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Top Books of 2025

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Putting together my favourite reads of the year is always such a treat. There are usually books that I knew, the moment I read them, would make the final list – while others come as more of a surprise as I look through my notebook.

I’ll do proper stats etc soon, but my overall reflection is that 2025 was quite an average reading year – with some real stand-outs. For different reasons, I dearly love all the books on this list, and have followed my usual caveats: no re-reads and no author can appear more than once. Click on the title to take you to a review – or, for one of them, the podcast episode where Rachel and I discussed it.

Here we go, in reverse order!

10. Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel (2025) by Mark Hussey

From my review: “It’s amazing how comprehensive he can be in a relatively short space. Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel does two things marvellously: give a huge amount of relevant, fascinating, detailed information in a distinct and enjoyable way, and remind me why I love Woolf’s novel so much. Now, of course, I am impatient for Hussey to give the same treatment to all the rest of Woolf’s oeuvre.”

9. Bookish (2025) by Lucy Mangan

From my review: “Even in the sadder moments, there is a warmth that flows through Bookish. How do you capture it? How do you make a book feel like curling up a sofa for a natter with a dear friend? I suppose by being an excellent writer, and that is a keynote of Bookish. It’s a hoot, it’s self-deprecating and simultaneously celebratory about the reading life.”

8. Love (1925) by Elizabeth von Arnim

From my review: “I prefer von Arnim on flippant form, and love her most when she manages to be ironically witty while still having a serious point (Father is the best example), and I found the melancholy rather overtook the irony in the second half. But I still think Love is up there with her best novels.”

7. Catherine Carter (1952) by Pamela Hansford Johnson

From my review: “It is suffused by the author’s affection for the main characters, even when they are being weak and flawed. In that way, it reminded me of Elizabeth Goudge. It’s by a long distance my favourite of hers so far.”

6. Perfection (2022) by Vincenzo Latronico

I didn’t write a review, because it was on a podcast instead. What I loved so much about this novella, translated by Sophie Hughes, was how unusual it was. The main characters really represent a generation. There is no dialogue, and we don’t get to know them as individuals, but it says so much about the millennial experience, and with calm beauty.

5. Treasure Hunt (1952) by Molly Keane

From my review: “She manages to people the novel with ‘normal’ characters and those who are borderline grotesques without it feeling uneven. Philip and Veronica are sensible, thoughtful, driven people who react much as you might expect to much-loved parents/uncle/aunt who behave foolishly – there is a warmth to the novel that means you never feel the generations are antagonists, even when they have very different wishes.”

4. The New York Trilogy (1986) by Paul Auster

From my review: “What makes Auster so good is the quality of his writing – and what makes it so refreshing is that he isn’t playing needless games with it. So much postmodern fiction ends up being convoluted and self-indulgent. Or, even if we are being more charitable, the style is co-opted as part of the postmodernism: it intends to confuse, or blur the boundaries between reality and irreality, or highlight the fictionality of what you are reading. In City of Glass, he lets all of those fascinating things come through character and plot.”

3. The Equations of Love (1952) by Ethel Wilson

From my review: “I bought The Equations of Love by Ethel Wilson in Canada back in 2017, based on her being a Persephone author. Since then, I’ve read another couple of novels by her – but I think this overlooked gem might be her masterpiece.”

2. Blue Postcards (2021) by Douglas Bruton

From my review: “I think Blue Postcards is a brilliant book. Bruton has clearly researched Klein in depth, and has written about him in a form that allows freedom to make something much looser and more interesting than a traditional biography.”

1. Follow Your Heart (1994) by Susanna Tamaro

From my review: “The first section of the novella is really just Olga walking around her home, remembering, thinking, reflecting. It is in the form of a letter to her granddaughter, but in the same way that Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is a letter to John’s son […] That is to say, Olga’s granddaughter is the one being continually addressed, but we have no idea if this letter will ever be sent – it’s really a way for Olga to frame her thoughts. And it’s beautiful. She is painfully honest with herself, not allowing the refuge of any comforting lies – whether about her own behaviour, the future of this relationship, or even about the lifespan of the birds and beasts she delights in seeing.

“Tamaro’s (and [translator Avril] Bardoni’s) major achievement is that capturing of voice. That’s what carries you through a book like this, and there is a rich gentleness throughout.”

Have you read any of these? What would you like to read next? The main thing I noted is that half of them came from this year’s ‘read the year’ clubs, which proves what an ongoing success they are for my reading life!

