Read This is a weekly post written by a guest author – often a friend of mine, or someone I’ve met on my writerly travels, who recommends three books that they think deserve more recognition. If you’re interested in buying any of the books, please on the covers and give these hidden gems some love.

Read This: Sarah Leipciger

I first met Sarah back in 2016 when we appeared at bookshop event together talking about our debut novels. I’ve loved all of hers, but especially her third, Moon Road. You can see the breakfast picture I took of it and read my brief review on Instagram here. And I’m delighted and proud that the quote I wrote for the book made it to the front cover. Here’s a bit more about her:

Sarah Leipciger has written three novels, The Mountain Can Wait, Coming Up for Air (currently being adapted as an opera with the Leipzig Opera House), and now Moon Road, published spring 2024. Sarah is an Associate Lecturer on the MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University and also teaches at City Lit, London. She is undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University and is currently researching her fourth novel, which means she gets to read about bootlegging, rum running, lake folklore and drafty old penitentiaries

You can find her on Instagram and X (Twitter). Here are Sarah’s recommendations:

Suzanne, by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette (translated by Rhonda Mullins)

Barbeau-Lavalette, a Canadian novelist from Québec, grew up with the knowledge that her mother and uncle had been abandoned by their own mother, and that throughout their lives had suffered greatly for this. Barbeau-Lavalette never knew her grandmother, Suzanne, and hired a private detective to discover what she could about this captivating woman, this artist and poet who walked away from her children and later, her husband, in 1950s Québec.

Written in the second person (though framed briefly and poignantly by the first), the result of Barbeau-Lavalette’s search is a fictionalised account of Suzanne’s eighty years. This book is a letter, an indictment and a speculation that wades deeply into the most secretive, shameful and exquisite parts of an elusive woman’s heart. It is written with tenderness and empathy. It is full of lines that compel you to stop reading, lay the book on your lap and savour the words.

Lines like these: “You like touching the books, feeling the paper nip your fingertips. You gather words like nectar, going author to author.”

And it shouldn’t matter… but… the Coach House edition of this novel is printed on thick and creamy, ridged paper, making for a luxurious experience. Read it with cake. And tissues. 

The Power of Story: On Truth, the Trickster, and New Fictions for a New Era, by Harold R. Johnson

Harold R. Johnson was a member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation and grew up in Northern Saskatchewan, Canada. He produced several works of fiction but the book I rave about constantly is The Power of Story, which came out only a few months’ posthumously in 2022. This collection of musings, philosophical ponderings and, frankly, ingenious social, cultural and political criticism is the result of a weekend gathering at his remote, lakeside home, where Johnson hosted representatives from the Saskatchewan ecumenical society to share with them his thoughts on storytelling (or story-making) in all aspects of life, from the first memories and associations of one’s mother, to the judiciary, to scientific theory and so forth. He composes the narrative as if we readers are sitting around the same campfire on that very weekend, asking if we want top-ups of our tea while he speaks about

(among many topics) the insidious damage of the “drunken Indian” story, the relationship between assumption, inference and interpretation, the national psychosis of the colonial, settler story and the agency we all possess to write and rewrite the stories of our own lives. Johnson writes with pure love and humour, with hard-earned perspective and empathy. I would have given my right foot to have shared a cup of tea with him by a campfire.

Neverhome by Laird Hunt

I’m going to share the first few lines of this harrowing, unique (fictional) telling of one soldier’s experience in the American Civil War so that perhaps you can forgive my act of petty theft when I found this book randomly on a friend’s desk. Here goes:

“I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic… Twenty dollars, two salt-pork sandwiches, and I took jerky, biscuits, six old apples, fresh underthings, and a blanket too… I wasn’t the only one looking to enlist and by and by we had ourselves a band.”

Suffice it to say, I stole the book and finished it in two days. A hint at the twist: think Viola in Twelfth Night, only she’s wearing the colours of the Union, carrying a musket and fighting Confederates.

One of the aspects I admire most in storytelling is the ability to maintain a musical, colloquial and utterly convincing first-person voice for the duration of an entire novel. How can you not fall hopelessly in love with the protagonist? It gets me every time! It’s been a while since I read this novel, so I can’t remember specifics of plot (though leafing through it today, it’s going back onto my TBR). What I do remember is the sensation of being wholly immersed and enchanted. Upon finishing, I mainlined all of Laird Hunt’s other novels.

(For those wondering: no, I did not return this book. I may have confessed.)

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My Librarian Husband is always urging me to read Laird Hunt, and after this recommendation from Sarah, Neverhome is definitely going on my tbr. Which do you like the sound of most? Let me know in the comments. And if you’d like to be told about future Read This recommendations, you can follow me on Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter.