Floored by Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Tanya Byrne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson  & Eleanor Wood

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Floored is the story of six people who meet by chance in a lift at a TV centre, and a seventh person who changes their lives by being there. Dawson, Kaitlyn, Velvet, Sasha, Joe, and Hugo have their lives changed by a traumatic experience they all go through, one which causes them to meet every year. Through friendships, relationships, and a Whatsapp group, the six of them change and grow over the following six years, showing that coincidence can bring people together and life is about chance and consequence.

This collaborative novel between seven YA writers tells the perspective of each of the six main characters and a mysterious narrator who brings each section together at the end. Though written by so many voices, it feels very much like an integrated whole. The characters’ lives are varied and show different elements of life aged fifteen to twenty-one. There are issues of class, disability, money, sexuality, relationships, friendships, alcohol, and more, all brought together by the narratives of the six characters. It is particularly good at tackling class issues in the UK and how disability (in this case, visual impairment) is treated by well-meaning friends.

Floored is an unputdownable YA read, urging the reader to find out what happens to the characters as each year passes. It shows how friendships aren’t perfect, and sometimes people have to be self-centred, but that it is also good to have people who have got your back.

The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry

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The Way of All Flesh is a historical novel that blends crime and medicine, showing the cutthroat world of scientific discovery and the dangerous situations of the poor of Victorian Edinburgh. Will Raven starts an apprenticeship with the renowned Dr Simpson, who alongside his patients is looking for discoveries in anaesthesia. In Simpson’s house, Raven meets Sarah, a housemaid with an interest in medicine and an early dislike of Raven. Soon, they find themselves working together to uncover why young women keep turning up dead in the Old Town, deaths that seem to have some link to the medical world that Raven inhabits.

The novel is co-written by a crime writer and a consultant anaesthetist, giving it a thoroughly medical setting whilst weaving in mystery and money. The class elements are vital too: Edinburgh is divided and the characters cross between rich and poor areas. Raven finds himself confronted by the realities of the poor even as he deals with his own money troubles, with actions he thinks are helpful turning out to not be as well thought out. A lot of interesting elements are combined in the novel and the narrative has plenty of intrigue, though at times the pace is a little slow. Sarah is a great character, providing a reality check for Raven and also showing how intellect could only be valued if you were male and well off.

There have been a number of nineteenth-century historical novels set in Edinburgh featuring elements of crime and medicine released recently (including The Wages of Sin and The Pharmacist’s Wife), but they all tend to have unique elements of focus or narrative. In the case of The Way of All Flesh, this is the quest for anaesthesia combined with the reality of hidden abortion, and the interesting way this intersects with gender and class in a historical context. This novel is definitely one for historical crime fans who aren’t squeamish about medical stuff, and the fact it is the first in the series means there is likely to be plenty more to come.

Future Popes of Ireland by Darragh Martin

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Future Popes of Ireland is a character-driven novel about the messiness of life and the way it unfolds, with a side helping of social relevance. Granny Doyle wants her family to produce the first Irish pope, but things don’t go as planned, and she finds herself bringing up four grandchildren: five year old Peg and infant triplets Damian, Rosie, and John Paul. As they all grow up, things don’t go as Granny Doyle planned, and soon the siblings are scattered. Peg left home as a teenager and is far away in New York now, Damian’s musing political ideals and love whilst trying to tell his grandmother about his sexuality, Rosie is a dreaming activist who hopes of making her big sister confront the past, and John Paul has taken his pope role in a rather different direction than might have been hoped.

The narrative spans from 1979 to 2011, focusing on different siblings and their grandmother as their lives are weaved. Underpinning the story is the backdrop of Ireland and beyond: abortion and the 8th amendment, environmental issues, LGBT rights, war in the Middle East, and hope and despair in politics. This element gives the novel a relevant feel, rather than just being another novel focused on a family’s messy personal drama. The characters are frustrating in a good way, flawed and foolish and unlikely to have a magical happy ending.

This is a novel that from the summary sounds like a lot of other books out there, but it has a surprising spark in its relevance and its depiction of messy and not easily described human lives. Levels of ambiguity and unspoken facts give it narrative power, and it can be witty and heart-warming as well as cutting.

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

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Washington Black is a gripping and fresh novel about a slave for whom escape is only the start of his unusual adventures. Eleven-year-old Washington Black knows only the Barbados plantation where he has lived as long as he remembers. When the old master dies and his cruel nephew takes over, Wash finds a strange opportunity: he is selected as the personal servant and assistant to the new master’s eccentric brother, Titch, who is working on a flying machine. However, Wash and Titch’s plan is soon scuppered and they are forced to leave the island. The novel follows Washington from the Arctic to Morocco as he finds an interest in marine biology and learns how to make his way in the world.