 

Two wintery novellas

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I hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas! Perhaps I should apologise for being quite an intermittent blogger for the past month or two, but those sorts of apologies always presuppose that anybody has noticed! Let’s not flatter ourselves that your festive season was spoiled by my absence.

And since the festive season is not over, I wanted to share a couple of wintery novellas that I read recently. It’s a bit late to get in the mood for Christmas, but I think these would be rather lovely at any point during this time of year.

Lanterns Across the Snow (1987) by Susan Hill

There is a real luxury to this book – or at least to my 1987 edition from Michael Joseph. It’s less than 80 pages, but the wide margins, hardback cover, and occasional woodcut-esque illustraiionss by Kathleen Lindsley make it feel precious. I don’t doubt that it was designed to appeal as a Christmas present – and that is exactly what it was for me in 2019. This is how it opens:

Last night, the snow fell. And then I began to remember. I remembered all the things that I had forgotten. Or so it had seemed.

But not forgotten after all. They were all there, stored away like treasures.

Last night, the snow fell.

Fanny is an old woman. There is nobody left who remembers her childhood – which must be around the turn of the century. But she remembers – and she settles down to reflect on one particular Christmas, when she was nine years old.

Her father was a rector, and so Christmas is a time where the whole household is busy: not just the busyness of celebration and family, but the high point of the church calendar. While there will be a church-full on Christmas Day, the first day that Fanny remembers is Christmas Eve – and she slips down the path between rectory and church to join in a service that her father is giving to one man, the verger. Nobody else has attended, but Fanny’s presence is noticed by her father, even if he doesn’t comment. The words of Evensong are there in the dialogue – “O Lord, save they people / And bless thine inheritance” – that have a beautiful timelessness to them. They are words I say and hear once a month in our local church still, and they are woven into Fanny’s memories as the rhythm of everyday life – and communication with a much-loved, now long-gone, Father.

Over Christmas Day itself, two important things happen to people in the parish. A baby is born; an elderly parishioner dies. We see them through the excited, cautious, wondering perspective of young Fanny – filtered quietly through the distanct perspective of old Fanny. Though birth and death are, of course, defining experiences, this particular birth and death do not define Fanny. These are important things that once happened to other people, near her – remembered as a particularly significant Christmas, but moreso as representative of a world that she once lived in that is far away now.

Lanterns Across the Snow is a simple story, simply told, but more than the sum of its parts. Hill laces it beautifully with emotion and reflection that is too subtle to be simply nostalgia – and yet, nostalgia is the best word I can think for it. The novella is moving and poignant. There are no surprise twists or sudden ironies. It is a beautiful little tale and perfect for a cold winter evening.

Snowflake (1952) by Paul Gallico

There is something about Michael Joseph and beautiful little wintery books, as they also published this 64-page novella by Paul Gallico. If you have much familiarity with Gallico, you’ll know that he can veer in different directions. Some of his books are fey, whimsical, and maybe even sickly sweet. Some are vicious, dark, even shocking. And many combine elements of the two in a way that feels distinctly Gallicoian.

Here’s how the story opens:

The Snowflake was born on a cold, winter’s day far up in the sky, many miles above the earth.

Her birth took place in the heart of a grey cloud that sswept over the land driven by icy winds.

It all came about from one moment to the next. At first there was only the swollen cloud moving over the tops of the mountains. Then it began to snow. And where but a second before there had been nothing, now there was Snowflake and all her brothers and sisters falling from the sky.

The rest of the novella follows Snowflake’s life – and Gallico does lean into anthropomorphism. Depending on your taste, he may lean too far into it. It’s this element of the story that brings both the fey and the occasional shock. Snowflake finds herself lying on the ground, enjoying the beautiful surroundings – then in sharp pain when a sledge cuts through her. Being piled on by further layers of snow crushes her shape and makes it hard to breath. Respite seems to come in being massed into the form of a snowman – but it is also humiliating and sore.

Who would ever think of snowflakes feeling pain? There is much that is about beauty, performance and sparkle – the sort of things you might expect from a Disneyfication of snow – but Gallico insists upon the rough with the smooth. Melting is next – but don’t worry, it isn’t armageddon for little Snowflake. Instead, she meets Raindrop in a stream. They marry (!) and have children (!!) and despite how ridiculous that sounds, there is something curiously magical in the way Gallico describes their contented time living together in a lake.

