Rebecca Fisher recommends

This beautiful story centres around Ulysses who returns to London after serving in Italy during WW2.  He has an eclectic group of friends who work in or frequent an East London pub.  There is no crescendo or momentous event in the book.  It is a wonderful portrait of a group of characters for whom you become invested and remain gripped by their story until the very end.

I am not sure I have ever read a book that got quite the eyebrow raises on the tube as How To Kill Your Family.  When Grace finds out that her millionaire, absentee father fails to recognise her mother’s dying wish she seeks revenge and sets out to kill him and every member of his family.  It’s certainly one way to deal with a beneficiary dispute!  Grace finds increasingly bizarre and ingenious ways to bump off another family member.  The book offers some light relief and you will never look at a sauna in the same way again. 

This is my most recent read so it makes the cut.  June Hayward, the narrator, didn’t write the book she claims to have written.  She steals this from her best friend, Athena Liu, who meets a rather sticky end.  June is also not Asian American.  This book raises questions about diversity, racism and is a satirical discussion of cultural appropriation.  Sustaining the fraud whilst dealing with the whirlwind of social media and cancel culture make this a dark, hilarious read. 

This is an utterly gripping read about the senseless murder of the Clutter family in Kansas.  A disturbing insight into post-War America and the jigsaw puzzle style of knowing who, how, when and where but not why.  Capote decided to write about the Clutter murders when reading the story in the New York Times.  Very shortly after he travelled down to Holcomb accompanied by his childhood friend, Harper Lee (just after she published To Kill A Mockingbird) to assist with one of his great “non-fiction novels”.

 “… the books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives”.  Growing up I was a Roald Dahl fanatic.  This book has it all – villains, heroes and huge doses of comedy. Matilda devours books in her local library from the age of three and discovers she has extraordinary powers.  Living with her shallow, uncaring and crooked parents she encounters the warmth and encouragement of her teacher, Miss Honey.  Miss Trunchbull, her headteacher, is the very best of childhood pantomime villains!  I have since regularly read this to my children and in honour of the book, our boxer dog is named Matilda.

This book has really stayed with me ever since I read it 9 years ago.  It is a profoundly moving account of the author and her family dealing with a horrific accident involving her younger brother, Matty.  The book largely focuses on the aftermath.  It is painful and desperately sad at times yet much of it remains filled with humour and warmth.  The crux of the book – at what point does a human life cease to be worth living?