BOOKS OF THE WEEK
Furies by Margaret Atwood et al Virago, £16.99 (ebook, £9.99) Review by Abi Jackson
Feminist publisher Virago – founded in the 1970s in response to political and social change – amplifies the voices of women with something to say. Furies is a short story collection featuring the likes of Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, Nigerian writer Chibundu Onuzo and BritishPakistani writer Kamila Shamsie. Sandi Toksvig provides the introduction, warning readers this is a book of wild writing – and it’s a promise that delivers. Each story explores female experience and, most crucially, power. Some are historical, some are infused with the mystical and magical, some have threads of fierce commentary and some are laugh-out-loud funny. All of them fizz with energy, meaning and page-turner plots.
Writing Landscape, by Linda Cracknell Saraband, £8.99. Review by Roger Cox
Like Doubling Back, Writing Landscape consists of a series of essays inspired by direct experience of the natural world. In the first of these essays, Script and Scrape, she writes: "The act of writing calls us to refresh our tired ways of noticing, and a writer perhaps has to look as patiently as a scientist, visual artist or naturalist does.” In a sense, Writing Landscape is an object lesson in attentive looking, and how this can in turn produce attentive writing. Linda Cracknell is a writer of place and nature who believes in being alert, observing, and writing from the particulars of each experience with the natural world. It is published in a special, jacket pocket-sized edition. This is a small book, but certainly a mighty one.
I Will Find You by Harlan Coben Century, £20 (ebook, £10.99) Review by Imy Brighty-Potts
Going to prison for a crime you didn’t commit is one thing, but going to prison for killing your toddler son, and then being told there is a chance he may still be alive, makes for terrifying reading. David Burroughs is merely surviving life in a high-security prison as a convicted “child killer’, his marriage in tatters, until his former sister-in-law shows up with an unbelievable photograph. This is a dramatic, suspenseful Coben novel with plenty of twists and turns, but it does read a little too chock-full of clichés. From cop tropes to corruption, plus a bit of unnecessary romance a little too predictably delivered, it feels too much designed for TV and not necessarily for the reader.
Enchantment: Reawakening Wonder in an Exhausted Age by Katherine May Faber & Faber, £16.99 (ebook, £9.99) Review by James Cann
Katherine May, author of Wintering: The Power of Rest, emerged from lockdown much like the rest of us: beaten down and battling to reacclimatise with the outside world. In Enchantment, she charts her journey of rediscovery through sections on the four elements: with pool-based lessons cancelled during the pandemic, she now embraces wild swimming; later she marvels at the destruction of fire and over astronomical movements beyond our comprehension. A thread of spirituality pervades the text, possibly deterring some readers, but every chapter contains valuable insights and can help those still struggling to shun exhaustion, and reawaken their senses.