The October Shortlist

This month's stack was literally toppling over after a number of visits to some of my favourite bookstores; Daunt Books of Marylebone and The Book House in Thame. With a slight lull in review copies (have I done something wrong??) I had the opportunity to crack the spines of some new fiction I'd long been looking forward too.

So here it is the latest shortlist with no spoilers...

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1892 by Cho Nam-Joo

‘Disappointment collected between them like dust on top of the refrigerator or medicine cabinet - spots clearly visible but neglected’

Kim Jiyoung is a fascinating character though as unremarkable as they come. Her story is personal yer arguably the story of all women in South Korea at the end of the twentieth Century. At first, the gender inequality portrayed in the novel feels like Alice looking through the looking glass until you read the citations in the margin and realise, no, this is real. What a novel.

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

Two novels in one, both pushing the boundaries of gender identity in Japanese fiction and challenging the status quo - the bookshelves will never be the same again.

We know that Kawakami writes believable and unforgettable female characters from her landmark novel Ms Ice Sandwich but here we are taken further into what it means to be a woman in Japan.

Is this the new benchmark by which all new Japanese fiction will be judged? Maybe. It’s a landmark novel from a female writer unafraid to challenge social norms and literary representation.

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

'Memory shifts. Memory lifts. Memory makes due with what its given. Memory is not about facts. Memory is an inconsistent measure of the pain in one's life'

The campus novel of our time? College for Wallace is a another world that cannot ‘lay a claim on who you were before you arrived’ but there is no escaping the truth in Brandon Taylor’s brilliantly genuine novel.

‘The past is not a receding horizon. Rather it advances one moment at a time, marching steadily forward until it has claimed everything’ #amreading Brandon Taylor