This is a surprising book, multi-faceted in its narrative. The shock to Wash of the places he ends up is mirrored in the way the book feels solidly set in Barbados until the point Wash and Titch leave. Slavery is vital to the narrative and so is freedom, in different forms, as Wash’s escape does not free him from thoughts of what he left behind, or the dangers of being an escaped slave and and a black boy. It is also a kind of coming of age novel, as Wash ages from eleven to eighteen across the novel and discovers a lot about the world and about his own interests. The writing style suits the novel, not trying too hard to be historical, and keeps the novel moving forward with pace.

Washington Black is a fresh kind of historical adventure novel that mixes science, exploration, freedom, discovery, and slavery. Wash is an inquisitive, complex protagonist coming to grips with the world, and his relationships with other characters show the inherent prejudices and ignorance of even well-meaning, abolitionist white people. Edugyan creates a twisting historical narrative that manages to capture wonder and darkness.

There There by Tommy Orange

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There There is a gripping novel about a collection of people brought together by the Big Oakland Powwow, telling a story of cycles of violence and family. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and back in Oakland after a long time, not sure if she’s ready to see her grandsons and her sister Opal. Edwin is looking for his father and proving he can get out of the house and do things. Dene is collecting Native stories about Oakland to honour his uncle. Blue is organising the event and looking for her mother. And all the while, a plan to rob the powwow lurks beneath the preparations.

This is an explosive novel with a lot of energy. The narrative weaves the perspectives of a number of interconnected characters, telling the stories of how they ended up at the powwow and how their lives have unfolded in and around Oakland. It has a very distinctive sense of place as well as character, focusing on urban Native American life and identity. Oakland is really another character in the novel, and it is the location of the powwow that brings the characters all together, regardless of their connections.

There There is a thoroughly modern novel that looks backwards and forwards, bringing together the stories of a range of characters and how they relate to culture, identity, and violence. It is an impressive piece of literary fiction ideal for anyone looking for novels centred around place, identity, and character, or books that tell diverse stories from people with a multifaceted sense of culture and identity.

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Czech Decadence in Prague: A Gothic Soul by Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic

An atmospheric piece of Czech Decadent writing, in which a nihilistic protagonist looks for meaning in life and compares his hopeless mindset to Prague, which he thinks of as a dead city. I picked up this translation at random whilst on holiday in Prague due to the title (and beautiful edition), and I’m glad I did. Lyrical and almost without plot, it won’t be for everyone, but this is a gothic novella that feels deeply connected to the city.

Quick book picks for July

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A powerful bunch this month, which all feature memorable and distinctive characters and interesting narratives. I’ve cheated and put a graphic anthology that came out in June on the bottom of the list as I only got my copy a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share it with more people.

  • Hold by Michael Donkor – A fantastic debut novel about two very different teenage girls coming of age, Hold tells the story of Belinda, who is summoned from Ghana to London to try and bring Amma out of her shell. Full of memorable characters and vividly accurate south London description.
  • Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg – Metafictional historical romp through the life of Jack Sheppard, thief and gaolbreaker, that tackles gender, oppression, and the truth in the archive.
  • The Life and Death Parade by Eliza Wass – An eerie YA novel about a travelling occult group, a weird rich family, and the power of love and loss.
  • Oreo by Fran Ross – Reissued this month but originally published in 1974, Oreo is a clever, satirical tale of a girl looking for her dad.
  • We Shall Fight Until We Win by 404 Ink and BHP Comics – A graphic anthology published for the centenary of the first wave of women in the UK, it tells the stories of political women, both well- and lesser- known. A powerful read and one to gift people in your life.

The Life and Death Parade by Eliza Wass

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The Life and Death Parade is an atmospheric YA novel that combines an eerie secret travelling occult group with a depiction of grief across a family. Kitty had a complicated relationship with her sort-of boyfriend Nikki Bramley, who she grew up alongside and whose family home she now lives in following the death of her mother. However, now he’s dead, after a psychic told him he was going to die, and the Bramleys are all dealing with his death in different ways. Kitty tries to find the psychic who told Nikki his fate, but instead finds a strange medium, Roan. Roan seems like he could be the answer Kitty is looking for, with powers to talk to and maybe even bring back the dead, but she’s not sure he’s not a charlatan, even when the strange rituals and mysterious group lead her towards memories of her mother.

This is a novel filled with eerie and dark elements: the old castle that the rich Bramleys live in, the rituals and occult, intense obsession, and a strange group called the Life and Death Parade that Kitty decides she must track down for answers about Nikki and about her mother. Wass weaves a narrative that combines these with far more down to earth elements such as grief, love, and uncertainty. This makes The Life and Death Parade a book that feels far more real than its occult parts might suggest: something more like the fleeting magic of urban fantasy or the unnerving mysticism of the Bacchanalia from The Secret History.

