BOOKS OF THE WEEK
My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes Michael Joseph, £22 (ebook £11.99) Review by Lauren Taylor
Long-standing fans of Irish bestselling author Marian Keyes will be thrilled that her new novel focuses on one of the Walsh sisters – the large fictional family several of her books are weaved around. This time, fuelled by what was dubbed ‘the great resignation’ after the height of the pandemic, Anna, now in her late forties, has quit her dream New York job in beauty PR to move back to Ireland with no plan, eventually helping a friend set up a fancy coastal retreat in a small town (an idea locals hate). My Favourite Mistake expertly tackles issues of gentrification, perimenopause and bereavement, while also managing to stay humorous and heartwarming, and, of course, there’s a central romance.
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen Torva, £20 (ebook £10.99) Review by Tom Campbell
There are no winners and we blast ourselves back to the Stone Age is the terrifying outcome of the nuclear war scenario presented by 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen in her new non-fiction thriller, Nuclear War: A Scenario. North Korea goes rogue and fires a nuclear missile at Washington DC, giving the President of the United States just six minutes to decide how to respond. Jacobsen examines what happens over the next 26 minutes and 40 seconds in painstaking detail, the time it takes for the world’s most dangerous weapon to travel across the globe and strike its target. What she discovers is a series of risky policies and protocols fraught with pitfalls.
The Morningside by Tea Obreht W&N, £20 (ebook £11.99) Review by Amanda Willard
Tea Obreht’s The Morningside follows in a similar vein to her previous novel, The Tiger’s Wife, examining the experience of displacement and how stories, friendship and family bind us; all laced with a liberal dose of magic realism. In a post-apocalyptic world where rising tides have claimed cities and war has claimed communities, eleven-year-old Sil and her mother join her aunt in the dilapidated Island City, moving into the former luxury high-rise apartments – The Morningside. This isn’t recommended if you’re after a gritty dystopian imagining of a collapsed future society, but it entertains as a character-driven saunter through myth and worlds beyond the veil of our own reality.
Head North: A Rallying Cry For A More Equal Britain by Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram Trapeze, £22 (ebook £12.99) Review by Christopher McKeon
Metro mayors and football fans, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, have written a book of two halves. The first focuses on their life stories, with the Hillsborough disaster as a key experience and a reference point throughout their political careers. It gives you a sense of how they see themselves, and of how they came to be where they are. It is readable, and contains several interesting anecdotes, though as both are still active politicians it feels at times a little guarded. The second half is more of a manifesto for ‘rewiring Britain’. Many of their suggestions will be familiar to those who follow such debates.