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Kindles at the ready, Readers – our round-up of new releases and recommended favourites for 2023 is designed to give you a TBR list to treasure throughout the year
The best books to read this January
In the first of what is our rolling list of monthly recommended titles throughout 2023, we’re leaving the royal free-for-all surrounding the publication of Harry’s memoir, Spare, firmly out of it.
Instead, we suggest you kick off this year’s reading list with some standout debuts – which take us from contemporary Toronto to queer Victorian London via medieval Norwich – alongside new works by up-and-coming and established names.
Interestingly, a full four of the titles listed below are not just ‘drawn from’ or ‘inspired by’ real-life historical or contemporary figures, but set out to deliberately redraw the lines of what ‘fiction’ is. Could we be looking at the literary trend for 2023?
For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain, Victoria Mackenzie
This stunningly original debut tells the stories of two very different real-life medieval women – Julien of Norwich, who spent over two decades living in solitude in service to her faith, and mother-of-14, Margaret Kempe – both of whom saw divine visions they believed to come directly from God. Mackenzie’s source material is the surviving manuscripts from both, which are respectively the first surviving book to have ever been written by a woman in English and the first ever English-language autobiography (by man or woman) full-stop.
Her skill is in creating a story that goes much deeper than its slender spine and spare prose might suggest to not only shine a light on the lives and experiences of two ‘ordinary’ women, but to draw clear contemporary echoes and parallels – around mental health, grief, motherhood and more – that resonate long after reading.
Really Good, Actually, Monica Heisey
The Schitt’s Creek screenwriter’s fiction debut follows the fallout from the breakdown of 28-year-old Maggie’s marriage to her college sweetheart. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry – you’ll probably join Maggie’s friends in wanting to give her a good shake – but Heisey’s warm, witty voice (not to mention clear affection for her hometown, Toronto) will have you rooting for her to the very last page.
We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman
Best friends Ash and Edi are forced to face the worst possible future when Edi is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Not the cheeriest of set-ups, you might think; in Newman’s hands, however, this tale of love and friendship is tender, funny, life-affirming joy.
The Things That We Lost, Jyoti Patel
In 2021, Patel scooped Stormzy-founded imprint Merky Books’ New Writer’s Prize with the opening pages of what has become, two years later, her debut novel. A multigenerational exploration of family secrets, cultural identity and grief in modern Britain and beyond.
Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan
Kick the Latch is a work of fiction (or ‘fact-tion’?) crafted from real-life interviews with a Midwestern horse trainer called Sonia, to whom the novel is dedicated. Scanlan is a master of minimalism, able to conjure up an entire personality, situation or community in just a line or two. Which is not to say that she skimps on the details: over a series of tight, spare vignettes that rarely run to little more than a page in length, Scanlan reveals the full arc of Sonia-not-Sonia’s life, from birth – when it was announced she would never be able to walk (‘My mom said, Oh no. There’s got to be something’) – through the near-death accident that ended her career as a jockey and far beyond.
There is heartache, hardship and some truly shocking violence (none of which is told with either salaciousness or self-pity), with heart and humour by the bucketload.
A very special read.
The Shards, Brett Easton Ellis
The American Psycho author is back and this time he’s in high school. This semi-autographical blend of fact and fiction draws heavily on Ellis’s own experiences of the same as a teenager in 1980s LA (grisly serial killings excepting, of course). Most definitely NSFW.
More blurring of life and art as first-time novelist Tom Crewe reimagines the lives and loves of two Victorian men – John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis – in this finely drawn and deeply passionate debut. The pair worked together on a study called Sexual Inversion that served as an early call to arms for gay rights in 1890s London at a time when there was no such thing; indeed, Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment for gross indecency serves as a backdrop here.
Crewe spins his narrative from known historical facts of each man’s life (and that of those close to them, including their wives) to create a multifaceted exploration of the tensions between the public and private selves of each man and his desires.
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