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My Father’s House (2023) by Joseph O’Connor

The Rome Escape Line

My Father’s House was a spontaneous library read, an historical thriller based on a true story and the first book in the Rome Escape Line Trilogy.

The second book The Ghosts of Rome (2025) continues the story of Irish priest Father Hugh O’Flagherty  and the clandestine group known as ‘The Choir’ who smuggle thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Rome Escape Line.

Inspired by Real People and Events in Rome WWII

The first chapter begins:

Sunday 19th December 1943

10.49pm

119 hours and 11 minutes before the mission

My Fathers House by Joseph O'Connor Book 1 Rome Escape Line Trilogy

A car is being driven in the streets of Rome with Delia Kiernan, a diplomat’s wife and an injured man in the back. The pace and elements of danger are set. The next chapter is her voice, in January 1963, from a transcipt of a BBC research interview, questions inaudible, conducted in White City, London.

In her interview, as the wife of the senior Irish diplomat to the Vatican, she answers questions about the young Irish of the city, many of them seminarians.

One or two were scarcely into long trousers and they staring down the barrel of priesthood. Some of them, you wondered had it maybe been more Mammy’s idea than their own.And, often enough, though some won’t like me saying it, a nun was the youngest daughter of a poor family, with no other prospects.

On Father Hugh O’Flagherty she said:

But this Monsignor fellow was different, down to earth. Affable. You get that with Kerry people, a sort of courtesy. Too many priests at the time saw themselves not as a sign of mercy but as grim little thin-lipped suburban magistrates. Hugh wasn’t too mad on authority.

A City of Hiding Places and Bridges

On the opening pages we also see a 1943 map of Rome and the boundaries of Vatican City, the only safe zone in the city during the war. In the narrative that continues, we observe and learn of its streets, alleys and underground tunnels and those who know them well, like a London cabbie used to know ‘The Knowledge’, crucial to the group during the event of 24 Dec 1943 that is to be carried out.

A Polyphonic Literary Thriller

Written like a literary thriller, as we read, are not exactly sure what the mission on Dec 24 is, like those involved, we too read on a need to know basis, and we begin to understand as an alternative thread of the story is told twenty years in the future in 1962 and 1963, by some of the participants in that mission. These chapters are given headings that tell us they are The Voice of… BBC transcript, research interviews, though again, we do not know what the purpose was for. But they give us another form of chorus, allowing multiple voices to perpetuate the wider moral and political considerations, each voice uniquely shaped and restrained.

So the evening unfolds and we feel the danger and the writing is a kind of lyrical realism with a sense of moral urgency. Short sentences are very descriptive, they act like a constant scan of the area every time a character moves. They must be able to detect without being detected. It creates taut, cinematic prose that at times I almost wanted to skip over, but eventually I got used to the style and it flowed better. While it is not melodramatic at all, it made me think of the shadow elements in a thriller, those not very well lit forms infused with creepy music that make the viewer uneasy. O’Connor succeeds through language to create this unease in the reader.

Father O’Flaherty writes his last will and testament that same night.

As for me, in those days, I saw all political systems as more or less the same, forms of foolishness, the prattling of apes, designed to keep the lesser chimps down. This was a shameful foolishness of my own. I have come to see that neutrality is the most extremist stance of all; without it, no tyranny can flourish.

Classic Theatrical Structure

A prolific writer of novels and Theatre/Spoken word, it is no surprise that the narrative is so propulsive, but it is done in a way that is not action oriented, as descriptive, it is written in a way that makes the reader pay attention to everything around them. The description is purposeful rather than decorative, it contributes to the sense of unease and provides cover, hiding places, makes us aware of danger.

Rome and Vatican City Map 1943 Joseph O'Connor My Father's House

The novel is structured into Act I: The Choir, Act II The Solo, Act III The Huntsman, and the final Act is Coda. So we meet all the characters, the mission is carried by one, supported by all the other characters, and then the one who really wants to capture him, has his moment.

Countdown To the Solo Act

The hours before the mission commences are narrated and then Hugh O’Flaherty is off on the night crusade, but one man is determined to catch him outside the neutral territory of Vatican city, SS Officer Paul Hauptmann, a man who rules with terror and is obsessed with stopping the one man who does not fear him. Within the walls of the Vatican no one can be touched, he is biding time, waiting for the priest to cross over into the occupied territory.

A Neutral Territory Within an Occupied City

Photo by Alexandre Moreira on Pexels.com

The way it’s written deftly portrays the dark, menacing shadow of occupation and the risk these people take and the incredible preparations they make and memorise should they be confronted. Ultimately, they are facilitating the continued funding of the Escape Line, in order that others can continue to help those whose lives are at greatest risk to find safe haven.

Written in such a propulsive and careful manner, that even as the reader, we are not entirely sure of the mission until it fully progresses, making one feel the risk of having too much knowledge and experience the tension and potential danger waiting around each corner.

Not at all my genre, I was intrigued to find out what the Rome Escape Line was all about and recalled that the sequel The Ghosts of Rome won the overall Book of The Year in all categories at the 2025 An Irish Book Awards as well as the Listener’s Choice Award.

Described by the Irish Times as an “extraordinary picture of Rome under Nazi control; brutal, chaotic, treacherous, decaying, wrecked and crumbling, and yet sometimes still bathed in glorious and unexpected light’

Highly Recommended if you are interested in WWII history of Rome and the Vatican. The third and final book in the trilogy is expected in 2027, though nothing has been announced yet.

Have you read either of the Rome Escape Line books? Share your thoughts with us below.

Further Reading

The Guardian: My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor review – a literary thriller of the highest order

Author, Joseph O’Connor

Joseph O’Connor is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and broadcaster from Dublin.

He is the author of eleven novels including ‘Star of the Sea’, ‘Ghost Light’ (Dublin One City One Book novel 2011) and ‘Shadowplay’.

Among his awards are the Prix Zepter for European Novel of the Year, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, an American Library Association Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature. His work has also been translated into forty languages and in 2014, he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

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The Mushroom Tapes (2025) by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper, Sarah Krasnostein

Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial

The Mushroom Tapes was probably more interesting for me because I knew nothing about the trial and stumbled across it after having already decided to read Helen Garner’s collected diaries. This is a catch up review from Dec 2025.

Courtroom Content, Trial Coverage, the Spectacle of Justice

The book concerns a 2025 trial in Australia, which was very widely covered in the media, in a similar way to the coverage of the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial.

Court Trials of public interest become like live reality television when the Courts decide to allow love broadcasting to the wider public, who capitalise on it turning it into something more like serialised drama.

Three Literary Authors on a Road Trip

The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner Chloe Hooper Sarah Krasnostein Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial in Australia

The nonfiction book The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial was created by three established Australian literary nonfiction writers:

Helen Garner, an acclaimed novelist and nonfiction writer with a long history of researching and writing about real-world true crime legal cases.

Chloe Hooper, an award-winning author known for deeply researched true-crime and nonfiction works.

Sarah Krasnostein, multi-award-winning writer and critic with a background in long-form journalism and law.

The book was created shortly after the conclusion of nine weeks of evidence to a jury in 2025. It is based on recorded conversations in the car and a local cafe, and reflections during and after the Erin Patterson triple-murder trial in Victoria, Australia, combining legal observation with personal and ethical analysis rather than simple narration.

It starts and we are not even there. Everyone in the world is talking about it. People say to us, you must be going. No, we answer. No. No. No.

…Heads turn to watch the trial. We see them start to stir. Via a media audio-link we listen to the evidence of the woman’s estranged husband. One wild domestic detail galvanises us: his dying aunt remembered that the guests ate off four grey plates, while the hostess served herself on an orange one.

On day five we get in the car.

Courtroom justice The Mushroom trials Helen Garner
Pic K. Bolovtsova Pexels.com

The book is split into six parts: The Court, The Church and the House, The Death Cap, The Victims, The Accused, The Verdict and it ends with Coda (the conclusion).

The first page shows a map of south east Australia, showing where the trial took place, the distance from the city of Melbourne, where the homes of the people involved were and where she foraged.

The text begins on 5 May and concludes on 4 July 2025.

Collaborative Authorship

This was a spontaneous book purchase. I was curious to see how the three authors could pull off the idea of road trip conversations, and create a collaborative approach to authoring a book of this nature.

We’ve never travelled anywhere together before. We’re writers and we’re friends, but this morning we’re almost shy of each other, not a hundred percent how we’re going to handle the day.

None of us wants to write about this. And none of us wants not to write about this.

While it does work and I really enjoyed the way the book is presented, I read it not long after Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, which is true crime on a whole different level, a case that involves years of research and delving into archives and uncovering the conspiracy of a nation. This is nothing like that, so not not investigative epic, but reflective, conversational, and essayistic.

It has more in common with Helen Garner’s earlier work, This House of Grief, being as much about the writer’s observations and response as the crime itself and in this case, The Mushroom Tapes shares the considerations of three people, arriving at a collective understanding and sensibility. It might be compared to French author, Emmanuel Carrère’s The Adversary, an exploration of the double life of a once respectable doctor.

