I’m genuinely fascinated by human nature and why we behave the way we do, the things that make us act within or out of character, and at what point they become a part of who we are rather than just a lapse in judgment or an isolated incident. Relationships in particular fascinate me because of the way they force us to reckon with our behavior towards ourselves and other people. I love seeing how writers explore and examine those relationships, whether before, after, or during them, and how they allow their characters to move through those moments. Often, despite how far-fetched some of the scenarios may feel, I find myself within their pages.
The story of a marriage told as though Greek mythology, Fates and Furies is a masterful look at what it takes to make some of the most sacred relationships work, and what we are willing to do to save them, even at the cost of our own pride.
Charting the marriage between Mathilde and Lotto (Lancelot), we see at first the Lotto’s perspective, which paints for us a picture of a happy marriage, plagued with life’s traditional issues, but still a good marriage. Then in the second half of the book we see Mathilde’s perspective, what happened in the moments Lotto was consumed with himself and which of them really worked hardest to keep their marriage together until the very end.
I was utterly gripped by this book, which felt like a refreshing and brutally honest take on keeping a marriage alive.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE
“Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.” —The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Florida, Matrix, and the highly-anticipated The Vaster Wilds: an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception.…
I loved A Separation because we learned so little about the personality of the husband, who goes missing, and the narrator – his estranged wife – who goes to Greece to look for him.
Kitamura instead shows us who the husband is by how he makes others, including the woman at the hotel in Greece he has an affair with and the narrator herself, feel. It’s a sharp and taut depiction of what happens when a love dies over time, and what you do with the pieces that are left.
A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it's time for them to separate. For the moment it's a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, alone, she gets word that her ex-husband has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged southern Peloponnese. Reluctantly she agrees to go and search for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she's not even sure if she wants to find him. Adrift in the wild and barren landscape, she traces the failure of their relationship, and finds that she…
Possibly one of the most chaotic and entertaining books I have ever read, it tells the story of a woman utterly transfixed not just by the man she is having an affair with – a married man – but also one of the other women that man is also having an affair with, referred to throughout as ‘the woman I am obsessed with’.
Patel’s highly engrossing and visceral writing will call you out, make you laugh, and leave you desperate to keep reading all at once.
“A fast, fizzing cherry bomb of a debut” (The Observer [UK]) about power, intimacy, and the internet
I stalk a woman on the internet who is sleeping with the same man as I am.
Sheena Patel’s incandescent first novel begins with the unnamed narrator describing her involvement in a seemingly unequal romantic relationship. With a clear and unforgiving eye, she dissects the behavior of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world. I’m a Fan offers a devastating critique of class, social media, patriarchy’s…
I rarely read books more than once, but this is one of the few that gets an exception based on its sharpness and ability to show its reader the highs and lows of a new, intoxicating, and hidden relationship.
The protagonist, as far as she knows, is straight, that is until she meets Finn. What happens then is what happens when you know that something is bad for you from the very beginning, but you pursue it anyway. So beautifully and painfully written but impossible to put down.
'A beautiful read / a perfect primer for an explosive lesbian affair / an essential truth' Lena Dunham
'I have meditated repeatedly on what it was about Finn that had me so dismantled.'
A young woman moves from the countryside to the city. Inexplicably, inexorably and immediately, she falls in love with another woman for the first time in her life. Finn is nineteen years older than her, wears men's clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile - and a long-term girlfriend. With precision, wit and tenderness, Women charts the frenzy and the fall out of love.
I loved this book – and read it in one or two sittings – because of how skillfully the author, Megan Nolan, is able to explore the pits of a broken relationship and the attempts and failures of trying to heal.
It pulls no punches in its depiction of what we are willing to do when we believe we are in love and that that love is good, and also in its depiction of what happens to us when the bad reveals itself in all its naked ugliness. Once you’ve read this, you’ll want to read anything else Nolan writes next.
*A NEW STATESMAN, OBSERVER, IRISH TIMES, i, SPECTATOR AND STYLIST BOOK OF 2021*
'Please believe the hype ... a seriously exciting writer' Sunday Times
'Such brilliant writing about female desire... honest and visceral' Marian Keyes
Discover this bitingly honest, darkly funny debut novel about a toxic relationship and secret female desire, from an emerging star of Irish literature.
Love was the final consolation, would set ablaze the fields of my life in one go, leaving nothing behind. I thought of it as a force which would clean me and by its presence make me worthy of it. There was no…
What if your two favourite people hated each other? A nice house, a carefree life, a doting husband, a best friend never leaves your side. There’s just one problem: they love you but they hate each other. Set over a single day, husband, wife, and best friend toe the lines of compromise and betrayal. Told in three parts, three people’s lives, and their visions of themselves and one another, begin to slowly unravel, until a startling discovery throws everyone’s integrity into question.
Full of intrigue, idiosyncratic wit, and a healthy dose of wealth and snobbery The Three of Us is part suburban millennial comedy of manners and part domestic noir that will leave you wondering: whose side are you on?
I grew up a fan of an evening news segment called “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.” Kuralt spotlighted upbeat, affirmative, sometimes nostalgic stories of people and places he discovered as he traveled across the American landscape. The charming stories he told were only part of the appeal; the freedom and adventure of being on the open road ignited a spark that continues to smolder. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are our annual family road trips, and I still jump at the chance to drive across the country.
Head West in 1865 with two life-long friends looking for adventure and who want to see the wilderness before it disappears. One is a wanderer; the other seeks a home he lost. The people they meet on their journey reflect the diverse events of this time period–settlers, adventure seekers, scientific expeditions, and Indigenous peoples–all of whom shape their lives in significant ways.
This is a story of friendship that casts a different look on a time period which often focuses only on wagon trains or gunslingers.
After four years of adventure in the frontier, Win Avery returns to his hometown on the edge of the prairie and tracks down his childhood friend, Jeb Dawson. Jeb has just lost his parents, and, in his efforts to console him, Win convinces his friend to travel west with him―to see the frontier before it is settled, while it is still unspoiled wilderness.
They embark on a free-spirited adventure, but their journey sidetracks when they befriend Meg Jameson, an accomplished horsewoman, lost on the Nebraska prairie. Traveling together through the Rocky Mountain foothills, they run into Gray Wolf, an Arapaho…
