2 weeks Ago By Anna Bonet
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce’s 2013 debut novel, is one of those books which warms you from the inside out. The story of our retired eponymous protagonist who walks the length of the country to hand deliver a letter, it is as uplifting as it is gripping. No wonder it went on to sell six million copies and be adapted into a 2023 film starring Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton.
With the world as it is, this is exactly the kind of book we all need more of. Thankfully, from the love story at the heart of The Music Shop to the Harold Fry sequels The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy and Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North, all of Joyce’s back catalogue offer some sense of hope and solace. Now, as she returns with a sun-soaked family drama, The Homemade God, Joyce shares the five most life-affirming reads she has ever read.
..if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver “In this utter blast of a reimagining of David Copperfield, a young boy struggles to survive America’s opioid crisis.
Demon is the Appalachian boy no one wants. He braves poverty, addiction, institutional failure, disastrous love, moral collapse and debilitating loss.“And yet.
..and yet.
..caught within a plot that never pauses for breath, he is like a cork on water; he keeps bouncing back.
Equal parts funny and fierce, with a multi-dimensional cast and a singular voice, this is epic story telling. No matter how bleak things get, the message is one of hope and resilience. For me, this is the definition of a life affirming book: despite the difficulty, and even the horror, the human experience is radiant and worth fighting for.
In short, a privilege.” Faber, £9.99Less by Andrew Sean Greer “Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn 50, terrified that he is the ‘first homosexual to ever grow old’.
His worst fears are only compounded by an invitation to the wedding of his much-younger former lover. Desperate to get out of it, he accepts every other invite he has received to every half-baked literary event around the world.if(window.
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Hilarious, zesty and wise, Less is a literary romp about the life that can happen just at the point you are resigned to giving up. And the prose sparkles like a rare diamond.” Abacus, £9.
99Orbital by Samantha Harvey “In the course of one day, six astronauts circle the world 16 times, spinning past continents and seasons and witnessing endless shows of beauty. They carry out their routines of maintaining the craft and scientific experiments. They have tiny mementos of their lives back on earth and they think about the people they love and miss.
“But the centre of everything is what they see through the windows: ‘They don’t know how it can be that their view is so endlessly repetitive and yet each time, every single time, newly born.’ Like its gorgeous vision of the earth, each line, each word of this precious book sings with wonder: it is a hymn to the planet that holds us. And from its place in the darkness, Orbital looks at the world and says I love you.
”Vintage, £9.99Middlemarch by George Eliot “Middlemarch charts the lives of a number of inhabitants of a fictional Midlands town circa 1830. At its heart is Dorothea, married to the cold-hearted Rev Edward Casaubon, and who – despite all her disappointments – tries her utmost to be a good person and do what is right.
When I first read it as a teenager, I thought it was about staying true to your vision.“Now I think it is about the compromises, the small connections and mostly unseen transactions that happen between one person and another. It is in the same mould as all those other writers I would mention (if only I could choose a hundred books instead of five) – Anne Tyler, Kent Haruf, Elizabeth Strout to name but a few – who write about ordinary lives in such a profound way that the small transcends itself and becomes universal.
And if that isn’t life affirming, I can’t think what is.”if(window.adverts) { window.
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adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); } Penguin Classics, £8.99All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews “How can a story about two sisters, one of whom wants to die, be at the same time one of the dearest, funniest, most fiercely intelligent books I have read? Elf is a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married.
Yoli is divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men and desperate to keep her older sister alive.”“It asks how to hold onto someone who wants to die but it asks lighter things too, like why – in moments of tragedy – you walk into the wrong door at the hospital and find yourself in the linen cupboard. This blistering book holds so much life and love it knocks you sideways and if you can read it without sobbing, I think you might be a monster.
”Faber, £9.99The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce is published by Doubleday on 17 April, £, and is available to preorder now.