Kitty is an interesting and unusual protagonist, who has lost almost everyone and needs to find something to fight for and a reason to keep fighting. Trying to work out what happened to Nikki and if there’s anything she can do about it may serve that purpose, but the novel—for all its occultism—ultimately shows that people need to find ways to move on. Nikki’s siblings Macklin and Holiday are also engaging, with Macklin’s struggle with guilt and Holiday’s extreme reactions helping to create the image of a messed up family in a moody old castle. And crucially, Roan works well as a mysterious and possibly dangerous figure, brooding over the death of his boyfriend and seeming to be a rock star medium who could solve the Bramleys’ problems.

The Life and Death Parade is a gripping novel, part story about grief with hints of magic and part thriller featuring a mysterious stranger. It will appeal to people who like their books with eccentric characters, complex love and obsession, and a dash of something otherworldly, whether young adult or otherwise. This is a book to read for the story, which becomes difficult to put down, and for the creation of an eccentric and intriguing cast and atmosphere.

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

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Confessions of the Fox is a transformative, metafictional piece of historical fiction that takes the life of Jack Sheppard—infamous thief and gaol-breaker who provided inspiration for John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera—and tells it afresh through a mysterious manuscript. A precarious professor, V. Roth, discovers a manuscript in a university clear out. The manuscript tells the story of Jack Sheppard, a transgender man indentured to a carpenter who turns thief and prison-breaker, and his love Bess Khan, who escaped the draining of the fenlands. Together they fight to uncover a strange secret that leads back to Jonathan Wild, Thief-Catcher General. However, the manuscript may not be as first appears, or so Roth seems to think through footnotes that lead the reader on another quest altogether, one that considers freedom, gender, and the archival text.

The novel blends a kind of eighteenth-century style—full of bawdy slang and thieves’ cant—with academic footnotes and personal reflection. Rosenberg’s Sheppard is a man motivated by love and freedom, in contrast to Roth, who talks of a lost ex and imprisonment within a corporate university system. And yet, Roth identifies with Sheppard, and the action of identifying with a subject of research becomes something else fictionalised within the novel.

Rosenberg’s novel is a difficult one to categorise. On the one hand, it is powerful historical fiction that carves a non-white, non-cis space in a certain point in eighteenth-century history. On the other, it is a postmodern consideration of oppression, theory, the archive, and what authenticity could possibly be. Within both of these strands, Confessions of the Fox fights for the untold story, for over throwing the masters, and for telling diverse stories for the people who have been left out of them. It is an exciting, powerful, postmodern book that forces the reader to look beyond its pages, but also keeping an adventure story of crime and love at its heart.

The holiday book conundrum

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There’s no good way to start a post about going on holiday without sounding like you’re showing off, or so I’ve decided in the past five minutes. Regardless, I am going on holiday in a week, and I have a big decision to make. One that may change my entire life (with a little imagination). Which book should I take with me?

Plenty of books are marketed as ‘holiday reads’. The phrase conjures for me an image of thick paperbacks you might take on the beach, in whichever genre you may like best. Lots of thrillers seem to be touted as travel companions, presumably in case your holiday is so rubbish you need escapism. Articles suggest recent popular books that you might want to catch up on now that you’ve got some time away from the daily grind. A quick Google brought up Waterstones’ page of ‘holiday reads’, which seem to have the defining feature of being books that exist (actually, they’re paperback books that exist, for easier packing I assume).

None of this helps my decision. I’m only going for a few days and only taking a backpack so the book must be singular. There’s not likely to be much reading time, but I still want to take a book. My previous two cheap European city break holidays don’t offer much inspiration. When I went to Rome as an undergrad I took the major works of Byron so I could continue reading Don Juan (and did sit on the top bunk in a shared room in a comic book themed hostel reading it). I don’t remember which book I took to Berlin (a hunt through our holiday photos and a bit of squinting reveals it was Steppenwolf), but I know I bought a Reclam copy of A Clockwork Orange with endearing German footnotes. I could read something related to my location, but I’ve already read a few Czech books in translation thanks to having a Czech friend and I’ve been reading Kafka as some kind of pre-holiday homework.

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With this in mind, here are my thoughts on what may make the best holiday reads:

  • A book that doubles up as something else – With baggage restrictions and limited space, you need a Swiss army knife of a book. Either something thin that could also be a fan, or something hefty that could be a doorstop or a weapon.
  • A book featuring characters visiting exciting locations that aren’t the one you’re in – Then you get two holidays: the one you’re on and the one you’re getting vicariously through a novel.
  • A book listing the best holiday reads – Would take the decision away, meaning you can just flick through pages looking at what you could be reading.