What Happened

Photo V. Vieira Pexels.com

In July 2023, in a quiet Australian country town, Erin Patterson, stay-at-home mother and true-crime aficianado, invited her estranged husband’s devoutly Christian family to Sunday lunch. Her ex-husband was invited but pulled out at the last minute.

Within days, three of her guests were dead and the fourth was in a coma. They had been poisoned by death cap mushrooms found present in the Beef Wellington dish she had served.

The Trial

Two years later, Patterson stood trial, accused of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The prosecution argued she deliberately foraged, prepared, and added the poisonous mushrooms to the meal to kill her guests; the defence claimed it was a tragic accident and that she had “panicked” after realising people had died.

The Mushroom Tapes

It is a terrible and tragic event when three close relatives die so suddenly after a Sunday lunch and even worse to imagine the poisoning may have been deliberate. The three writers decide to follow the trial and between them combine close legal examination and observation of people in the courtroom as the events unfold (reminding me of Yvvette Edwards courtroom novel The Mother), with personal and ethical analysis.

Chloe: Why is the public fascinated by a female poisoner?

Sarah: It’s archetypal. Adam and Eve and the apple. It’s through myths and fairytales.

Chloe: These crime stories seem to work as modern folktales. We mike it all the more if the characters are clearly good or bad, much as those old tales need a witch.

Helen: When I was splitting up with my husband, he said angrily to me, ‘You think you’re a good person!’

Chloe: Did you take that as an insult?

The women listen to the evidence and discuss it in a way that makes for an easy reading, intriguing form of coverage, a lot less repetitive no doubt than the actual trial.

Female Poisoners

I also picked this book up because my curiosity had been piqued earlier after listening to a podcast interview with the author Patti McCracken prior to the publication of her true crime book The Angel Makers (2023). A village in Hungary in the 1910-1920’s had more than 160 cases of death by poison.

Women in the village had been complaining to their midwife ‘Auntie Suzy’ about unwanted pregnancies, domestic violence and a host of other marital complaints; she had a plethora of knowledge that she passed on to her clients. The story blends social history, gender roles, desperation, and crime, exploring why these women turned to murder and how the killings remained undetected for so long.

True Crime Devotees

It is likely that Erin Patterson and her true-crime friends were aware of that book. Stories about true crime, we learn, fascinate women. A criticism of true-crime is that it desensitises us to murder.

Chloe: I want to know more about true-crime’s appeal to women. I read that something like seventy percent of Amazon’s true-crime book reviews are by women, whereas for war books it’s like eighty-two per cent men. A female audience is driving the production of true crime in every medium. Why are women so fascinated by this?

Though they attempt to discover a motive, the four victims are portrayed as kind, gentle people, so the focus shifts to an analysis of the personality of Erin Patterson, the accused, the disintegration of her marriage, her resentments, her fascination with true crime and the devoted online community of friends she was part of in absence of the same in her own life.

According to the newspapers, Erin had described her upbringing to her Facebook friends:

My mum was ultra weird her whole life. We had a horrible upbringing. Mum was essentially a cold robot. It was like being brought up in a Russian orphanage where they don’t touch babies.

Dad wanted to be warm and loving to us, but mum wouldn’t let him because it would spoil us, so he did as he was told. She would shout at him if he did the wrong thing, so he became very meek and compliant. My sister and I would hide in our room most of the time so we couldn’t do anything wrong.

Chloe: Erin said that, to cope with this, she spent most of her childhood reading.

It seems also strange the attention the trial is given in this age of podcasts and content creation, so many people pursuing a trial for their own opportunity and attention, a conversational book seems almost an oxymoron.

Helen: I look at some people I’ve seen in the dock and I think, Jesus, I’ve been there, and somehow I didn’t crack – something in me stopped me from cracking and murdering…A friend of mine said to me, ‘I have to know why she broke.’ That’s what I’m always looking for in these stories. What was the point at which Erin just could not hack it any longer.

Chloe: She has elements of a fantasist or fabulist. Who knows what she’s told herself about breaking.

Final Words From the Survivor

It is an intriguing and compelling read, with its own glimmer of hope, as the sole survivor of the four dinner guests shares the final thought-provoking words, exhibiting values seriously lacking elsewhere.

Sarah: Erin was estranged from her parents, so Don and Gail became even more important for the practical and emotional support they gave. Love betrayed is often the motive for extreme rage. I almost find it more incriminating the more she talks about this well of deep feeling she had for them, because this rage about rejection hovers at the edges.

Further Reading

The Guardian: The Mushroom Tapes review – Erin Patterson through the eyes of Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein

Author, Helen Garner

Helen Garner is one of Australia’s most acclaimed and revered writers: of novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 1993 she won a Walkley award and in 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature. In 2019 she was honoured with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Her best-selling books include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, Cosmo Cosmolino, The Spare Room, The First Stone, This House of Grief, Everywhere I Look, The Season and her diaries, the collected volume of which has been shortlisted for the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize.

Author, Chloe Hooper

Chloe Hooper’s first novel, A Child’s Book of True Crime , was short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction.  In 2006 she won a Walkley Award for her writing on the inquest into the death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee. The Tall Man, her 2008 book-length account of the case, received numerous awards including the Victorian, New South Wales, Western Australian and Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.

Her account of the Australian Black Saturday bushfires, The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire, was voted 2018’s Best Non-fiction title by Australian Independent booksellers.

Author, Sarah Krasnostein

Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award winning writer and critic. Her best-selling books include The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, the Quarterly Essay, Not Waving, Drowning, and On Peter Carey

She has won Walkley Awards and been awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature, the Australian Book Industry Award for General Non-Fiction, the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction, the Prize for Non-Fiction at the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards and the Dobbie Literary Award. She holds a doctorate in criminal law and is admitted to legal practice in New York and Victoria.

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You Are Here (2024) by David Nicholls

I picked this up from the library during the festive season for a light romcom type read without looking too much into what it was about. I remember when David Nicholls wrote One Day (2009), seeing that book splashed all over red double decker buses in London as if it were a movie, and it was a book. That was a book about two people from different backgrounds, barely connecting while at university, but keeping a tenuous friendships alive over 20 years. Emotional depth, continuity, the will they, won’t they get together intrigue – readers loved it.

Perfect Arc, Terrible Title

So I know he understands the formula, he is known to adapt books into screenplays, he’s got the story arc down pat. The only thing he gets wrong in my humble opinion are the totally forgettable book titles! And this one is terrible! You Are Here? I guess it could have been worse, Here is Now, or Another Day.

I was a little unsure going in, as I realised how lonely the two main characters were being portrayed, but then I remembered, they are going to be going through a transformation, so they must start out being somewhat at a loss. I persevered.

Northern England’s Coast to Coast

You Are Here by David Nicholls romantic comedy hiking coast to coast England

The book is about this one friend Cleo, who invites her friends Michael, Marnie, Conrad and her son Alex to go on a 2 or 3 day walk from the Cumbrian west coast of England inland, only Michael plans to go all the way west to east through Yorkshire to the opposite sea.

…he thought he could make it to the east, a high belt cinched under Scotland’s arm, crossing the Lakes, over the Pennines, along the Dales and across the Moors, then descending down the Yorkshire coastline to dip his toes into the North Sea. It was the famous route devised by Alfred Wainwright, 190 miles usually covered in twelve or thirteen days, though he felt sure he could do it in ten if he didn’t stop or rest.

When Freedom Beckons

You Are Here David nicholls hiking coast to coast engliand
Photo by A. Rasool on Pexels.com

As they set off, the weather deteriorates and some of them pull out, so then it is just Marnie and Michael who continue. She continues to delay her taxi and return train to London, enjoying the challenge, though at the back of her mind is a deadline for the copy edits she’s doing for an erotica novel, and at the back of his mind is a loose arrangement he made to meet the wife he separated from eighteen months ago.

Books saw her through the pupal stage of thirteen to sixteen, frowning at Kafka and Woolf, tearing through John Irving and Maeve Binchy, widely read in the proper sense, making no distinction between Jilly Cooper and Edith Wharton.

Marnie (38) is divorced and Michael (42) nearly 2 years separated, both are childless and while they say they were good with their solitude, the pandemic had not been exactly welcome, however this walking holiday does seems to be helping, lifting both their spirits.

Being with other families sometimes felt like indoctrination, as if she were attending a symposium on what family life could be. Here’s what you might have had if you’d made better choices, here’s where you might have poured your love.

After a slow and reluctant start, with their attention elsewhere, they begin to connect and are able to talk about things in a way they have not with anyone else – so it might seem predictable – but no, there has to be a deep connection, some kind of disruption, perhaps the feeling that’s it is over, and then the will they, won’t they, before the end.

‘Well, seven days! What did you talk about?’

‘You know – life, love, death,’ she said, and Conrad laughed, though in fact this had been true. ‘There’s something about walking, things slip out. It’s like taking a truth serum or something. Also it was very beautiful. Look.’

