This month's stack was as varied as ever with award winners, books in translation from Gallic Books (thank you) and new reads from one of my favourite Japanese authors. Here's the shortlist, and what to read next, with no spoilers....
Rather than a single overarching narrative, it's the shared experiences of twelve black women that binds this novel so brilliantly together. Each character is expertly drawn from Evaristo's pen which never succumbs to cliche or stereotype. Expertly conceived and completely unforgettable.
'Nobody talked loudly about feeling too uglystupidfatpoor or just plain out of place, out of sorts, out of her depth'
Enjoyed Bernadine Evaristo? Try Tayari Jones
2. People from my Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami
Kawakami's new novel is a collection of extremely short stories that, together, depict the inhabitants of a small neighbourhood. Each story is essentially a vignette with a character introduced in a specific situation often whilst interacting with others. Quite why or how this works is a mystery yet Kawakami manages to deliver an expansive novel from the fewest number of pages.
If this is how micro-fiction works then I'm hooked but I suspect that, rather than the genre being in the spotlight, its Kawakami's eye for detail and ability to present only the words that really matter in the page that is the real winner.
The dog school principle, the woman who ran The Love, Grandpa Shadows, Uncle Red Shoes or The Princess - who's your favourite character?
More work by Hiromi Kawakami here
3. The Sleeping Car Murders (originally published as Compartiment Tuers) by Sebastian Jaspirot
This 1962 novel was not the first to introduce the idea of a dead body on a train, indeed Agatha Christie got there in the mid-1930s, but The Sleeping Car Murders is a stylish and sophisticated take on the trope that is as much literary fiction as it is crime writing. Almost as soon as the body of a 'beautiful young woman' is discovered by a shocked train conductor the classic 'whodunit' narrative is subverted by Jaspirot who begins killing off the other passengers as quickly as Police Inspector Grazziani can interview them. Cool mid-century noir brought write up to date in a new translation by Francis Price.
'As soon as you accept the idea of killing someone, the number of people you kill becomes unimportant.'
Enjoyed Sebastien Japrisot? Try Leila Slimani
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