But this is temporary. They eventually are siphoned out of the lake – and, worst of worst fears, used in a firefighter’s hose to be sprayed into a fire. And so the exciting, unexpected story continues.

If someone described Snowflake to me, I’m not sure I would rush towards it. But Gallico is so unusual and excellent a writer that he persuadses the reader – this reader, at least – to come along for the ride in the most unusual of stories. It is curiously emotional, and he whirls together the beautiful, poignant, fanciful and dark into one surprisingly successful mix.

Don’t be fooled by that lovely cover. This isn’t a story for children. Rather, it ends up being a strangely affecting take on the highs and lows of almost any life – and the hope for satisfaction when it is all looked back upon as one whole.

Project 24: the final books

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And I have finished Project 24! One of these actually came in the post a couple of weeks ago, but the other three were bought on a jaunt around Oxford at the weekend. Because I had got so close to the end of December with a few books in hand, I allowed myself the delight of spontaneous buying.

On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle

This series has been all over the bookish internet for a while, but somehow I only recently learned that it was a timeloop concept. I LOVE a timeloop. I decided to take a plunge on the first one, and I’ll doubtless scoop up the others that are available if it proves to be a hit.

Christmas: Tradition, Truth and Total Baubles by Nick Page

Nick is a good friend of mine, and yet somehow I’ve only read a couple of his prodigious output of books – so I thought I’d rectify by getting his Christmassy one to read over Christmas. Here’s the description: “Combining in-depth historical research, cheerfully irreverent humour and cutting-edge guesswork, Nick Page explores what this festival really means, and how we can get back to something real and true beneath all that wrapping.”

Peter by E.F. Benson

Hurlingham Books and I have a sporadic 84-Charing-Cross-Road-style relationship, modernised for the 21st century, where they WhatsApp me when they have any E.F. Benson or Beverley Nichols books in stock – and I couldn’t resist getting this E.F. Benson which is signed by him!

Aphra Behn by Vita Sackville-West

I actually left this slim volume behind in a charity shop in Oxford – and only when I got home did I google and see that it’s actually pretty hard to get hold of. Since I love Vita Sackville-West and remember enjoying Aphra Behn back in the day, I was relieved that the good people of Oxford had left it on the charity shop shelf for the couple of weeks that intervened before I could go back and claim it.

There we go! Project 24 has, as usual, made me think more deeply about the books I buy and why – and the things I’ve ended up purchasing have surprised me. 2026 will see me return to unbridled book buying, but at least I can say that I definitely read more books from my shelves in 2025 than I added to them.

8 things I love about Bookish by Lucy Mangan

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Bookish by Lucy Mangan cover

I read a lot of books about books and reading, and I almost invariably enjoy them. But they do quite often feel like palate-cleansers in between other books – treading familiar ground, and not quite capturing the love I had of my first forays into the genre, like Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman and Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill.

But then, sometimes, I come across a book about being a reader that reminds me why I love them so much. Bookish (2025) by Lucy Mangan is such a wonderful read. Or, in my case, listen – I listened to the audiobook, but I wasn’t far through it when I knew I’d have to get hold of a paper copy too. It’s always hard to write a proper review from my memories of an audiobook, so instead here are some bullet points of things about loved about Bookish.

1. The opening lines

The book starts with ‘I am never happier than when I am in a bookshop’, and you know you’re in safe hands already. Like Lucy Mangan, I consider book hunting to be one of the happiest, most joyful ways to spend time. I’d already really enjoyed her previous bookish book, Bookworm, about childhood reading – and I was even more excited to read her talking about grown up books.

2. Lucy Mangan is a kindred spirit

If that quote doesn’t make it clear, she is One Of Us. Few writers have better captured what it is to live a bookish life – not just somebody who enjoys reading, but somebody who is A Reader. Not in a scholarly, superior way – rather, somebody who lives, breathes, and loves books. There were countless occasions on which I felt seen by her. Which is why I am calling her ‘Lucy Mangan’ in full throughout – because I don’t actually know her, so can’t call her ‘Lucy’, but also now feel too much of a friend to call her ‘Mangan’.

3. She captures stages of life perfectly

There are plenty of life experiences that Lucy Mangan and I do not share – marriage, parenthood, being an incredibly successful journalist. But one thing we do have in common is going to Oxbridge from state schools, and being thrown into seminars and tutorials with students who clearly felt much more comfortable in those environments. The section where she describes that period of her life had me nodding vigorously.

