Unschooled: The story of a family that doesn’t fit in
Caro Giles
Little Toller Books, £20
Former schoolteacher Caro Giles is a single mother with four young daughters, two of whom are autistic. Unschooled is her unflinchingly honest journal-style account of what it is like bringing up children for whom the education system is not a lifeline but a form of psychological torture. She writes: “The impact of school upon my children has led to hundreds of appointments with early support workers, school nurses, speech and language therapists, psychologists, occupation therapists, physiotherapists and psychiatrists. It has made medication like Sertraline, Promethazine and Circadin part of our daily conversation.” With no option eventually but to home school her children, Giles explores the subject with sadness, anger and incomprehension.
The Glass Mountain: Escape and Discovery in Wartime Italy
Malcolm Gaskill
Allen Lane, £25
A chance conversation with his elderly mother put historian Malcolm Gaskill onto the trail of his shadowy great-uncle Ralph. All he knew about him was that he had been a prisoner of war in Italy, and had once made his escape from a train using a knife and fork. Drawn in part from his uncle’s diary, The Glass Mountain honours Ralph’s exceptional bravery during the second world war, during which he joined Italian partisans and peasants in the Alps under a new identity. But as well as uncovering a dramatic tale, Gaskill also reflects on the reasons why the past exerts such a hold on us.
Venetian Vespers
John Banville
Faber & Faber, £16.99
Shades of Henry James and Wilkie Collins haunt John Banville’s unsettling atmospheric account of an unhappy marriage between English journalist Evelyn Dolman and American heiress, Laura Rensselaer. On their honeymoon in Venice, in 1899, the city’s eery charms play on Dolman’s nerves; worse still, he discovers his wife has departed, leaving in her wake a bloodstained night dress he cannot account for. Once the police are on the scene, the distraught husband comes under suspicion of being behind his wife’s disappearance. A tale of psychological suspense, with the otherworldliness of a bad dream.
Clown Town
Mick Herron
John Murray, £22
For those addicted to Mick Herron’s mordantly comic spy thrillers, the ninth in the Sough House series resurrects the Irish troubles. The title recalls the dictum of young MI5 agent River’s grandfather: “Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.” But as Herron’s readers well know, where there’s clowns there’s danger. Humour too.
Fires Which Burned Brightly: A Life in Progress
Sebastian Faulks,
Hutchinson Heinemann, £20
In 10 essays, providing snapshots throughout his life, Sebastian Faulks proves himself as vivid and thoughtful a memoirist as he is a novelist. Here, in dreary post-war rural England, is a childhood familiar to many born in the 1950s. There are recollections of running away from boarding school; of the alcohol-fuelled exploits of Fleet Street; and of writing Birdsong in his brother’s house in France. Faulks’s picaresque essays are keyholes into his private world, but also a record of ours, showing the ways in which the immediate post-war generation was moulded by what the country, and its parents and grandparents, had endured.
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan
Lyse Doucet
Hutchinson Heinemann, £25
It’s an excellent idea: telling the recent history of Afghanistan through the fortunes of its first five-star hotel, the Inter Continental in Kabul, which opened its doors in 1969. Opening with the return of Taliban rule in 2021, and the terrified fleeing of wedding guests from its ballroom, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, charts the fortunes of this beleaguered country. From Soviet attack, US occupation and the Taliban’s revival, she follows the stories of long-serving hotel staff and guests. The Inter-Con’s story vividly encapsulates the nation’s turmoil and tragedies, but also its resilience, humour and courage.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Kiran Desai
Hamish Hamilton, £25
A big novel in every sense, from the Booker Prize winning author of The Inheritance of Loss. Would-be novelist Sonia is studying in Vermont, and Sunny is working as a journalist in New York. Both are far from home, dislocated, and struggling to reconcile western life with their Indian families’ expectations. Much more than a romance, this absorbing novel paints a multi-faceted portrait of Indian culture meeting Western ideals, and the friction this can create.
Witches: A King’s Obsession
Steven Veerapen
John Donald, £20
James VI & I’s biographer Steven Veerapen explores the king’s fanatical role in igniting the Scottish witch hunts. Convinced that supernatural powers had been at work to raise the storm that almost sank his ship as he returned to Scotland with his bride Anne of Denmark in 1589, he set in motion a hysterical wave of persecution. With his trademark brio and imagination, Veerapen tells the story through the most prominent trials and those involved in them. He also reflects on the ways in which, despite its harrowing history, the idea of witches continues to fascinate us.
What We Can Know
Ian McEwan
Jonathan Cape, £22
Narrated from a century in the future, by which time a rise in water levels has reduced the UK to an archipelago, What We Can Know is a brilliant, satirical and disturbing portrait of the pre-flood literary world. In 2014, a poet writes a remarkable poem to his wife, which has gained fame in the decades since its single performance for a group of friends. Following that historic evening, the poem has disappeared. When an ambitious academic sets out to find it, he discovers far more than he could have anticipated.
Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History
Emma Warren
Faber & Faber, £18.99
From its origins in the industrial revolution, the youth club has become a vital, if often overlooked and underfunded, part of society. Emma Warren, an impassioned advocate of the importance of these clubs, traces the ways in which, down the years, adults have offered spaces allowing young people a chance to enjoy themselves, make friends and relax. There are variations between all four of the UK nations in how they came into existence, but the essential premise, and benefits, remain the same. An inspirational new angle on political, social and cultural history.
