Rites by Sophie Coulombeau

DISCLAIMER - I adore the woman who wrote this book and the night before I started this blog post nearly a year ago, she'd just made me dinner. Also, this book has my name in the back. My copy also has a hand-drawn picture of a dinosaur in the prelim pages.

Here's a book about choices, and circumstance, and opportunity and icy-poles in Summer. The bravery, stupidity and calamity of adolescence where truth and duty begin to fray their edges - it's all here.

The way she writes about everything awkward, awful, harrowing and defining about growing up, you'd think she was the world's most articulate teenager. She might have been, but she's not any more.

I'm not going to say any more than this, except look out for her next one - you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Congratulations Soph.

x

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

This is such a more-ish book. Set in the Congo at the end of the 50s and starring a zealous Baptist missionary couple and there several daughters, this is brilliant.

The daughters and their mother take turns to narrate the story - a style I really enjoy when it's used well, as here. But the voice we never hear - that of their increasingly maniacal father - is omnipresent, dictating, essentially, the trajectory of the entire story.


This is a fascinating look at belonging and community, and destiny, faith and hope. You will love and hate the characters, but you will find your fate entwined with theirs and you will rip through the pages to save yourself.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

Here is a book about identity & friendship. It's wonderfully written & deeply amusing. All friendships instruct you in some way, make you who you are, but also reflect you by your choices. This portrayal of that interplay is truly thrilling.

Enjoy.