4. She has controversial but correct opinions

I am thinking specifically of her preference for Anne Bronte over Charlotte and Emily. Tell ’em, LM!

5. Our tastes overlap…

To be fair, there aren’t many super-super-obscure books mentioned in Bookish, though there are plenty I haven’t read or are only dimly aware of. But it’s still lovely to read a fellow enthusiast for books like I Capture the Castle and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And, in fact, Lucy Mangan’s love for those books makes me desperate for her to read Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton and O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith. The four belong together, and it should be impossible to love one without loving them all.

6. …and they also differ

But it was also fun to read Lucy Mangan’s enthusiasm for books I know I wouldn’t like – and that certainly isn’t always the case. She doesn’t like whimsy in books, while I do now and then – and, most decisively different, she adores historical fiction which I usually dislike. And yet reading about her obsession with Norah Lofts was a delight, and I do hope she has read Lofts’ excellent, funny, tense non-historical novel Lady Living Alone.

7. She is wise about owning books

Apparently there are 10,000+ books in her house – and, gosh, I’d love to see her library. The descriptions of culling (limited) and bookshelf arranging (joyful) hit home, and it’s wonderful to read about somebody who sees no problem in overflowing shelves – filled, crucially, with much-loved books and possible-reads, rather than expensive first editions and books bought as investments.

8. It’s funny, warm, and optimistic

Even in the sadder moments, there is a warmth that flows through Bookish. How do you capture it? How do you make a book feel like curling up a sofa for a natter with a dear friend? I suppose by being an excellent writer, and that is a keynote of Bookish. It’s a hoot, it’s self-deprecating and simultaneously celebratory about the reading life. Press it into the hands of any bookish friends and family this Christmas – and put it on your own wishlist. After all, it’ll help justify all the other teetering piles of books.

Project 24: Book #20

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Surplus: A Novel - Stevenson, Sylvia: 9780930044787 - AbeBooks

Despite having been ahead of myself all year, my birthday helped me get my new-to-the-shelves fix for a while and now I’m… behind? I have four books left to buy this year, and four or so weeks to buy them in. (Is it time to confess that I didn’t count books bought with my birthday book tokens? Cos they were just gifts from friends who needed a little help picking out the book…)

Anyway, book 20 of 24 is Surplus by Sylvia Stevenson, which I saw mentioned on Neglected Books. It’s published in 1924 (though my copy is a 1980s reprint) and is a book about a spinster – but also a very early example of a lesbian novel, I believe. Those things combined made it sound very intriguing, and I’ll admit that I’ll be reading it with one eye on whether it would make a good candidate for the British Library Women Writers series. That series has slowed down a bit, to give a chance for the 25 or so books to pick up steam, but there will be more titles coming next year.

Despite seeming to be quite a significant book in 20th-century literary history, Surplus wasn’t super easy to come by – my copy was shipped from the US – and doesn’t appear to have been massively covered online. So, watch this space and wish me luck!

#144: Simple vs Ornate Style, and Sylvia Plath vs Janet Malcolm

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Sylvia Plath, Janet Malcolm and our thoughts on writing style – welcome to episode 144!

In the first half of this episode, we discuss whether we prefer writing style to be ornate or simple. In the second half, we compare Sylvia Plath’s most famous poetry collection Ariel with Janet Malcolm’s book about Plath biography, The Silent Woman.

You can get in touch with suggestions, comments, questions etc (please do!) at teaorbooks[at]gmail.com – we’d love to hear from you, even if I’m quite bad at replying quickly. Find us at Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re able to, we’d really appreciate any reviews and ratings you can leave us.

You can support the podcast at Patreon – where you’ll also get access to the exclusive new series ‘5 Books’, where I ask different people about the last book they finished, the book they’re currently reading, the next book they want to read, the last book they bought and the last book they were given.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther
All The Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner
Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy
Tortoise By Candelight by Nina Bawden
The Cost of Living by Kathleen Farrell
Bookish by Lucy Mangan
Bookworm by Lucy Mangan
The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
Henry James
Wilkie Collins
George Orwell
Yellow by Janni Visman
The Trouble With Sunbathers by Magnus Mills
The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner
Island In Moonlight by Kathleen Sully
The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Barbara Comyns
Beryl Bainbridge
The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills
Elizabeth Strout
Anne Tyler
Carol Shields
Margaret Atwood
Virginia Woolf
James Joyce
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel by Mark Hussey
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson
Ted Hughes: the Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bates
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
Two Lives by Janet Malcolm
Fenny by Lettice Cooper
Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee

Birthday books!