For two private people, the open air, the focus on the walking and the terrain facilitates them being a little vulnerable with each other (they are English, so not too much), while not quite being as open as good friends. That would require taking a risk, and neither are quite there yet.

Photo by Hc Digital Pexels.com

I really enjoyed it, particularly towards the end as other elements in their lives began to put pressure on them, where they were likely to make mistakes, exposing their flaws, where they had to step up and beyond, because they couldn’t be guaranteed each other’s company like they had been on those seven days.

Apart from the English weather, it would be great to see this made into a film or series, it certainly lends itself to it, with the wry English humour and the opportunity to see all that beautiful landscape.

It reminded me a little of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, a character who walks from the south of England to the north, and interestingly she is also a playwright.

Recommended if you enjoy light, uplifting, humorous fiction that moves forward at a good pace.

Further Reading

The Guardian: You Are Here by David Nicholls review – a well-mapped romance

Author, David Nicholls

David Nicholls is the bestselling author of Starter for Ten; The Understudy; One Day; Us, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction; Sweet Sorrow; and You Are Here. 

He is also a screenwriter who has also written adaptations of Far from the Madding Crowd, When Did You Last See Your Father? and Great Expectations, as well as his own novels. His adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, was nominated for an Emmy and won him a BAFTA for best writer. Nicholls is also the Executive Producer and a contributing screenwriter on a new Netflix adaptation of One Day.

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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006) by Maggie O’Farrell

In my library picks, I picked up a Maggie O’Farrell novel from her backlist, not one of her historical fiction novels of recent years, more of a Gothic mystery set in mid 20th century Scotland, in and around Edinburgh.

With another work of historical fiction due in 2026 ‘Land‘ set in 1860’s Ireland, and now the recent success of the film ‘Hamnet‘, her star is firmly set in the ascendant.

A Gothic Mystery in Edinburgh

Set in twin timelines, early 1900’s and early 2000’s, it tells the story of a family that returns from India after a tragic loss. Two sisters who were born there are abruptly brought to Scotland, to live in the household of a strict and rigidly corseted upper-middle class family, ruled by a grandmother in an environment that free-spirited Esme Lennox neither fits nor readily accepts conforming to.

As she gets in trouble, her sister sees her own opportunity and makes decisions that will cast long shadows on the family for decades.

Modern Life, Modern Dilemmas

In the early 2000’s, Iris runs a shop and has complex relationships with her brother and an unavailable man Luke she met at a wedding. Into this already complex life, a telephone call informs that she is the next of kin of a resident of the Cauldstone Hospital, a woman they claim is her grandmother Kitty’s sister, despite Iris believing her grandmother had been an only child. She is asked to come to an appointment where all shall be revealed.

Meanwile Esme’s world is about to change, though in another sense she is returning to where it all started.

Esme takes one last look at the driveway and sees a woman who used to have the bed next to her, standing beside a brown car. An old man is stowing a suitcase in the boot. The woman is weeping and peeling off her gloves. The man doesn’t look at her. Esme turns and starts climbing the stairs.

Family Secrets and Omissions

Photo A. Palmowska Pexels.com

Iris’s grandmother Kitty is in care and hardly remembers her grand-daughter. They haven’t been close since she was a child, when she seemed to turn against the child.

Iris visits the long-stay psychiatric hospital and learns more about her grandmother’s secret affairs that appear to have been signed over to her without her knowledge or consent.

‘I have here a copy of a document lodged with us by her solicitor, signed by Mrs Lockhart, naling you as the family member to be contacted about affairs pertaining to one Euphemia Esme Lennox, her sister.’

Iriss is really cross now. ‘She doesn’t have a sister.’

There is a pause in which Iris can hear the man moving his lips over his teeth. ‘I’m afraid I must contradict you,’ he says eventually.

Photo Suzy Hazelwood Pexels.com

No one in her family has heard of this woman, her mother lives abroad, her father is no longer living and her grandmother Kitty has Alzheimers. And the hospital is closing down. If arrangements aren’t made with family members the residents are to be moved to a hostel. Iris can’t possibly take on the responsibility, but she is curious about who this woman is and why she has been left in this place.

‘It’s not unusual for patients of ours to…shall we say, fall out of sight. Euphemia has been with us a long time.’

‘How long exactly?’

Lasdun consults his file, running a finger down the pages. The social worker coughs and leans forward. ‘Sixty years, I believe, Peter, give or take -‘

‘Sixty years?’ Iris almost shouts. ‘In this place? What’s wrong with her?’

The novel concurrently tells the story of those defining circumstances in Esme’s early years that lead to her being sent to the hospital, and Iris’s determination to get to the bottom of what of her grandmother did or didn’t know.

But before she can do this, she will meet and consider whether or not to take in this great Aunt and try to find something out from her grandmother, whose mind is no longer in ordinary reality.

Why Deny Sisterhood?

When Iris brings Esme to her apartment, it becomes clear that she recognises it, she too has lived there.

She cannot fathom the strangeness of all this. She has acquired a relative. A relative who knows her home better than she does.

‘Which was your room?’ she asks.

Esme turns. She points. ‘The floor below. The one overlooking the street. It was mine and Kitty’s. We shared.’

Girls’ Behaviours and Predicaments

The novel contrasts modern life in Edinburgh, depicting Iris’s unconventional but common behaviours with the rigid social norms of early-20th-century Scotland, especially around outspokenness, sexuality, consent and judgement. Any breach of these norms by girls was considered a form of madness and could result in them being committed to a psychiatric institution. The Edwardian era epitomised rigid class structures, strict gender expectations and a superficial elegance that masked deep social control.

Maggie O’Farrell imagines two girls who were not born into those social norms, but come into them later in childhood, and what happens to them after coming from a different culture, even though their parents were from that Scottish background. It seems unbelievable and yet we know it was very common for such situations to happen.

It’s an immersive page-turner and shocking portrayal of misdiagnosis, patriarchal control and the devastating lack of female solidarity, where women choose safety, respectability, compliance and/or silence over loyalty. This silence continues to be inherited in successive generations rather than challenged.

Highly Recommended.

Have you read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox? Do you have a favourite Maggie O’Farrell novel?

Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Further Reading

  • Anne Hathaway Shakespeares wife Hamlet
  • Dual narrative, 1950S London a young woman seeking independence and present day new mother who has no memory of giving birth navigating life changes
  • Maggie O'Farrell Memoir Near Death Experiences
  • Hamnet The Marriage Portrait Shakespeares Wife The Hand That First Held Mine

Reviewed here:

I Am, I Am, I Am: 17 Brushes With Death, A Memoir

Hamnet

The Marriage Portrait

The Hand That First Held Mine

Author Maggie O’Farrell

MAGGIE O’FARRELL was born in 1972 in Coleraine, Northern Ireland and grew up in Wales and Scotland. Currently, she lives in Edinburgh.

Her novels include Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), The Marriage Portrait, After You’d Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Novel Award), and Instructions for a Heatwave. She has also written a memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. 

Hamnet, which imagined the untold story of Shakespeare’s son, won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction and was Waterstones’ Book of the Year and is now feature film.

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10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is one of my favourite writers, ever since being lent The Bastard of Istanbul (2006) and then on learning she had been a Rumi scholar, was delighted to read The Forty Rules of Love (2009).

She is one of the most interesting and prolific authors of cross-cultural fiction, and made the transition in 2004 from writing in Turkish and being translated into English, to writing directly in the English language. She made the decision to write in English to have distance and freedom from political and social pressures implicated by writing in her native language, and to approach her heritage and subjects of interest from an alternative perspective.

A Profound Dedication

Her engagement in writing about social issues, multicultural and political themes and her relocation to London from Istanbul, and her deep engagement with history, identity, gender, religion and cultural themes, her regular speaking out, her weekly essays to followers and her prize nominations have all contributed to raising her profile to the point of being elected President of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) in the UK in 2025, succeeding Bernardine Evaristo. She is a great writer and an important connector between cultures, disciplines and literary communities.

10 Minutes 38 Seconds

This book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019, the prize that year won by Bernadine Evaristo for Girl Woman Other. I spotted this on the shelf at the library I mentioned in my last post, along with Intermezzo by Sally Rooney and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell and You Are Here by David Nicholls. I immediately jumped to read the Elif Shafak and I am happy to see there are few more of her backlist I might be able to get to this year as well.

10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world by elif shafak

Shafak’s novel starts with the intriguing title, what exactly is the meaning of 10 minutes and 38 seconds? The novel starts with a seven page chapter called The End. We are confronted with the early morning discovery of the body of Leila, before any of her friends have learned of her premature death/murder.

Once the authorities had identified her, she supposed they would inform her family. Her parents lived in the historic city of Van – a thousand miles away. But she did not expect them to come and fetch her dead body, considering they had rejected her long ago

You’ve brought us shame. Everyone is talking behind our backs.

So the police would have to go to her friends instead. The five of them: Sabotage Sinan, Nostalgia Nalan, Jameelah, Zaynab122, and Hollywood Humeyra.

