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What Else We've Been Reading
Jenny Offill's brilliant new book Weather (already one of our favourite reads of the year), a strange but engrossing novella by Amina Cain, and Anne Enright's latest novel Actress.
Just about every review we've read of Jenny Offill's new novel hints that the author has been living inside the reviewer's mind; such is her ability to write that very specific cocktail of climate dread, political anxiety and hapless living that seems to be 2020’s mood. Told in brief snippets, Weather follows Lizzie Benson, a librarian who is enduring life in Trump's post-truth landscape of contemporary America. Sounds bleak we know (a reviewer described the books as the 'Five Stages of Climactic Grief'), but this small novel transcends bleak and produces something incredibly human and illuminating and surprisingly hilarious. Don't come to this book for the linear narrative or busy plot (those who have read Offill's excellent Dept. of Speculation will know that this is simply not her style) but do stay for that perfect balance of wit and wisdom that characterises Offill's writing and holds a mirror up to modern living. Already one of our favourite books of the year!
A strange but engrossing novella about a cleaning woman who marries a wealthy man only to find that her her new privilege does not bring her peace. Sparse but weighty, Indelicacy is a feminist fable about a woman coming into her own, exploring the risks and rewards of creativity. For anyone who loves Jean Rhys, Clarice Lispector or Octavia Butler.
From the Booker-winning Irish author Anne Enright comes this very detailed and moving novel about fame, sexual power and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths. Written from the point of view of the daughter of a very famous Irish actress, the novel reads almost as a stream of conscience. The pace takes a little while to regulate but once it hits its stride the book is hard to put down. A haunting and absorbing account of sexual power and the destructive impact of celebrity as well as a detailed account of the complexity of mother and daughter relationships.