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Earlier this month, I turned 40 years old. I think I’m ok with the milestone – and it was put in perspective by my neighbour inviting me to her 90th birthday – but it is strange to think I was only 21 when I started this blog.

I had a lovely celebration with friends from many stages of life, having a civilised afternoon tea in a local village hall. And, of course, I got a lot of books! I won’t write masses about them, but there are lots that I’m excited to dive into. Some were bought were book tokens (which, I have decided, don’t count under Project 24 as they are effectively birthday presents… right?) and that includes Bookish by Lucy Mangan, which I listened to as an audiobook and knew I had to own. It’s SO good. More about that soon.

From the ones I haven’t read, I think I’m most excited by The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw – which I heard about from Kate of The Book Club Review Podcast, when she appeared on a ‘5 Books’ bonus episode for the Tea or Books? Patreon.

The thing that isn’t a book is (gasp) a letter written by E.M. Delafield!!

A lot of books - descriptions below!

Here are the books in the pic:

Snowflake by Paul Gallico
Hercule Poirot stories by Agatha Christie
The Garden of the Finzi-Contini by Giorgio Bassani
Arnold Bennett omnibus (RiceymanSteps, Elsie and the Child, Lord Raingo, Accident)
The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw
Bookish by Lucy Mangan
Look Closer by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
The Picador Book of 40
All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything by Claire Harman
Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me by Mimi Pond
Uncle Fred: an Ombnibus by P.G. Wodehouse

The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma

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Every now and then, I’ll know it’s time to pick a book from my teetering pile of books about reading. I mean this literally, except there is not one pile: there are three. They stand about three feet tall, behind the door into my living room, as there simply isn’t space for them anywhere else – and they are not in any order, so that read and unread books, old and new, a scattergun of unalphabetised authors sit there.

The most recent choice was The Reading Promise (2011) by Alice Ozma, which my friend Malie gave me for my birthday last year. The subtitle tells you what is going on: ‘3,218 nights of reading with my father’.

Opinions differ, within the book, about how the promise started. But it seems to have started on a train. Alice’s dad – Jim – regularly read to Alice at night and now, in 1998, when Alice was in third grade (the internet tells me this is aged eight or nine) they decided to make this casual habit into something official. They started The Streak. Now, their opinions differ on whether they initially set out to do a hundred days or a thousand – one remembers the hundred-day streak ending with a commitment to add another 900 days, while the other thinks it was a thousand at the outset – but the commitment was made.

When I started reading Ozma’s book, I thought it might feature a lot of the books they discussed. And they are in there, of course. But the specifics are somewhat incidental to what is really a memoir of a father/daughter relationship – one that became all the more important after Ozma’s parents divorced. Their shared love of reading managed to get past the awkward teenage period, and they were able to put aside temporary feuds to ensure they had at least a few minutes of reading every night – though Ozma movingly remembers the final time that she lay in the crook of her dad’s arm as he read. And even that was an unusual concession to the significance of the nightly ritual: Ozma builds up a picture of a kind, intelligent, funny and very loving man, but he is not the warm, huggy man you might be picturing from the premise.

My dad is not an affectionate man. As a librarian, he told his students not to touch him, warning them that his skin was poisonous. Kindergarteners seemed to accept this as fact, but the older students often wondered why they couldn’t just give their favourite teacher a hug. He does not like to be touched, and he does not want to touch other people. After school concerts or award ceremonies, I saw other parents hug and sometimes even kiss their children. My father considered it a bold and almost over-the-top display to stick one finger in my hair and scrtach my scalp for a moment with his cracked fingernail, like he was helping me get an itch I just couldn’t reach. If the event called for such a grand gesture, he would do it quickly and then back away several feet. 

The portrait of Jim is necessarily very subjective, and I wasn’t always sure that I would like him were I to meet him, but I loved reading the evolving relationship of father and daughter (with other members of the family much more peripheral). Reading is more of a thread through the tapestry than the main content – there is, for instance, no complete list of books read, just some pages of the ones they remember, ranging from childhood classics to presidential biographies, via Dickens, Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many, many books I haven’t heard of.