A Post Death Structure

Photo Tara Winstead Pexels.com

The book then is structured into, Part One: The Mind, Part Two: The Body and a very short few pages, Part Three: The Soul. In Part One we learn about the significance of the 10 minutes 38 seconds and this is what the chapters pertain to.

During this period of time when the victim is dead her consciousness is replaying memories, aromas, all of the things that she has sensed and experienced and known, and it is in these chapters that we learn about her past with her family and we are introduced to the five friends. These are the flashbacks of her life passing through her consciousness. Thus forming the structure of this first half of the novel.

Researchers at various world-renowned institutions had observed persistent brain activity in people who had just died; in some cases this had lasted for only a few minutes. In others, for as much as ten minutes and thirty eight seconds. What happened during that time? Did the dead remember the past, and, if so, which parts of it, and in what order? How could the mind condense an entire life into the time it took to boil a kettle?

As each minute passes and each sense is evoked and each friend is remembered, there is then a short story about that friend and how they came to the name they now hold and what brought them to the city of Istanbul where they all resided until this moment.

Friends on a Mission

Photo by Kathryn Archibald on Pexels.com

When we get to Part Two: The Body, the consciousness has left the body and we arrive in the present moment with the five friends trying to deal with the fact that their friend is missing, is dead, and no one will allow them to visit her.

“Grief is a swallow,’ he said. ‘One day you wake up and you think it’s gone, but it’s only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.”

The want to pay their respects, to do something for her, but the city has already judged her and made decisions without the consent of family or friends, so this part of the novel becomes something of an adventure as the friends bond together to make amends for the current situation and try to do something for their dear friend. And go on a road trip in an old truck.

A Clever Structure Dulls Character Recall

The only trouble I found with the clever format of the first half, was that because it all takes place in the past and each chapter is about a different friend, by the time they all come together half way into the novel, it is not as easy to remember who they are, because they haven’t been regularly present in the text until now.

Thus it created a disconnect for this reader, who likes to imagine each character as they are introduced, but they need to stay present for that image and impression of them to last. I found that I had to refer back to the beginning to recreate that sense of the character, in order to recall who they were.

Overall I found it an enjoyable read, the characters come from all walks of life, mostly marginalised for one reason or another and in their neighbourhood they have found each other, look out for each and wish to challenge the way they and others like them are treated. By coming together to do something for Leila, they are also challenging the way their city deals with others who have been marginalised, that grief, burial, remembrance and recognition of those who have passed should be something universal that all can participate in, regardless of where life has taken them.

Nostalgia Nalan believed there were two kinds of family in this world: relatives formed the blood family; and friends, the water family. If your blood family happened to be nice and caring, you could count your lucky stars and make the most of it; and if not, there was still hope; things could take a turn for the better once you were old enough to leave your home sour home.

It’s a beautiful fable-like story, much of it inspired by real circumstances, real places and conditions and inspired by friendships lived by the author from time lived in the city of Istanbul.

Highly Recommended.

Further Reading

UnMapped Storylands: Elif Shafak’s Sunday Essays: Substack: ‘When Will You Begin That Long Journey Into Yourself?‘ Jan 11, 2026

‘I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.’ Hafez

Books reviewed here:

  • three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Set in 1840 and 2018 London, 2014 Turkey. “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

The Happiness of Blond People (2011) – A Personal Meditation on the Dangers of Identity (Essay)

Honour (2011) (Novel)

Three Daughters of Eve (2016) (Novel)

The Island of Missing Trees (2021) (Novel)

Author Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and storyteller. She has published 21 books, 13 of which are novels and her books have been translated into 58 languages. 

Shafak is a Fellow and President of the Royal Society of Literature and has been chosen among BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women. An advocate for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice TED Global speaker.

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A Flash Book Sale & Library Haul

Recently I attended a flash booksale at a small local English library, donating a bag of books and picking up a few temptations, despite going with the intention of not buying.

New Daughters of Africa

I was remarkably restrained and only bought four books, one of which is more of a reference book, but one that introduces many other authors. I’m talking about the New Daughters of Africa by Margaret Busby, her second anthology of over 200 women writers of African descent, the follow up to the original landmark anthology, Daughters of Africa (1992).

This new companion volume brings together fresh and vibrant voices that have emerged more fully in the last 25 years, but looks back over all the decades of the 1900’s. It does not duplicate any of the authors from that first anthology, but updates it and included more contemporary authors.

I enjoy reading unique African women voices, whether of Africa or the Caribbean, or Francophone and it is helpful to have a repository of those voices in one collection.

It is from Margaret Busby’s earlier list of authors that I discovered and have read/reviewed authors like Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria/UK), Mariama Ba (Senegal), Ann Petry (US), Nella Larsen (Danish Caribbean/US), Zora Neale Hurston (US), Simone Schwartz Bart (Guadaloupe), Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), Gayl Jones (US), Audre Lorde (US), Octavia Butler (US), bell hooks (US), Wangari Maathai (Kenya) and the late, great Maryse Condé (France/Guadalupe)

Now in this second anthology, among others we find Leila Aboulela (Sudan/Scotland), Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Nigeria), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), Edwidge Danticat (Haiti), Yvvette Edwards (UK), Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt), Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone), Bernadine Evaristo (UK), Maaza Mengiste (Ethiopia), Afua Hirsch (UK), Andrea Levy (UK/Jamaica), Imbolo Mbue (Cameroon), Marie NDiaye (France), Chinelo Okparanta (Nigeria), Yewande Omotoso (Sth Africa/Barbadoes), Namwali Serpell (Zambia), Warsan Shire (Somali/Kenya/UK), Zadie Smith (UK), Jesmyn Ward (US).

Literary Travel and Insight

New Daughters of Africa Margaret Busby Daisy Jones and the Six Lucy By the Sea Flights Olga Tokarczuk

As well as this great find, I also picked up a copy of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, the brilliant Polish author and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018, the same year that she won the International Booker Prize for this fragmentary novel Flights, a book based on some of her own experiences as a traveller that she describes as a constellation novel, constructed from small fragments. The judges said:

‘We loved the voice of the narrative – it’s one that moves from wit and gleeful mischief to real emotional texture and has the ability to create character very quickly, with interesting digression and speculation.’

I recall buying it as a gift for a family member, but I did not read it myself. I did read and adored Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones and it was my One Outstanding Read of 2022, so I am keen to explore more of her work, despite knowing it can be quite complex.

Here’s a description of the novel:

Olga Tokarczuk’s unique novel interweaves reflections on travel with an exploration of human anatomy – examining life and death, motion and migration.

In the 17th century, the Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen dissects and draws pictures of his own amputated leg. On to the 18th century, where a North African-born slave turned Austrian courtier is stuffed and put on display after his death. Next stop is the 19th century, as we follow Chopin’s heart making the covert journey from Paris to Warsaw. Final destination is the present, with the harrowing story of a young husband whose wife and child mysteriously vanish on holiday on a Croatian island.

A Comfort Read and a Musical Drama

The other two I picked up were Lucy By the Sea (2022) by Elizabeth Strout, which is a follow on novel in the Amgash, Illinois Series, to My Name is Lucy Barton (2016), Anything is Possible (2017), Oh William! (2021), and Tell Me Everything (2024). I haven’t read the third in the series, but I see they have a copy in the library. Strout is great comfort read, immersing into her characters’ lives is perfect for winter.

Atmosphere Taylor Jenkins Reid Daisy Jones and the Six

And finally I picked up Daisy Jones and the Six (2019) by Taylor Jenkins Reid, a novel about the rise and implosion of a 1970’s rock band (loosely based on Fleetwood Mac and the volatile dynamics between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham) and now a TV series, because I like musical dramas and would like to read the book first.

I have her latest novel Atmosphere (2025), a space novel, which I might read first, because I don’t think it is as good, so I’d rather save the best for last.

She is well known for her emotionally immersive storytelling and readable plotlines, her debut historical fiction novel, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017) about a reclusive Hollywood icon was a runaway bestseller.

Mood Reading and Library Obligations

So that’s it, watch out for reviews of these coming in 2026, I’ve started the year somewhat randomly, but aware that library books have to be returned, so I’ll be sharing those soon, the first one I have already reviewed was Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.

Have you read any of the books or authors I shared here? Let us know what you recommend or if you enjoyed any of these three novels I picked up in the sale.

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Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (2024)

After donating a bag of books at a recent book sale, I spotted a few novels on the shelves of this small English library that I was curious about, so joined the library and came home with four popular titles I thought I might read over the festive season, the first one being Intermezzo by Irish author Sally Rooney. I had heard it discussed by the Irish Times Woman’s Podcast Bookclub where thoughts on it were quite divisive.

Sally Rooney’s earlier novels Conversations With Friends (2017), Normal People (2018) and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) all examine how educated young people try to love each other under conditions of class inequality, political exhaustion, and intense self-consciousness, where desire is constantly constrained by these factors and the question then becomes whether love can survive these somewhat undermining conditions.

