This year I’m trying to romanticise the colder months and find time for my hobbies as the darker nights mean more time indoors. Being someone who is a summer person at heart, and truly believes that a hot country is where I belong, I’m turning to creating, reading and journalling. The end of year wind down is the perfect time to rest and reflect. After all, there’s nothing better than getting cosy with a good book. I’ve picked up some great reads recently, so if you’re looking for a good book to get stuck into here’s some recommended reads. I write more regularly about what I’m reading over on my Substack, so do give that a follow!
Damnation Spring – Ash Davidson
I picked this up on a whim after seeing it recommended on Goodreads and being drawn in by the cover. I’m not sure what I expected but it wasn’t a beautiful, sprawling novel about a logging community in the heart of California’s redwood forests.
Rich comes from a generation of tree-fellers and wants a better future for his family, he sees buying his own land as the way out the family desperately needs. But this comes at a cost larger than the huge debts Rich racks up to achieve his dream. His wife, Colleen, is increasingly concerned by the damage the industry is causing to the environment and her fears are fuelled by Daniel Bywater, a scientist and member of the Yurok tribe, who is investigating toxins in the residents’ drinking water caused by the chemicals sprayed to clear forests. There are links to the illnesses is the community: birth defects, cancers, unexplained nosebleeds. Colleen’s own miscarriages and grief drive her to find answers but those answers put her family and communities livelihoods at risk.
This is a winding, complicated narrative exploring small town life that will wrap you up in its branches.
Talking at Night – Claire Daverley
This quiet love story follows Will and Rosie who connect at a bonfire in their exam year at school. Rosie is serious and studious, determined to go to Oxford, while Will has a reputation for trouble and a chequered family life. Both have their own issues and when a devastating event changes their lives forever an unbreakable bond forms between the two.
Fans of Sally Rooney’s Normal People will love this debut novel. There are similarities not only in the punctuation-less prose but also in the characterisation of two very real, deeply flawed, individuals navigating their love for each other. Told in alternating chapters, we follow the pairs lives individually as they grow from teenagers to young adults. Sometimes together, sometimes apart for months or even years they somehow always find their way back to each other.
This book perfectly captures the intensity of first love. At times the plot feelss frustratingly drawn out but there were so many parts of the book that made me feel nostalgic about my teenage years and the characters arrive fully formed and real on the page.
Black Butterflies – Priscilla Morris
Set in Spring 1992, at the start of the Siege of Sarajevo, as violence breaks out artist Zora sends her mother and husband to stay with family in England, believing she will continue her work until they can return. I picked this book up after seeing it was on the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist and I’m so glad I did because it is one of the most beautifully written and moving stories I’ve read in a long time.
The city is cut off from the outside world, with dwindling access to food, water and eventually communications are cut too. Zora and those around her lose everything and life in Sarajevo, as they knew and loved it, changes beyond recognition yet, somehow, they persist. The novel is based on real stories from the Morris’ own family and the details of life in a war-torn city are so vivid and devastating; zigzagging between streets to avoid snipers in the hills, neighbours banding together to cook on open flames, the ashes of burnt books filling the skies like black butterflies.
It’s hard not to be swept up in the fast-paced narrative and it’s also impossible not to draw parallels with current conflicts. The moments of resilience, Zora’s continuation of her craft in spite of losing everything, give the story a real sense of humanity and hope.
Next on my TBR pile is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. What are you reading this autumn?