And because the reading is really a portal to their relationship, there are lots of chapters about totally unrelated things. There is a clarion call against the American education system for its devaluing of reading. There are the various relationships her father has after divorce, and what an extending, evolving family feels like. The most fascinating tangent is where Ozma writes about her vivid fear of JFK. Even when she learns he is dead, the fear doesn’t abate: she is terrified that his body (still, somehow, evil and out to get her) is in her bedroom. Holding a book he once loved leaves her scrubbing her hands like Lady Macbeth. The terror is so unusual that a novelist might be wary of using it, but Ozma describes it with a heady recollection of the fear, as well as self-awareness about how unrelatable it is, at least as a specific phobia. It’s not what I expected in a memoir about reading, but these sorts of details and anecdotes help set The Reading Promise apart from any book-about-books that ends up retreading familiar ground.

Why did The Streak end? There isn’t a sad story here: it simply ended because Ozma went away to college. And this book is really a tribute to what a beautiful thing it was. An obsessive, perhaps peculiar version of many father/daughter relationships – but lovely to read a memoir of resilient love, and a generational love of reading that persisted long beyond the close of the book. Here are the final words of The Reading Promise (which, in case it isn’t clear, is a book I loved reading):

We called it The Reading Streak, but it was really more of a promise. A promise to each other, a promise to ourselves. A promise to always be there and to never give up. It was a promise of hope in hopeless times. It was a promise of comfort when things got uncomfortable. And we kept our promise to each other.

But more than that, it was a promise to the world: a promise to remember the power of the printed word, to take time to cherish it, to protect it at all costs. He promised to explain, to anyone and everyone he meets, the life-changing ability literature can have. He promised to fight for it. So that’s what he’s doing.

Thirteen years ago, my father made the reading promise to me. He kept his word.

An A-Z of Brilliant Novellas

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As Novellas in November is starting, I thought I’d recommend some novellas you might like to read. And after jotting down a few, I thought… would I be able to make a whole alphabet of them? Without repeating any authors? And, reader, I did. (Almost.)

I’m delighted that this A-Z isn’t just a list of novellas – it’s a list of excellent novellas. I was determined not to sacrifice quality, and I would happily press any of these into your hands and assure you of a brilliant time.

Happy reading! Do let me know if you’ve read any, or if you’re tempted to. You can find reviews of most of them in the review archive, or by searching in the search bar.

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

I find McEwan quite variable, but this book about the friendship between a composer and journalist – both lovers of a woman whose funeral is in the opening pages – is a page-turner of a dark comedy.

Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton

Told in 500 vignettes, Blue Postcards covers Yves Klein, Henri the tailor, and the narrator some decades later. It is well-researched, but told with a lovely looseness and freedom.

City of Glass by Paul Auster

The first of three novellas that make up The New York Trilogy, it’s also my favourite. A postmodern play on detective fiction, the protagonist is a detective novelist who gets a call asking if he is Paul Auster and, under that name, investigates a future murder. It is playful and odd, and extremely satisfying.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Another book in vignettes, this tells the story of a relationship – from dating to marriage to a lost pregnancy to a child to an affair. Somehow these stray fragments give us incredible depth of character.

Echo by Violet Trefusis

Translated from French, Echo is a fun, mischievous story of love and feuds in a Scottish castle that develops into a fablesque tone.

Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro cover

Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro

One of my favourite discoveries this year, the novella is in the form of a grandmother writing to her absent granddaughter – but, like Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, this is really just a way of telling us about everything in the world of these fascinating women.

Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis

Henry Standish falls off a ship into the sea. And then the rest of the novella concerns the hours afterwards – as Standish is adrift in the ocean, and the passengers carry on with their lives. Lewis presents it all with true psychological acumen.

The Heir by Vita Sackville-West

A romance – where one of the lovers is a house. Having inherited an enormous home he can’t afford, the main character is keen to sell – but, as the point of losing the house grows nearer, he realises he can’t be parted from it. A beautiful example of how important home can be.

Ignorance by Milan Kundera

Translated from French, the novella opens with a Czech woman being asked why she is staying in France after her affair with a Frenchman is over – and Kundera uses it as a jumping-off point to explore the concept of nostalgia. As usual with Kundera, he swims and dashes all over the place, with The Odyssey and composer Arnold Schoenberg the points he often returns to.