An Irish Millennial Perspective

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney Irish literature 2025

I haven’t read anything by Rooney, however knowing those novels have been a huge international success, being a writer with her literary pen poised on particular millennial characteristics, I picked up the latest, Intermezzo (2024) set in modern day Dublin, to understand what that might be all about.

I finished it in late December and overall I enjoyed it, though in the beginning I found it a little tiresome and repetitive, especially all the awkward self-conscious sex scenes between the younger brother and his newfound lover, but as the story progressed and the conflicts and mysteries become more present in the narrative, it became ever more psychologically interesting and I ended up really liking it. So it almost lost me in the beginning, but ultimately (in 442 pages) it gets there and I’m all the more appreciative of it for going back and considering it again now, from a distance.

Grief As a Turning and Growth Point

The Kindness of Enemies Leila Aboulela The Queen's Gambit Intermezzo Sally Rooney
Photo C. Solorzano Pexels.com

The novel charts the months following the father’s premature death and how it affects his two sons Ivan 22, a socially awkward, competitive chess player who has not been on form recently and is questioning whether he might be past his best, and his elder brother Peter 32, a corporate, detached Dublin lawyer juggling two relationships and medicating himself to get sleep.

You know, a lot of people told me I was letting it take up too much time, and I just thought they didn’t understand. But now I think, maybe I’ve really wasted a lot of my life.

Unresolved Mother Son Issues

The boys mother has long since moved on to a new relationship and the boys have complicated relationships with her.

I guess I would say, if you’re interested, they’re both kind of dominant personalities. Who like getting their own way. So my mother trying to be the authority figure, that never went down too well with Peter, if you get me. Because he wouldn’t be a great fan of getting bossed around.

I see, Margaret says.

Ivan is looking at her. Yeah, he says. Whereas with me, I guess, my mother can be the authority more. But with no great results, because she’s never happy with me.

Photo: Katrin Bolovtsova

The brothers have different personalities and are no longer close like they once were. In fact, they find it difficult being around each other without emotions escalating to volatility. And yet. Underneath, there’s a desire to connect.

Without their father present in their lives, they get easily derailed, falling into old destructive patterns. Something needs to shift and change if they are to arrive in a place of acceptance.

The same ritual he thinks each time. She tries to extract from him some valuably hurtful information and he tries to conceal from her any aspect of his life in which he suspects she might gain a foothold. Her fake innocuous queries and his studied evasions. Screens her calls whenever Naomi is home. Why does his mother even want to know; why does he want not to. Contest for dominance. Story of his life.

In essence, this is what the novel explores. Are these two brothers able to grow through the grieving process into a new form of relationship with each other that might sustain them in the years ahead? And can they successfully be in a relationship with another, given the stagnant place they are currently at.

Millennial Self-Consciousness and Entangled Love Lives

They are each trying to navigate romantic relationships, and here there is much interiority expressed, both anxiety and indecisiveness, but the feelings push them forward and the interactions they have with women allow them to be tested and move forward as they confront someone else they have feelings for and have to adapt to stay in relationship.

Ivan meets the older, separated Art Centre Manager, 36 year old Margaret, who struggles with how they might be perceived due to the age difference, but she can’t deny the strong connection and positive effect they have on each other. They must explore their own different perspectives and experiences to maintain that something they have together, if it is deemed worth it.

Dimly she wonders now whether she has been thinking somehow about herself, her own circumstances, and she feels her face again growing flushed. It is this, she thinks, her own sense of identification, that has thrown everything into confusion. She has lost sight of the brother Ivan has been describing, replacing him with herself, and therefore attributing to herself a greater understanding of his motives than she could possibly possess.

Peter is navigating the familiar, intellectually compatible friendship with his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, a chronically ill English literature professor he’s known since college, and a more challenging, non-committal relationship with student Naomi who sells images of herself online to help fund her studies.

Unclear whether you’re cheating on me with her, or you’re cheating on her with me, she said. Absentmindedly he considered the proposition. Either option preferable he thought. Dignity of old-fashioned faithlessness. Neither, he answered. Sylvia is a very dear friend of mine. And you’re just a homeless college student who lives in my house. That made her laugh. The actual disrespect, she said.

Using Voice Stylistically to Create Power Dynamics

Photo by Leeloo Pexels.com

Rooney explores how intimacy is negotiated under constant moral and social evaluation, both from the family and society and from one’s own self-judgement.

Peter’s thoughts are expressed in short, clipped, declarations with little depth, a voice trained to avoid vulnerability, and control interpretation, reducing the risk of him being misunderstood or judged, which doesn’t always help navigate the path of more intimate relationships.

This controlled minimal manner of speaking suits his profession and will have developed as he absorbed criticism in the maternal relationship and created a habit regarding his brother. His short sentences create discomfort, they become a form of domination by withholding forcing the other to elaborate.

They are initially disconcerting to read, but after a while you get used to the style. This manner has been said by some to be ‘Joycean’ not because it is like Ulysses in style, but because it shares with Joyce a particular attitude to consciousness, authority, and language under pressure. This way of expression gives Peter’s voice a hard, self-contained quality that Joyce often gave to male consciousness.

Meanwhile Ivan’s longer, more considered sentences allow for doubt and consideration, for exploration and confirmation in the relationship. Oh, and there is a touching storyline around the family whippet.

A Long Positional Game

Ultimately every character has a reckoning, no one is immune to the need to look at their own part in creating some of the perceived conflict and the novel travels the arc from the initial state of these relationships, through the hashing things out, blame, judgement, self pity, self consciousness, fear of what others might think, and out the other side to talking it out, owning up, allowing unconventionally without fear of judgement, settling differences through to forgiveness.

It’s not a fast paced read, it’s more of a slow, gradual navigation of challenging relationships between not particularly likeable characters, but that makes it all the more interesting to see how and whether they might overcome the exit of the one person who was their centre, and move to a healthier way of co-existing. It is an exploration of buried pain and unresolved issues meeting new opportunities and fresh hurts. A long, positional game played in mutual fear of getting it wrong.

Further Reading

The Guardian – Intermezzo by Sally Rooney review – is there a better writer at work right now?

Chicago Review of Books – Mixing Loss with Life in “Intermezzo” by Cait O’Neill, October 1, 2024

Author Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney is an Irish novelist from Castlebar, Country Mayo. She is the author of Conversations With Friends, Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You.

Interesting Fact: While attending Trinity College Dublin, Rooney was a university debater and in 2013 became the top debater at the European Universities Debating Championships.

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Best Books of 2025 Top Reads in Translation

Apaprt from committing to read Women in Translation in August, I read less consciously and more by mood or whatever stood out on the shelf this year.

Though I read more books, I read from the same number of countries, but less in translation. In 2024, 33% (20 books) of the titles I read were in translation – a conscious effort. This year only 15%. It is also in part the effect of taking a subscription, I loved most of the Charco Press titles I read, but there were some I was less inclined to read; I would look at them and then choose something else.

It’s about discernment. So I remove those books from the shelf and more carefully research those I have no hesitation in wanting to read. I chose well this summer and so I here are the best seven titles I highly recommend. I’ll be making a more conscious effort to read more in translation in 2026, so please share with me your favorites from this year.

Top 7 Reads in Translation

The Runner Up Outstanding Read of 2025

Someone is Walking On Your Grave My Cemetery Journeys Mariana Enriquez
Mariana Enriquez Somebody is Walking on Your Grave My Cemetery Journeys Essays and travelogue from two decades of visiting graveyards

Somebody is Walking On Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys, Mariana Enriquez (Argentina) tr. Megan McDowell

See yesterday’s post Runner Up for Outstanding Book of the Year. The author travels to 13 countries over two decades, visiting cemeteries – mixing travelogue, personal history, cultural history and collective memory. I read the essays over a month, each one exhibiting not just the protocols around death, but the context of different eras that each country has been through, and how that has impacted the collective memory. Her essays take the reader to :

Europe: Italy, Spain, France, United Kingdom (England & Scotland), Czech Republic, Germany
Americas: Argentina, Chile, Mexico, United States, Peru, Cuba
Oceania: Australia

Argentina in the ’70s, the decade where I was born, had a dictatorship that made a lot of bodies disappear. Therefore, there’s a generation of people that were killed by the government, and they don’t have a grave.

I realized that that trauma, that is very engraved in my life, somehow made me feel that a grave, a tombstone – it’s something of comfort. It’s a final thing in a good way.

Far by Rosa Riba (Spain) tr. Charlotte Coombe

Book cover of English translation of Far by Rosa Ribas translated by Charlotte Coombe, mountain and monastery of Montserrat, Catalonia in the background

Far was a novel I came across by the relatively new publisher of Mediterranean literature, Foundry Editions after reading an article in the Guardian about a building project in Spain, 13,500 affordable apartments built to house 40,000 people, a ghost town after the global financial crisis, and the deepest economic recession Spain had experienced for fifty years.

