Shelf life

THIS WEEK: Grief forces a daughter to investigate the life of her mother – and more tales to get you thinking about maternal matters

An Unremarkable Body Elisa Lodato (£ 14.99, WEIDENFELD AND NICOLSON)

‘A big book about a small life’, Elisa Lodato’s novel opens with an autopsy, but is ultimately an uplifting story. When Laura finds her mother, Katherine, dead at the bottom of the stairs, the resulting medical examiner’s report tells a coldly unremarkable story, with body parts weighed and categorised. Laura is motivated to write her own version of events, filling in the life between the lines – a task that leads her to discover more about her own mother, making sense of an unfulfilled life and protesting the idea that an unremarkable body means an unremarkable life.