A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence

A masterpiece of melancholy literature. Rachel lives with her mother in the small Canadian town where she grew up, feeling alone and hopeless. Into that world steps a man she used to know at school, and she begins to hope for the future – all the while doubting the security of these hopes.

A Kind Man by Susan Hill

What if a man had the power to miraculously cure people? Hill went through a period of writing short, powerful, parable-esque novellas, and this has a wry beauty and poignancy to it.

The Love Child by Edith Olivier

Up there with my all-time favourite novellas, The Love Child is about a childless spinster who accidentally conjures her imaginary childhood best friend into life – beginning a path of wish-fulfilment that descends into a power struggle. A brilliant slant on the ‘surplus women’ problem of the 1920s.

 

The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono

Almost a short story, this French classic is an allegory about a man who plants trees, as the title suggests. The very simplicity of the story is what is so striking. My edition (not the one pictured above) has sumptuous woodcuts by Michael McCurdy.

No Mama No by Verity Bargate

Don’t be put off by the terrible title – this isn’t a misery memoir. Instead, it is the sharp cry of a woman who hates having young sons – or, rather, hates the identity it has forced on her. Her only freedom is a parallel life where she pretends her sons are daughters. Sprase, odd, and breathtaking prose.

The Only Problem by Muriel Spark

Only Muriel Spark would bring together a theologian writing about the Book of Job with a story about a terrorist organisation. It’s quintessential Spark – strange, spiky, beguiling. You’ll see The Driver’s Seat recommended a lot this month, I’m sure, but it’s worth remembering how wide and deep her talents are.

Portait of Jennie by Robert Nathan

I think this could just sneak into novella territory – I certainly read it in one go, sat on a bench in Washington DC. An artist starts painting portraits of a young girl he meets in the park – but every time he meets her, she has somehow aged several years. A compelling fantasy book in Nathan’s usual readable, affectionate style.

Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff

Ok, it’s non-fiction, but Q is tricky, ok? It tells of the aftermath of 84, Charing Cross Road – the book’s success, adaptation onto stage, and the consequent whirlwind of fame Hanff experienced.

The Red House by E. Nesbit

Sadly there isn’t a decent edition of this around – my attempts to get it into the British Library Women Writers series have proved fruitless – but it’s a fun novel about a novelist who suspects her house might be haunted, as well as dealing with other domestic inconveniences. It is chiefly notable for some of her more-famous children’s book characters popping up as cameos.

The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns

Another one the British Library said no to, actually! Comyns is as strange and matter-of-fact as ever in her coming-of-age tale populated by bizarre and often dangerous characters – and, yes, a group of chairs covered in human skin.

Three To See The King by Magnus Mills

Mills’ books are always a clever mix of surreal and everyday, so that you feel disoriented but don’t quite know why. One of his best is about houses that turn up at long distances in a desert, and what is going on with a curious and charismatic newcomer in the district.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

What would the Queen read? A fun tale about Queen Elizabeth II getting obsessed with books – starting with Ivy Compton-Burnett, which is often how people first come across her now, it seems.

Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

Translated from Italian, and coming in at a mere 62pp, Ginzburg gets a whole world into Valentino – a world of resentment, pride, stubbornness and intrigue amongst a family.

Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Not a great title, but a very good novella about girls Berie and Sils who work together at a sort of theme park, whose friendship splinters when Sils believes herself ready for adult life. It’s all told from the perspective of Berie in the future, which gives an added poignancy to the story.

X… ok, I had to give up on X. I did my best. I’m so sorry!

Yellow by Janni Visman

Stella is agoraphobic and neurotic, and Visman’s sparse narrative tells of her growing paranoia and attempts to control it. Hitchcockian and powerful.

Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm

Imagine a woman so beautiful that a whole bunch of undegraduates drown themselves. Beerbohm has a lot of fun with this OTT parable of beauty and infatuation.

So, there you have it! A slightly incomplete alphabet of brilliant novellas. I do hope it has inspired you with something to read this November.

Announcing the next club…

StuckinaBook All 10 Comments

The 1925 Club has been a joy! What a fun time, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the reading weeks. As ever, I am quite behind with updating my reviews page and reading all of your posts, but bear with me…

And, of course, Karen and I are instantly thinking about next time. We didn’t want to linger too close to 1925, and we have jumped to a very promising year. So here is your six-month warning for the 1961 Club!

1961 Club badge: a library from the 1960s, with the dates 13-19 April 2026 and The 1961 Club overlaid.