Author Rosa Ribas was taken by friends to visit this strange monument to a broken era in Seseña; the housing development was known as ‘The Manhattan of La Mancha’ and as night fell three lights came on and inspired an idea for her novel Far, a story of determined inhabitants trying to create community, while others are escaping who knows what? We follow two characters, both dealing with issues, one in hiding, the other part of the community. Tensions rise, the locals become paranoid and angry at their untenable situation, mirroring the disintegration of the country’s economic situation, disenfranchised youth and a rise in racism and xenophobia.

The entire development was constructed on a pile of poorly concealed sleaze, a chain of bribery, corruption, intimidation, and complicit silences. No ancient manuscripts, no mythical foundations. If these lands had been the scene of some momentous event, back when battles of conquest and reconquest were being fought all over the area, no one had bothered to record it. It was a bleak place, devoid of stories, where it was impossible to satisfy any yearnings for greatness.

The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel (Mexico) tr. J.T. Lichenstein

The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel

Having loved Still Born by the same author, I picked this up and was equally mesmerised. This novel is a semi-autobiographical coming of age story set in the 1970’s, that follows a girl’s childhood in Mexico, the things that marked her experience, that she looks back on now (from a therapist’s chair) with a better understanding of the impact.

She ponders the harm of parental regimes and how they perpetuate onto the next generation the neuroses of one’s forebears, in her case her parents were ‘open-minded’ in a way that ultimately lead to the disintegration of the family and a period of living with a grandmother who disliked her. She and her brother then move to the south of France while her mother pursues studies and a new love.

Enjoying it, I was surprised to learn the narrative moved to the same town where I live. The siblings navigate life at a local school among pupils from multiple origins, North African, Indian, Asian, Caribbean and French, a unique and unforgettable experience, very much unlike the international schools they had attended elsewhere.

It is an engaging, insightful recollection of an atypical upbringing, within different cultures. Loved it!

To survive in this climate, I had to adapt my vocabulary to the local argot – a mix of Arabic and Southern French – that was spoken around me, and my mannerisms to those of the lords of the cantine.

All That Remains by Virginie Grimaldi (France) tr. by Hildegarde Serle (French)

Another book set in France, this time set in Paris, this a page turner from the opening chapters, a feel good novel and another that I was attracted to due to its connection to real life events. I had heard about elderly widowed Parisians in largish apartments being assisted by a specialist agency that matched them with mature students as a way to keep them in their own homes, and to provide students with accomodation.

This is the premise of the novel; recently widowed Jeanne (74) decides to rent one of her rooms and two people quickly respond, an 18 year old Théo, apprentice boulanger, of no fixed abode and a thirty something Iris, who is escaping from something. It’s a perfect slice of ordinary life in Paris and a wonderful example of a new way to live, where young and old help each out and all the better for it.

“Hello Madame, I just wanted to confirm my interest in your room for rent. And please know that, if it weren’t for my tricky situation, I’d never have interrupted your conversation with the young man, who also seems in real need of a home. If you’ve not yet made your choice, I’d understand if you favour him. Regards Iris.”

The Brittle Age (L’età fragile) by Donatella Di Pietrantonio (Italy) tr. Ann Goldstein

Winner of the 2024 Strega Prize, The Brittle Age is a novella inspired by an historic true-crime event in the 1990’s, a double femicide in the mountainous region of the Abruzzo Apennines in Italy, a novel dedicated to “all the women who survive”. The third novel I’ve enjoyed by her, since A Girl Returned and A Sister’s Story.

Though it is framed by an actual event, this novel really piqued my interest for the way it dealt with the mother-daughter relationship. Lucia’s daughter Amanda returns from Milan on one of the last trains as the pandemic shuts everything down, she stays in her room, barely eats, doesn’t talk, her phone lies uncharged under the bed. Lucia worries but can get nothing out of her.

The novel explores both the events of the past and the mother’s struggle to understand what is going on with her daughter. Amanda’s reclusiveness awakens memories and feelings Lucia has suppressed from 30 years ago. Although the story is about a crime, the mystery of what happens sits alongside the portrait of a fractured family and community, all impacted by the past, burying it with silence. I loved the balance of revelations of both past events and present predicaments, a most memorable read.

Our birthplace had protected us for a long time, or maybe that had been a false impression. We grew up in a single night.

All Our Yesterdays, Natalia Ginzburg (Italy) tr. Angus Davidson, Intro Sally Rooney

This might be my favourite Natalia Ginzburg novel – it sits alongside her family memoir Family Lexicon and often reminded me of parts of that book, clearly inspired by events she lived through.

Set in Northern Italy in the lead up to WWII, the war era through to liberated, it is a brilliant depiction of two Italian families (one family own the leather factory in town, the other is middle class), neighbours who live opposite each and everyone they’re connected to, everyone who enters their home – what they live through during this era, how they keep tabs on each other, the dilemmas they face, how they deal with them, their tragedies and accomplishments, their loves and losses.

The absence of the mother, and the ill health of their authoritarian father, intent on writing a memoir critical of the regime, looms over them and creates tension and an air of rebellion. Youth desire change and autonomy in a country that feels increasingly oppressive leading them towards risk and turbulent decisions.

This story and its characters was so immersive, and the depiction of difficult times treated with compassion, as we encounter each event, every friend or person connected to those two households. When not present they are the subject of letters, so at almost all times everyone is aware of the well-being of the others. In the second part of the novel, the focus shifts to the impoverished rural Italian south

It was so, so good, it really gives a sense of what it was like to live through this period for this family, especially knowing the hardship the author lived through, her young, anti-fascist husband Leone was tortured and murdered by the Gestapo.

This was a war in which no one would win or lose, in the end it would be seen that everyone had more or less lost.

Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou (Cyprus) tr. Lina Protopapa (Greek)

Another favourite from Foundry Editions, this is a wonderful novella that is like a series of vignettes set in an old hotel in Cyprus, each one from the perspective of a character with a connection to the hotel, their story told through a tale related to a particular beverage and often how it cures them of various afflictions. Clever but simplistic and there are threads that carry through making it read more like an interconnected story than separate stories.

He always wakes at dawn and he goes to the kitchen to have his coffee prepared the way he likes it. The only coffee of the day. With lots of kaymak and no sugar. Turkish coffee – Greek coffee, he always corrects himself – with sugar is an absolute waste of coffee. It needs to be bitter. There’s no point otherwise.

Coffee Brandy Sour turkish greek cofee Cyprus
Photo S. Daboul Pexels.com

The emblematic Ledra Palace Hotel was established in 1949 on Nicosia’s UN-controlled buffer zone, the Green Line that, since 1964, has divided the island into Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot sectors and reading the book one discovers a little known history of the island and its people, those who visited int he past, from colonial visitors to the Egyptian King, employees, local villagers.

“The Palace was the epicentre of the island’s recent history. It was built as the promise of a new era; a haven for all nationalities, all communities. It drew people from all backgrounds: the wealthy bourgeoisie who lounged by its cerulean pool; the poorer working classes who made its beds – and its Brandy Sours…”

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That’s it for 2025. Let me know what works in translation were your favourites this year. Thanks for reading and sharing and commenting. Happy Reading!

Further Reading

My Top Fiction Reads of 2025

My Top Non-Fiction Reads of 2025

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Best Reads of 2025 Top Non-Fiction

Yesterday I shared my Top 9 Fiction Reads for 2025 along with the One Outstanding Read of 2025 and the runner up. So no surprise to see them here on my best non-fiction of 2025, as the first two titles mentioned here were my two outstanding reads of 2025.

In nonfiction, I like a really good memoir that shares more than just the personal experience, like a good nature writing memoir will increase knowledge of an aspect of nature and share something of a life that is also uplevelling in some way.

Top Non-Fiction

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (India)

memoir by Arundhati Roy Mother Mary Comes to Me

– This was my Outstanding Read of 2025 and a book that takes a while to process, because these strong women it features, Arundhati Roy and her mother Mary Roy, have achieved incredible feats at a high cost to their basic humanity. They have both lived through situations that required them to fight back, they have lived in close proximity to and been decimated by cruelty and lifted up by personal achievement; they have been revered by an entourage and yet rarely found peace in their relationship to each other or in other close relationships. Intimate and inspirational.

The transparency and honesty with which Arundhati writes, as she walks the reader through childhood in Kerala, early adulthood in Delhi, through a dogged determination to live according to her own values making her both friends and enemies, and through it all that magnetising effect of the mother. Toxic bond or filial loyalty, I’m not entirely sure, but she chose to publish this work, one thinks respectfully, after the ruthless matriarch of steely perseverance let go of her last breath.

“I think I had a cool seraph watching over me. Especially each time I was at a crossroads and had to make a decision. My education, the class I came from, and, above all, the fact that I spoke English protected me and gave me options that millions of others did not have. Those were gifts bestowed on me by Mrs Roy. At no point, no matter how untenable my circumstance, did I ever forget that.”

