April was Drop Everything and Read Month, so here at Parade’s End that’s what we did. Well, apart from helping our wonderful customers to choose their perfect books of course! We would like to share our April picks with you in the hope of inspiring your next read.
Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead
A soaring, breathtakingly ambitious novel that weaves together the astonishing lives of a 1950s vanished female aviator and the modern-day Hollywood actress who plays her on screen.
From her days as a wild child in prohibition America to the blitz and glitz of wartime London, from the rugged shores of New Zealand to a lonely iceshelf in Antarctica, Marian Graves is driven by a need for freedom and danger.
Determined to live an independent life, she resists the pull of her childhood sweetheart, and burns her way through a suite of glamorous lovers. But it is an obsession with flight that consumes her most.
Now, as she is about to fulfil her greatest ambition, to circumnavigate the globe from pole to pole, Marian crash lands in a perilous wilderness of ice.
Over half a century later, troubled film star Hadley Baxter is drawn inexorably to play the enigmatic pilot on screen. It is a role that will lead her to an unexpected discovery, throwing fresh and spellbinding light on the story of the unknowable Marian Graves.
I really enjoyed this engrossing read. It’s rich, elegantly told, the heroines and supporting characters are complex and interesting and the story really draws you in. I’ve read a lot of fiction recently that feels overwrought or predictable, and this was satisfying. I recommend!
Deb – Parade’s End Bookseller
Games and Rituals – Katherine Heiny
The beloved author of Early Morning Riser brings us eleven glittering stories of love – friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts – in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime.
The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny’s characters range from mischievous to tender. In ‘Bridesmaid, Revisited,’ Marilee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid’s dress to work. In ‘Twist and Shout,’ Ericka’s elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In ‘Turn Back, Turn Back,’ a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor’s deception. And in ‘561,’ Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband’s ex-wife move out of the family home.
From one of our most celebrated writers, our bard of waking up in the wrong bed, wearing the wrong shoes, late for the wrong job, but loved by the right people, Katherine Heiny has delivered a work of glorious humour and immense kindness.
I’m not usually a fan of short story collections but I enjoyed Games and Rituals as each story felt complete in its own right and had something each of us can relate to. I would recommend dipping in and out, rather than reading all in one sitting.
Gaynor – Parade’s End Marketing Manager
Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver
Demon Copperhead is a once-in-a-generation novel that breaks and mends your heart in the way only the best fiction can.
Demon’s story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking ‘like a little blue prizefighter.’ For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn’t an idea, it’s as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn’t an abstraction, it’s neighbours, parents, and friends. ‘Family’ could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he’s willing to travel to try and get there.
Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.
Indomitable hero Demon survives just about everything thrown at him, which is a considerable amount. As a reader you’re really put through the wringer, this book certainly makes an impact. I’m wondering how I will view it from a distance because there is some great stuff in it which has stayed with me. A meaty book to discuss with others. Personally I would have preferred a tighter, condensed read (this weighs in at 550 pages but felt longer).
Sam – Parade’s End Bookseller
Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family’s insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of TheGolden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried: one by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore’s pelvis remained hidden.
The book was a sensation. A community of treasure hunters called the Bonehunters formed, in frenzied competition, obsessed to a dangerous, murderous degree. The book made Frank a rich man. Stalked by fans who could not tell fantasy from reality, his daughter, Nell, became a recluse.
But now the Churchers must be reunited. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. Nell is appalled, and terrified. During the filming, Frank finally reveals the whereabouts of the missing golden bone. And then all hell breaks loose.
Inspired by the author’s love for Masquerade, this is a taut, mesmerising novel of danger and obsession.
I love books set in London, so this was a good start for me and I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the story. The last third felt laboured and left me wishing for the end to come quickly. If you enjoy lots of twists, then this is for you.
Gaynor – Parade’s End Marketing Manager
When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
What makes life worth living in the face of death?
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity – the brain – and finally into a patient and a new father.
Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.
Paul Kalanithi wrestles with meaning and mortality first as a young man deciding between the pursuit of medicine or literature, then as a doctor on behalf of his patients and, finally, as a patient, when, at the age of 36 and in the last year of his training as a neuroscientist/neurosurgeon, he is diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. I re-read this after reading it some years ago and it remains one of the most moving, enriching, and well-written books I’ve ever read.
Deb – Parade’s End Bookseller
Doughnut Economics – Kate Raworth
The book that redefines economics for a world in crisis.
Relentless financial crises. Extreme inequalities in wealth. Remorseless pressure on the environment. Anyone can see that our economic system is broken. But can it be fixed?
In Doughnut Economics, Oxford academic Kate Raworth identifies the seven critical ways in which mainstream economics has led us astray – from selling us the myth of ‘rational economic man’ to obsessing over growth at all costs – and offers instead an alternative roadmap for bringing humanity into a sweet spot that meets the needs of all within the means of the planet. Ambitious, radical and provocative, she offers a new cutting-edge economic model fit for the challenges of the 21st century.
An interesting concept which is well written and researched but didn’t convince me it could ever be implemented.
Eszter – Parade’s End Bookseller