The Names by Florence Knapp
This acclaimed debut novel, which features on nearly every summer reading list, is about nominative determinism – the idea that someone’s name can set their trajectory for life. It begins with a mother setting out to register her new baby: she wants to call the boy Julian; her abusive husband, Gordon, thinks he should be named after him; and their daughter reckons it should be Bear. Each chapter is then divided into three sections – Julian, Gordon, Bear – charting how the boy’s life would unfold with each name. “As devastating as it is life-affirming”, says The Independent, The Names is “arguably a future classic”.
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Universality by Natasha Brown
Natasha Brown’s pleasingly short political satire – just 156 pages – explores the aftermath of a journalist’s viral exposé about a brutal incident involving a gold bar on a Yorkshire farm. It tackles the slippery notion of truth, and questions what we can take at face value in today’s media landscape. “It’s a fabulous fable”, says The Guardian, examining “what it means to be truthful – and who really benefits when facts come to light”.
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Flesh by David Szalay
This beguiling novel tracks the life of an inscrutable Hungarian, Istvan, over 50 years, from awkward adolescence, to his affair with an older neighbour, and into middle age when he becomes an extremely wealthy man living in London. It’s a compelling rags-to-riches story that’s “tense, unnerving and charged throughout”, says The Times. Plus there’s “lots of sex, sexily told”.
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Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
In this examination of millennial lifestyles, Anna and Tom move to Berlin to enjoy the city’s party scene. Working as digital nomads, the couple begin to feel trapped by their carefully curated lives and start to crave a more authentic way of being. It perfectly captures our culture of “exquisite taste, tender sensitivities and gnawing discontent”, says The New Yorker.
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Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
Sold as “the book Meta doesn’t want you to read” – the tech giant took out a court order to stop the author promoting it – Wynn-Williams’s memoir charts the seven years she spent at Facebook and her growing disillusion over what she sees as the company’s moral corruption. Stuffed with insider gossip and explosive claims of executive wrongdoing, it’s a “riveting corporate kiss-and-tell”, says The Economist.
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Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson
In this new biography of the author best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Wilson shows that Spark’s life was almost as offbeat and unusual as her novels. At 19 she moved from Edinburgh and got married in southern Rhodesia, before running off to London and abandoning her young son to become general secretary of the Poetry Society. Other escapades include espionage, murder, a breakdown brought on by diet pills and a religious conversion. It all makes for a richly detailed “origin story”, says the FT.
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John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie
This is a rich reading of one of pop’s greatest bromances: John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It begins in 1957, when 16-year-old Lennon invited McCartney to join his skiffle group – a type of band known for simple instruments and blues-influenced sound. While the journey from there to global domination is familiar, says The Times, there is a freshness to Leslie’s telling. It’s a “wonderful contribution to the ever-growing Beatles library”.
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Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America by Sam Tanenhaus
Tanenhaus was chosen to write this colossal work before Buckley’s death in 2008. It charts how the charismatic writer revived American conservatism in the second half of the 20th century with his love of fierce and incisive debate, and sheds light on how the right ended up with a leader like Donald Trump. Despite running to more than 1,000 pages, says The Economist, it is “not a word too long”.
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