Somebody is Walking On Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys by Mariana Enriquez (Argentina) tr. Megan McDowell (Spanish)

– My runner up book for Outstanding Read of 2025 in part because I couldn’t stop telling people about the many different things I learned from reading this book. A memoir-like collection of essays, this really is like super-alternative, armchair travel, where you get to voyage briefly through 13 countries with an experienced, gothic guide to an underworld of 21 cemeteries.

Somebody is Walking On Your Grave My Cemetery Journeys Mariana Enriquez Argentina in translation

However, the focus isn’t just on the visit, you’re going to be there for a few days, so you’ll get to learn from the highly observant, well researched, perspective of an Argentinian writer (known for unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre) about various cultures, odd behaviours and aspirations of various eras, in how humans have treated those they have revered, once passed. From Genoa to Prague, to Highgate to the Paris catacombs, from Rottnest Island in Australia to Bonaventure in Savannah, from Havana, Cuba to Peru, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, she uses cemeteries to reflect on history, culture, memory, and her own personal life. Outstanding!

Reading Edgar Allen Poe – and then with the years, I learned that also cemeteries have a lot to say about life, about the history of the people. And then Argentina in the ’70s, the decade where I was born, had a dictatorship that made a lot of bodies disappear. Therefore, there’s a generation of people that were killed by the government, and they don’t have a grave.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (UK)

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton shortlisted womens prize nonfiction winner Wainwright Prize 2025

– Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, I became aware of this title early in the year but waited till the end having read enough reviews to be convinced it was going to be for me. Chloe Dalton hears a bark, stumbles across a leveret and wants to ignore it, but can’t and then lacking knowledge becomes something of an expert on hares and how to care for one, going deep into library archives and reading obscure, ancient texts as well as modern informative ones.

She bonds with the hare but facilitates it return to the wild and then turns her daytime political expertise sights on an outdated policy – Hares are the only game species which are not protected by a ‘close season’ in England and Wales: a period of the year during which they cannot be shot and killed – which I was pleased to read just yesterday, an article in the Guardian Saturday 20 Dec 2025 – Shooting hares in England to be banned for most of the year in sweeping changes to animal welfare law about to be announced in the UK. The new close season will ban hare hunting during the breeding months of February to October to protect mothers and the young.

I pondered the concept of ‘owning’ a living creature in any context. Interaction with animals nurtures the loving, empathetic, compassionate aspects of human nature. It taps into a primordial reverence towards the living world and a sense of the commonality and connectedness across species. It is a gateway, as I was discovering, into a state of greater respect for nature and the environment as a whole. We all too easily subordinate animals to our will, constraining or confining them to suit our purposes, needs and lifestyles.

Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (UK)

nature writing rivers naturalist perspective nonfiction poetic prose

– Another travelling memoir with nature and the environment at the forefront of his journeying, Robert Macfarlane is well known for his mapping of the Old Ways of the ancients, writing about landscapes as living, abundant, storied places and how humans interact with them. So he is very aware of how aspects of nature, such as rivers and streams are being compromised and endangered and killed by humanity, thus he sets out on these three journeys to understand his question, Is a River Alive?

He travels to a cloud-forest in Ecuador with a team of people all looking at nature from different perspectives, a fungi expert, a musician and a ‘Rights of Nature’ lawyer; then to India to find the source of its three rivers with a passionate teacher and advocate for waterways and finally to northern Canada to kayak down a river under threat from corporations wanting to dam it.

Ultimately, beyond his initial question, to which his young son gave him the answer before he even left home, he explores the idea and begins to see for himself, rivers and forests as moral and sentient beings rather than resources to be owned and exploited, shifting from a perspective of ownership to one of responsibility for their guardianship. If we begin to see rivers and the natural world as part of our shared way of living and protect them, we might live more simple and healthy lives.

Spinster, Making a Life of One’s Own by Kate Bolick (US)

Spinster Making a Life of Ones Own by Kate Bolick features columnist Neith Boyce, essayist Maeve Brennan, social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and novelist Edith Wharton

– Not one I reviewed, but I came across this memoir while doing genealogical research. I discovered a female ancestor named Mary Stoyle, born in 1791 in Zeal Monachorum, Devon who had five children and on all the baptism certificates she was always the sole parent named. In the census registers, she was Head of Household.

Clearly a man contributed to the conception of her children, but equally it appears he was not part of her household. That made me curious about her Profession and initially under the heading Quality, Trade or Profession, in 1816 when her son George was born, it was listed as Spinster. When Joseph was born in 1831, her Profession had changed to Weaver, which suggested she was financially independent. Women worked at Spinning because it could be done at home, fitted around childcare, and required little capital. Weaving required greater technical skill. Mary was almost certainly a self-supporting handloom weaver, working from home, producing woollen cloth for the local / regional rural economy.

I wondered if anyone had looked into these non-married women from the early 1800’s, as I discovered it was more common than we might think, and that these matriarchs were well respected. So I read Kate Bolick’s book which was a little more modern than what I was looking for, (and focused on but equally fascinating as she explored a number of renowned women from the last century who had tried to live a life without marriage or children in order to pursue some other objective, creative or career.

She looked into the lives of American script writer and columnist Neith Boyce, Irish essayist Maeve Brennan, American social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and novelist Edith Wharton. Some of these women did marry, but all of them sought ways to escape the traditional expectations of that contract to pursue their own personal ambitions. While it didn’t really help me with my own questions about Mary Stoyle, it was fascinating to read about these women and some of the changing statistics over time, in particular to learn that the institution of marriage was less prominent in the 18th century and reached its peak in the mid 20th century.

Special Mentions, Spiritual Well-Being Top Ups

I read a few books this year that come under the heading of spiritual well-being and two that were particularly good were Rebecca Campbell’s Your Soul Had a Dream, Your Life Is It regarding the cycle of transitions, of resonance and discernment, understanding grief, loss, separation, change. The benefit of going within, of being our own best support, to heal, grow and transmute feeling(s) into the next version of ourselves. To align more with soul purpose, tapping into our inner guidance system. Nothing really new, just good reminders to keep up the practice (s). I’ve read all her books, they’re good to dip in and out of.

spirit hacking shaman durek frequency vibration energy

The other one I read and listened to was Spirit Hacking (2019) by Shaman Durek, I particularly enjoy his Ancient Wisdom Today podcast pep talks while on a 5 km walk. He is spiritually and intellectually knowledgeable, very direct, often funny, he calls things out, and is deeply encouraging. He comes from a heart-centred background of immersion in Buddhist and Shamanic Philosophy, basically that your thoughts create your reality and the regular checking of what kind of energy you are bringing when responding to challenges and triggers, he gives great examples from personal experiences and admits to his own flaws. He comes to all this with an attitude that may be challenging to some, but I find him interesting to observe, listen to and learn from, filtering out what is useful or not.

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If you’ve read any of these non-fiction titles, or have another favourite for 2025, share them with us in the comments below.

Further Reading

My Top Fiction Reads of 2025

My Top Reads in Translation 2025

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Best Reads of 2025 Top Fiction

In 2025, I read 75 books from 22 countries (the exact same number of countries as in 2024), 55 of those titles were fiction and 20 were nonfiction.

73 percent of my reads were by female authors and 27% by male authors. Of the total books read, 15% were books in translation, originally written in a language other then English.

I will be sharing my One Outstanding Read of the year, the runner up, Top 9 Fiction, tomorrow my Top 8 Non-Fiction and since there were so many excellent reads, the following day Top 7 Reads in Translation.

One Outstanding Read of 2025

My One Outstanding Read of the year for 2025 is the non-fiction memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me (2025) by Arundhati Roy, (review to come), a phenomenal, engaging, wide-ranging book that is as much about her mother Mary Roy as it is herself. From the back cover:

‘In these pages, my mother, my gangster, shall live. She was my shelter and my storm.’

Mother Mary Come to Me by Arundhati back cover photo of author

It is about the family she was born into, the matriarch Mary Roy she was raised by, the controversy around their housing, as her mother struggled initially to raise two children on her own, the lawsuit Mary Roy would launch against her brother and mother that changed inheritance laws in their state; the school Mary Roy founded and how it was being the child of the school principal. We follow Arundhati Roy through her seven year estrangement from family, her architectural studies, her early film-making ventures, her relationships and difficulties in them due to the strong values she held.

“When it came to me, Mrs Roy taught me how to think, then raged against my thoughts. She taught me to be free and raged against my freedom. She taught me to write and resented the author I became”

It is a raw, honest account and an insight into a passionate, dedicated, creative individual, who won the Booker Prize with her debut novel, The God of Small Things (1997) a feat that had a major effect and influence on what she has been able to do in life, and enabled the support she has been able to provide to other causes, in order that they remain independent and are not compromised by the stultifying agendas of large corporate and NGO organisations.

Outstanding Read Runner Up 2025

Someone is Walking On Your Grave My Cemetery Journeys Mariana Enriquez

Somebody is Walking On Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys (2025) by Mariana Enriquez (Argentina) tr. Megan McDowell (Spanish) – I have to mention this book as it was also an outstanding, unique and far-reaching book that kept me entranced for the most part of October, as the author travels in 13 countries visiting 21 cemeteries, (something she is passionate about) sharing cultural anecdotes about each country, history, legend and their relationship to the dead. She wrote these essays over a period of about 25 years, starting with a visit to Genoa, Italy with her mother through two and half decades of experience, learning, and journeying that no doubt continues in her life today.

