Can you believe it’s June already? We are almost halfway through the year and here at Parade’s End we are determined to reach our reading goals of at least 1 book a week. We’d love to know your reading goals if you’d like to leave us a comment.
In the meantime, here are our recommendations for new books this month.
When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn’t. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity – all we have to meet the world – so unstable?
To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world: one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting ‘the children’). In doing so, she lifts the lid on our own culture during this surreal moment in history, as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, publicly shame our enemies, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister.
This is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It’s for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.
Learned By Heart by Emma Donoghue
Eliza and Lister have never been this wide-awake in their lives, and the Slope, with its curtains drawn wide, is bright with starlight. They talk in whispers, not to disturb the maids who lie sleeping on the other side of the box room. The question Eliza’s been needing to ask swells like a great berry in her mouth, and all at once she’s not scared to let it out, not scared at all, not scared of anything . . .
In 1805 fourteen-year-old Eliza Raine is a school girl at the Manor School for Young Ladies in York. The daughter of an Indian mother and a British father, Eliza was banished to this unfamiliar country as a little girl. When she first stepped off the King George in Kent, Eliza was accompanied by her older sister, Jane, but now she boards alone at the Manor, with no one left to claim her. She spends her days avoiding the attention of her fellow pupils until, one day, a fearless and charismatic new student arrives at the school. The two girls are immediately thrown together and soon Eliza’s life is turned inside out by this strange and curious young woman.
Learned by Heart, Emma Donoghue’s mesmerising new novel, tells the heartbreaking story of the tangled lives of two women whose intense, and unlikely, relationship will change them for ever.
The Hairdresser’s Son by Gerbrand Baker
Multi–award winning Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker’s phenomenal new novel about grief and the unavoidable power of family ties.
Simon never knew his father, Cornelis. When his wife told him she was pregnant, Cornelis packed his bags, and a day later he was dead. Or everyone assumed he was dead; after all, he was on the passenger list of the KLM plane that crashed in Tenerife in 1977.
Simon is a hairdresser, just like his father and grandfather before him, but he is not passionate about cutting and shaving. ‘Closed’ appears on his shop’s front door more often than ‘open’, because every customer is a person, and people suck the energy from him. But there is one client he regularly interacts with: the writer. The writer is looking for a subject for his next book, and becomes captivated by the story of Simon’s father.
As Simon probes the mystery of what happened to his father, a deeply humane and beautifully observed portrait of loneliness emerges in another captivating novel from one of Europe’s greatest storytellers.
For Such a Time as This by Shani Akilah
These are the people who sustain us through good times and bad.
Meet Niah and her friends.
They’re young, they’re smart, they’re part of a tight friendship group determined to make the most of every day.
And their lives are about to change forever.
From the tingling excitement of a new relationship to the challenges of online dating, from the shadow of racism in the workplace to the isolation of Covid-19, the stories in For Such a Time as This burst with romance and friendship.
This stunning new collection is a powerful snapshot of the relationships – and moments – that make us who we are.
Early Sobrieties by Michael Deagler
Dennis Monk is about to spend his first summer sober.
At twenty-six he is ready to re-join sensible adult life, but just when Dennis needs stability, his uptight parents kick him out into a world of couch-surfing.
Everything around him has changed and everyone he knows seems to be doing better than he is.
At every street corner, former classmates, estranged drinking buddies, and prospective lovers threaten to burst the bubble of his recovery. And Dennis Monk is about to learn the difference between getting sober and staying sober in this new world.
Early Sobrieties is a devastatingly witty novel about coming of age a second time. Deagler’s debut marks the arrival of an astonishing new voice in American fiction.
Ettie and the Midnight Pool by Julia Green
Ettie has lived blissfully with just her grandma for company and the wild woods as her playground.
Until she meets the mysterious Cora and she starts to crave more – now she wants to explore further, to discover secrets of her own.
So, when Cora leads her to the hidden quarry pool – deep, cold, beautiful and dangerously inviting – Ettie is ready to jump straight in.
But the quarry has secrets too, and Ettie will have to dive deep into the darkness to uncover them . . .