Each week I’ve started by saying that Read This is a post written by a guest author, but this time we have a guest librarian. As those who read Claire’s and Tim’s Favourite Reads each year, know, my #LibrarianHusband always like to have his say, and when he heard that I was planning Read This, he wanted to be included and how could I say no. As ever, these are three books that he thinks 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: Tim Chapman

Here’s the disclaimer if you skimmed my note above: Tim isn’t an author, he’s a librarian and he’s my husband. Here’s a bit more about him:

I’m a University Librarian and prolific reader.

Authors need a lot of space and there’s only room for one in my household – I’m married to the host of the “Read this” series, Claire Fuller. I have a soft spot for short stories and Claire and I often read short story collections to each other. I read almost exclusively contemporary fiction – lots of it American, and also lots in translation (as you can see below). I like fiction about real people living real lives in real places, often when things go sour. Despite that, I’m generally a happy chap.

Inlands by Erin Willows (translated by Duncan Lewis)

Inlands is a captivating story of a young woman who leaves Stockholm and moves in with her boyfriend in a cold, remote village in Northern Sweden. Before she gets there they’ve split up. She decides to stay anyway and we witness her new life, her memories, her loneliness, and possibly her freedom. She has a new kind of freedom, yet the book is incredibly claustrophobic and unsettling. It’s a beautiful book about blending in and standing out. It’s ordinary and extraordinary, and in my opinion, deserves to be read by many more people. It’s one I always recommend.

At our book club, we all score the books we read out of 10 and take an average. After many years this one is still at the top of the list with the highest score, a quiet, unassuming victory.

On a Day Like This by Peter Stamm (translated by Michael Hofmann)

Peter Stamm is in my top 3 writers of all-time list. I think he’s criminally underrated. Lots of his novels tackle similar themes and are written in a very sparse and clinical way. In this one, a directionless, empty teacher in Paris reads a book that reminds him of a time in his life when he fell in love and lost someone who could have been the love of his life. He travels back to his former home in Switzerland and tries to find whatever it is he’s looking for. At the same time, he’s possibly diagnosed with cancer and starts a relationship with a student teacher – who is the same age as his lost love. It is a novel that puts failure, loneliness and regret under the microscope and has a suitably ambiguous ending full of melancholy and yearning. Despite all that, it’s quite funny in places. Oh, and it’s very Swiss.

Son of Svea by Lena Andersson (translated by Sarah Death)

My second Swedish pick. This one is an unlikely gem telling the story of Sweden’s industrial welfare state and social democracy in the 20th Century from the perspective of the Johansson family. Svea is firmly rooted in the past with her baking, her cleaning and her canning of all-kinds-of-food way of life. Her son, Ragnar, becomes obsessed with modernity – the brand of modernity that manifests itself as washing machines and pre-packed convenience food. As time passes Ragnar’s daughter comes to represent, to him, the future. At the same time, a slow realization comes over Ragnar that as he grows older his time has come, or even perhaps, has already gone. I can’t recommend it enough. Another quiet book about aging and acceptance.
You’re welcome.

---

Tim and I have some crossover in book taste but he seems to prefer stories about sad Belgian women going to Sweden and doing nothing. I enjoyed Inlands and I should probably listen to his recommendations of the other two… Do you have three top writers of all time? 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.