Clever Girl

By Tessa Hadley,

Book cover of Clever Girl

Book description

An indelible story of one woman’s life, revealed in a series of beautifully sculpted episodes that illuminate an era, moving from the 1960s to today, from one of Britain’s leading literary lights—Tessa Hadley.

“Clever Girl is…what could be called a ‘sensibility’ novel—a story that doesn’t overreach, about a character who…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Clever Girl as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

A lower-middle-class girl grows up in provincial England, and we follow her from early childhood through middle age. That’s it. She has a few relationships, a few kids, and some friendships. She fights with her mother, she works, and she thinks about her life, but only in passing because she’s busy living.

The kind of book that’s not supposed to work, except it does. It was technically marketed as a novel but exists on the disputed border between connected short story collections and novels. Each section can be read by itself and is a world unto itself. This book is…

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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

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