It’s not so much macabre, as it is insightful to learn about some of the communities of people she comes across, like the Welsh speaking community in Patagonia, what it means to have Taphophilia syndrome, the controversy surrounding the Pietro Gualdi marble sculpture of a seated woman in New Orleans, people who have already constructed elaborate tombs for themselves ahead of time, the dilemma of the 12th century Holy Innocents Cemetery in Paris that led to the catacombs, the first date she has with her Australian boyfriend, taking him to the aristocratic Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, where Eva Peron was finally laid to rest (after much debate, body snatching and travel). The entire book was an eye-opener and an unforgettable read and one I highly recommend.

Top Fiction

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Small Worlds (2023) by Caleb Azumah Nelson (UK/Ghanaian) – a brilliant, meandering coming-of-age story set mostly in Peckham, London. A story-line that spans three years as he finishes school and decides what to do next, it is an introspective excavation of a young British-Ghanaian man’s soul, the situations he will encounter and confront, as he matures and grows into a version of himself that he likes. I read this early in the year and this one is my Number 1. Top Fiction of the Year.

Second Class Citizen Buchi Ememcheta Nigerian Literature Classic London

Second Class Citizen (1974) by Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria/UK) – I read The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta some years ago and loved it and have long wanted to read this. It’s absolutely brilliant and poignant and tells the story of a young Nigerian girl in the 1960’s, much like the author herself, determined to get herself an education and raise herself up in the world, which she does – until a marriage and in-laws start to rely on her as their income source, so she sets London in her sights, only for the challenges to increase as children begin to appear – as a woman she has no control over her reproductive rights. It is a powerful story of a woman dealing with and overcoming the odds, in her home country and as an immigrant.

Buchi Emecheta, while raising five children, published novels, obtained a degree in sociology, wrote plays for television and radio, worked as a librarian, teacher, youth worker and sociologist, and community worker. She was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 1983.

Black Woods Blue sky by Eowyn Ivey book cover, the words a reference to Proust, the cover shows black tree trunks and a blue background, behind a tree a standing bear, his shadow is the shape of a man

Black Woods, Blue Sky (2025) by Eowyn Ivey (Alaska) – Eowyn Ivey remains one of my favourite authors, most known for her debut novel The Snow Child (2012). She also wrote The Bright Edge of the World (2016) and now her latest, a novel that subtly references Beauty and the Beast, is her most autobiographical novel and again set in her local region of the wilds of Alaska.

It is the story of a troubled, young mother Birdie, her six year old daughter Emaleen and a reclusive character Arthur. Ignoring the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to Arthur’s isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact. At first everything is idyllic, until it is not and this sense of things not being quite right creates acute suspense while reading. Ivey has a wonderful way of capturing the magic and menace of the wilderness while creating down to earth characters and that hint of an unsettling feeling lurking beneath the narrative.

Fundamentally Nussaibah Younis shortlisted womens prize set in UN Iraq comedy in print

Fundamentally (2025) by Nussaibah Younis (UK/Iraq/Pakistan) – Not reviewed here, but one of my favourite reads of 2025, I just loved the comic narrative voice of Fundamentally and the unique setting of a UN workplace in Iraq, even if some of the characters were somewhat cliche. Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize 2025.

When academic Nadia is disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, she decides to leave, accepting a UN job in Iraq. Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia observes the inside of world international aid and finds herself quickly compromised. As the tension ratchets up, as Nadia tries to make up for her mistakes, the humour fades and the danger increases, as they cross lines that can’t be reversed.

Younis is a fearless, talented writer, creating fiction from a place of knowledge that not too many authors occupy and is able to bring depth, humour and insight to serious subjects. I found it a relief to read a light version of the harsh reality of war zones and displacement, still having the imprint of Sally Hayden’s ambitious award-winning work of nonfiction, My Fourth Time We Drowned, which depicts the plight of those seeking asylum, risking their lives taking small craft across the Mediterranean.

The Marriage Portrait (2022) by Maggie O’Farrell (Ireland/UK) – In 1540 -1561 Renaissance Italy, we encounter the story of Lucrezia of Florence, who, due to the death of her older sister Maria, becomes the intended fiance of the man her sister was going to marry, Alfonso of Ferrara. It tells of her childhood in Florence, her year of wretched wifedom, her solace in creating art and the act of sitting for a portrait that she dislikes.

Told in twin timelines, childhood and marriage, beginning with a historical note in the opening pages about her alleged death, there is an underlying tension and suspicion all the way through the narrative which adds to the pace and intrigue. The character of Lucrezia is exquisitely constructed and rich in visual imagery, thanks to her artistic inclinations, despite the fact that she is often confined to quarters. The era of Renaissance Italy, the day to day lives, the close environment of these dynastic families is intricately portrayed and sumptuously imagined.

Look out for more historical fiction from Maggie O’Farrell in 2026, Land is set in 1865 Ireland.

Scottish Island literature Clear by Carys Davies Wales

Clear (2024) by Carys Davies (Wales/UK) – Clear is a short historical novella that gripped me from the opening pages and transported me to 1843 Scotland, the time of the Great Disruption, the Highland Clearances. It is about a quiet, worrisome, rebel pastor, John Ferguson, his wife Mary and Ivar, a lone islander out in the North Sea, somewhere between the Shetland Islands and the coast of Norway.

John, like other rebel ministers who signed the controversial Act of Separation and Deed of Demission, is under financial pressure to meet his new responsibilities and accepts a paid role from a landowner’s factor against his wife’s wishes. He must visit a remote island in the north and evict the last inhabitant. Evocative of its time and place. I thought this was a brilliant, atmospheric tale.

Flashlight by Susan Choi set in Japan USA and North Korea

Flashlight (2025) by Susan Choi (US) – Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025, Flashlight interested me because of its portrayal of a cross-cultural marriage (American and Korean-Japanese) and family that highlights the tensions between adults with different backgrounds and expectations, coping within one culture (America), while Louisa, the child of that union navigates her own life and connection to her parents.

Also the further stretch of scope and understanding it provides, as the narrative moves from the US to Japan to North Korea, because it concerns a family exiled from Jeju Island in South Korea, living in Japan, wanting to return. Their son Serk (Louisa’s father) has grown up and been educated in Japan and values that education, resists his family’s desire, while they wish to take up an offer to return.

When Serk goes missing, the narrative splits and we follow each family member on their own timeline, observing our characters while learning something of a complicated history of Korea and Japan. While slow to begin, this became captivating, mysterious and frightening as time began to run out for a man trying to return and a daughter trying to find herself. I loved the immersion in another culture, the multiple cultural perspectives and coming to understand the complication of borders, ethnicities, allegiances, and the creepy stealth of some nations and complete (or deliberate) ignorance of others.

Cover of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (2025) by Kiran Desai (India) – I do love a good cross-cultural novel, and one that is in part set in India, by a known author, sounded promising. As soon as I saw the Booker longlist I knew I would be reading this, and I loved it. The story is about two young people who have just finished studying in the US, Sunny is working as a freelance journalist and Sonia is in a college library, looking for an internship. Their families have a connection but are no longer close, however a letter arrives suggesting marriage, to absolve a past discretion, but goes nowhere.

It is an interesting navigation of their young adult lives, where they struggle to cope with the freedom and direction their lives might take, now that they are living outside of their country and culture. Both must deal with challenging issues on their own, their families far away and ignorant of their dilemmas. On a trip home, the two cross paths, make a strong connection, only to diverge again. This is enough to ignite in the reader, a wish that they might meet again, though it is clear the timing had not been right.

I loved this immersive, meandering novel, the loneliness and confusion of the protagonists, the clash of cultures and past/present values, the defiance and stubbornness of each parent, the multi-generational threads as everyone is going through their transition and it’s a wild, contemporary ride to the end. Brilliant.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (US) – Nothing like a feel good novel to wrap up the end of the year. This is a charming book of letters by a dedicated 73 year old retired law clerk and correspondent who sits at her desk every morning to write letters, emails, notes, through which we come to learn all the issues she’s currently juggling and something of her stubborn, somewhat dogmatic attitude. It’s also an unlikely word-of-mouth book that is enjoying some success thanks to readers, not marketing hype.

It’s entertaining, has multiple engaging storylines and some of the letters contain excellent book recommendations, which is always fun for readers. There’s mystery, loss, relationship troubles, mother-daughter issues, potential love interest(s) and a tribute to the lost art of letter-writing. Loved it!

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So that’s my Top 9 Fiction Reads for 2025, tomorrow I’ll share my Top 8 Non-Fiction Reads for 2025 and after that I’ll share my Top 7 Translated Reads of 2025.

Are any of these in your Top Reads of 2025? Let us know in the comments your thoughts, or share your favourite fiction read of 2025, I would love to know.