100 books like His Only Wife

‘The evening is the best part of the day.’ This is the ultimate realisation of Mr. Stevens, the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro’s most famous novel. It is a delightful first-person narrative, during which Stevens, an ageing butler, looks back on his life of service while embarking on a drive through the West Country.

Ultimately, it is a love story, the most moving of love stories, the unrequited love story. It is also an atmospheric portrait of a bygone age, of a life in service before the war, in the dying moments of the aristocracy’s country estate era.

I loved the fact that we, the readers, are addressed directly as if we are sitting beside Stevens in his vintage Ford as he motors around the country.

Is One Day a modern classic? After the hype had died down, I bought a battered copy second-hand from a charity shop. Over a decade since reading it, I still mentally return to Dex and Em: what was and what could’ve been.

There’s also something in the beautiful narrative structure – where we see both sides of their story over time – that makes me ponder the way we can never fully know another person. Even when they are familiar to us. Perhaps especially then.

I bought this book when I was looking for something else: its title hit me between the eyes. The word “bittersweet” encapsulates everything I often feel; I was nodding along in self-recognition.

If I’m honest, I’ve probably internalised a certain amount of shame around my strong emotions. Definitely, I’ve longed to feel less viscerally about the highs and lows of life. Or, at least, to feel them sequentially – instead of jumbled together: wonderful things tinged with the sadness of impermanence; hard things somehow glowing around the edges with the feeling of being really alive.

What to do with all the emotions? That’s been my recurring question. This book answers – gently, but insistently – make art.

This memoir is like a kaleidoscope: each time I re-read it from a new vantage point in my life, I see different colours.

Ariel Levy writes with brutal bravery about a series of personal losses. She brings a candid and unconventional perspective to marriage and motherhood, career and aging, and ultimately our inability to truly control our circumstances.

I think the heart of what this book tells me is: surrender is not synonymous with giving up.  It’s deeper and more hopeful than that. Surrender is learning that power and resilience come from gratitude and acceptance, even in the face of hardships.

I really admire how this book traces two lines of a tumultuous family history through a series of short stories.

Opening in Ghana 250 years ago, the book follows two trajectories: one family branch that is kidnapped into slavery in America, and a second that remains in Africa while collaborating with slave traders.

This is a brave book that is not afraid to pose difficult questions, but in doing so, it opens a clear-eyed perspective on the way that history shapes us.

Nadia Owusu is the quintessential third culture kid, holder of a US passport, but born in Dar-es-Salaam to a Ghanaian father and an Armenian-American mother. Her UN-employed father moved his two daughters around through Kumasi (Ghana), Kampala (Uganda), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Rome (Italy), and the UK. Her mother left the family when Nadia was three years old and didn’t look back, save for a rare, short visit and some trinket gifts. Aftershocks is Ms. Owusu’s tribute to a loving father, but her upbringing was a shaky foundation that reverberated throughout her life, and provided the earthquake metaphor around which she structures her memoir. She weaves bits of political history and culture from the countries she lived in into her own story, comprised of the foreshocks, main shock, and aftershocks. It’s held together by beautiful prose descriptions, both of place and emotions.

Walking with the author on his journey from successful African American businessman in Montgomery, Alabama to empowered and enriched Nigerian and Ghana American now living in Accra, Ghana brings the echoes of Dr. King's "dream" to life in the halls of our hearts: we realize that to walk equally with others first requires that we know ourselves, proclaiming proudly who we are and whose we are. Found My People gives us the tools, encouragement, and benefits to do so.

This book will challenge your concept of heritage, delight you with the serendipities of destiny, and inspire you to find your people! I was inspired to extend my DNA search and dig deeper into my heritage because of it.

This is the story of the relationships and legacy of surgeon Kweku Sai, who passes away of a heart attack in his garden in Ghana in the opening pages of this page-turning family drama. The novel explores Kweku’s relationships with each of his four children and how each makes sense of and mourns his death.

While slightly different than the other selections in this list in that it doesn’t focus on a single father-daughter relationship, the novel nonetheless explores the complexity of Kweku’s estranged relationships with each of his children, including his daughters Taiwo and Sadie. 

This is a gorgeous book to be savoured slowly.

It is suffused with music throughout (and the nerd within me loves the reoccurring literary motifs and phrases that definitely lend a musical quality to the book) and took me back to lazy summer days as a teenager when I first moved to London and the city felt wide open with excitement and possibility.

This is another love story, but one about community, family and the first loves that we learn from our parents.

This is mom culture at its best: Wolitzer traces the members of a clique who drop their kids at pre-k and enjoy over the ensuing years the gravitational pull of parenting, school volunteering, and part-time work.

She explores familiar dilemmas about aging, career versus family, and female friendship, while offering a sometimes heartbreaking, but always realistic, look at the choices moms face as they watch their kids grow.