Here at Parade’s End we don’t mind a grey, rainy month as it gives us an excuse to turn down all those invitations and stay home in the warm with a good book. Here’s what our booksellers read in November.
Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart
The long-awaited memoir from iconic, beloved actor and living legend Sir Patrick Stewart.
From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations in a career spanning six decades with his indelible command of stage and screen.
No other British working actor enjoys such career variety, universal respect and unending popularity, as witnessed through his seminal roles – whether as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame, Professor Charles Xavier of Marvel’s X-Men hit film franchise, his more than forty years as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company and in such critically lauded roles for Hamlet and The Tempest on the West End and Broadway, his unforgettable one-man show adapted from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, or his comedic work in American Dad!, Ted, Extras and Blunt Talk, among many others.
Now, he presents his long-awaited memoir, Making It So, a revealing portrait of a driven artist whose astonishing life – from his humble and hardscrabble beginnings in Yorkshire, to the dizzying heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim – proves a story as exuberant, definitive and enduring as the author himself.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope.
One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors – until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late…
Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
Reichl knows that to be a good critic she has to be anonymous – but her picture is posted in every four-star, low-star kitchen in town and so she embarks on an extraordinary – and hilarious – undercover game of disguise – keeping even her husband and son in the dark.
There is her stint as Molly, a frumpy blonde in an off-beige Armani suit that Ruth takes on when reviewing Le Cirque resulting in a double review of the restaurant: first she ate there as Molly; and then as she was coddled and pampered on her visit there as Ruth, New York Times food critic. Then there is the eccentric, mysterious red head on whom her husband – both disconcertingly and reassuringly – develops a terrible crush. She becomes Brenda the earth mother, Chloe the seductress and even Miriam her own (deceased) mother.
What is even more remarkable about Reichl’s spy games is that as she takes on these various guises, she finds herself changed not just physically, but also in character revealing how one’s outer appearance can very much influence one’s inner character, expectations, and appetites.
Red Queen by Juan Gomez-Jurado
You’ve never met anyone like her . . .
Antonia Scott is special. Very special. She is not a policewoman or a lawyer. She has never wielded a weapon or carried a badge, and yet, she has solved dozens of crimes.
But it’s been a while since Antonia left her attic in Madrid. The things she has lost are much more important to her than the things awaiting her outside.
She also doesn’t receive visitors. That’s why she really, really doesn’t like it when she hears unknown footsteps coming up the stairs.
Whoever it is, Antonia is sure that they are coming to look for her.
And she likes that even less . . .
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana
Banneker Terrace on 129th and Fred Doug ain’t pretty, but it’s home. Home to young and old, folk just trying to get by. Cookouts with beer and wings, summertime with souped-up cars bumpin music. People don’t come here for the bad; they came here to make a good life.
It is home to Swan down in 6B, reconnecting with his boy Boons, just out of prison. Home to Mimi in 14D, raising Swan’s child, doing hair on the side. Home to Quanneisha in 21J, longing to leave but it’s where she grew up. Home to Mr Murray in 2E, who has played chess outside on the sidewalk for years. Some of the residents of Banneker have got it together, some can’t make rent or pay bills, some are raising kids, some are hustling on the side, all are living.
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs expertly showcases the strengths, struggles and hopes of one Harlem community, who are grappling with the effects of gentrification alongside their own personal challenges. It captures the joy and pain of the human experience and heralds the arrival of a uniquely talented writer.
Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection.
In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg and mumbled remarks betray a marriage.
In the glow of Davis’s keen noticing, strangers can become like family and family like strangers.
Our Strangers is a fascinating collection of short stories that confirms the genius of a writer whose every attention is transformative.
The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
‘Maudie, why are all the best characters men?’ Maudie closes the book with a clllump. ‘We haven’t read all the books yet, Miss Cristabel. I can’t believe that every story is the same’. Cristabel Seagrave has always wanted her life to be a story, but there are no girls in the books in her dusty family library.
For an unwanted orphan who grows into an unmarriageable young woman, there is no place at all for her in a traditional English manor. But from the day that a whale washes up on the beach at the Chilcombe estate in Dorset, and twelve-year-old Cristabel plants her flag and claims it as her own, she is determined to do things differently. With her step-parents blithely distracted by their endless party guests, Cristabel and her siblings, Flossie and Digby, scratch together an education from the plays they read in their freezing attic, drunken conversations eavesdropped through oak-panelled doors, and the esoteric lessons of Maudie their maid.
But as the children grow to adulthood and war approaches, jolting their lives on to very different tracks, it becomes clear that the roles they are expected to play are no longer those they want. As they find themselves drawn into the conflict, they must each find a way to write their own story…
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Sutanto
Put the kettle on, there’s a mystery brewing…
Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective? Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).
But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things.
Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.
Three gripping tales from No.1 Sunday Times bestseller S. J. Parris.
The Secret Dead
Summer 1556. A girl’s body is found in a Neapolitan monastery. Novice monk Giordano Bruno is determined to uncover what happened, but his investigation could deliver him into the hands of the Inquisition.
The Academy of Secrets
Autumn 1568. An invitation arrives for Giordano Bruno from a secret society of philosophers. Bruno is delighted, but keeping their heretical secrets soon becomes a matter of life or death.
A Christmas Requiem
Winter 1569. Giordano Bruno is summoned by the Pope, who is intrigued by his talent for memory games. But Rome is a den of iniquity, and Bruno will be lucky to escape the Eternal City alive.