in fact, the creations of a woman - whose contributions were unjustly erased from history. Furthermore, she leaves us with a compelling question: are we, too, guilty of perpetuating this false narrative?
‘Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theatre world where the playing field isn't level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.
In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centring two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on ... no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.’
Purchase By Any Other Name and add it to your #tbr list here
Swallow The Ghost By Eugenie Montague
This book is heading straight to the top of my ‘want to read list’ I’m curious to see how Montague navigates the complex emotions and relationships we have with ourselves, and how this influences the way we choose to publish our lives online. I’m preparing myself for an uncomfortable, introspective read.
‘Swallow the Ghost traces the impact of a violent event on three different lives, each interconnected story further complicating the truth.
Things are going well for Jane Murphy, or so it seems. She's making it in New York, a sort of wunderkind at the social media marketing startup where she works. She's put an experimental writer, Jeremy Miller, on the map by helping him concoct a viral internet novel, told in fragments through various fake social media accounts. But privately, Jane feels trapped, ruled by her routines and her compulsions with food and social media, caught up in an endless cycle of soothing and punishing herself. There is so much that she has to keep hidden, especially from Jeremy as their professional relationship transforms into something more.
But then, tragedy strikes, and the story changes track. As the perspective shifts, so too does our image of Jane and those in her orbit as what we think we know begins to unravel.
Audacious, emotionally precise and head-spinning in its ingenuity, Swallow the Ghost interrogates our public identities and private realities through the kaleidoscopic portrait of one woman's life.’
Purchase Swallow The Ghost and add it to your #tbr list here
The Volcano Daughters By Gina Maria Balibrera
Gina Maria Balibrera’s debut novel is a sweeping tale infused with magical realism, set against the backdrop of the lush jungles and towns of Latin America—specifically, El Salvador. Blending historical and mythical elements, this novel delves into the horrors of the genocide in El Salvador under the brutal rule of El Gran Pendejo.
Spanning decades, the story follows two sisters as they desperately try to escape the genocide—a massacre that claims the lives of their childhood friends and family after El Gran Pendejo's coup d'état.
Narrated by the spirits of four childhood friends from beyond the grave, The Volcano Daughters is a poignant, slow-burn read, enriched with exquisite prose. The inclusion of Spanish phrases and mythical figures like La Sihuanaba highlights the cultural nuances that beautifully bind this haunting and enchanting novel together.
‘A searingly original debut about two sisters and their flight from genocide—which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to San Francisco's Cannery Row—each haunted along the way by the ghosts of their murdered friends, who are not yet done telling their stories.
El Salvador, 1923. Graciela, a young girl growing up on a volcano in a community of Indigenous women, is summoned to the capital, where she is claimed as an oracle for a rising dictator. There she meets Consuelo, the sister she has never known, who was stolen from their home before Graciela was born. The two spend years under the cruel El Gran Pendejo's regime, unwillingly helping his reign of terror, until genocide strikes the community from which they hail. Each believing the other to be dead, they escape, fleeing across the globe, reinventing themselves until fate ultimately brings them back together in the most unlikely of ways…
Endlessly surprising, vividly imaginative, bursting with lush life, The Volcano Daughters charts a new history and mythology of El Salvador, fiercely bringing forth voices that have been calling out for generations.’
Purchase The Volcano Daughters and add it to your #tbr list here
The Full Moon Coffee Shop By Mai Mochizuki
Likened to Before The Coffee Gets Cold, this heartwarming novel has all the foundations for the perfect cozy read: cats, coffee shops, and astrology. A cute and charming story about encounters with magical beings in a café, who guide wayward souls to live better lives through the wisdom of their astrological charts. The premise is simple yet profound—you must first know yourself to be able to truly find your way.
‘Translated from the Japanese bestseller, a charming and magical novel that reminds us it's never too late to follow our stars.
In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they'll one day return the favour. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon.
This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and it seemingly appears at random.
It's also run by talking cats.
Every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost. For a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the coffee shop's feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. For there is a very special reason the shop appeared to each of them.’
Purchase The Full Moon Coffee Shop and add it to your #tbr list here
The Slow Road North By Rosie Schapp
The Slow Road North offers thoughtful and lyrical prose, delving deeply into the themes of grief and restlessness on both personal and historical levels. This novel serves as a love letter to the author’s late husband, to New York, and to Ireland. For anyone grappling with their own private battles with loss, this book promises to be a poignant and compelling read.
‘Rosie Schaap had a solid career as a journalist, and a life that looked to others like nonstop fun: all drinking and dining and traveling to beautiful places—and getting paid to write about it. But beneath the surface she was reeling from the loss of her husband and her mother, who had died just one year apart. Caring for them had claimed much of her daily life in her late thirties. Mourning them would take longer.
It wasn’t until a reporting trip took her to the Northern Irish countryside that Schaap found a partner to heal with: Glenarm, a quiet, seaside village in County Antrim. That first visit made such an impression that she returned to make a life. This unlikely place—in a small, tough country mainly associated with sectarian strife—gave her a measure of peace that had seemed impossible elsewhere.’
Purchase A Slow Road North and add it to your #tbr list here
Have you read any of these novels? If so I’d love to hear what you thought of them, be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Like what you see? Help me keep creating our bookish content by treating me to a coffee. You’ll get really good karma 😉😘