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, click on the covers and give these hidden gems some love.

Read This: Juliet West

I got to know Juliet through the Prime Writers – a group of authors who were first published over the age of forty. The website and the Twitter account have fallen away but the friendships remain. Juliet was also in my writing group for a while and I’ve always been a fan of her writing. Here’s a bit more about her:

Juliet West is the author of two novels Before the Fall (Pan Macmillan, 2014) and The Faithful (Pan Macmillan, 2017). Her short stories and poetry have been published in various magazines and anthologies including The French Literary Review, The Sunday Times and the Sunday Express.

You can find more about her on her website or on X/Twitter. Here are Juliet’s recommendations:

The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros

Set in 2026, this is the story of Dylan and his mother Rowenna, survivors of a nuclear apocalypse that has wiped out the Welsh village of Nebo and the world beyond. In alternating short chapters, Dylan and Rowenna reveal the hardships they’ve suffered, the secrets they’re guarding, and the love (sometimes tough love) that’s keeping them alive. The Blue Book of Nebo is marketed as YA, but it’s definitely a crossover title that deserves a place on the adult fiction shelves.

The writing is stunning – simple but poetic, with tantalising threads of Welsh folklore woven in. Dylan’s voice is so honest and pure. He loves his mother but their relationship can be difficult: ‘Sometimes I think it’s impossible for someone to be as beautiful and ugly as my mother’, he writes in his notebook (the ‘Blue Book’ of the title).

Tension builds throughout the novel yet the tone is somehow meditative and gentle, pitching us into an eerie, isolated world that’s all too believable. It’s shocking at times but uplifting too. I challenge you not to love it!

The Process of Poetry by Rosanna McGlone

This is a fascinating little volume of interviews with contemporary poets, all of whom have been brave enough to share first and final drafts of a poem. Each chapter is dedicated to one poet and opens with the two versions side by side. The rest of the chapter is written in Q&A format, with McGlone questioning the poet about various stages of their process. The interviews touch on all aspects of a poem’s development as well as more general questions about creativity and the writer’s life.

I’m pretty certain you don’t have to be a poet or poetry-lover to enjoy The Process of Poetry. Yes, there’s the odd technical term but the book is accessible to anyone with an interest in literature and the arts generally. The poets are unpretentious and completely open about the highs, lows and sheer graft of their trade.

If you ARE a writer there are countless insights and nuggets of advice. My favourite comes from Costa Award-winner Hannah Lowe, who says: ‘Whenever you have the thought ‘I can get away with this’ . . . you can’t’. True words of wisdom for poets and prose writers alike.

The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton

The title suggests a bleak read, and admittedly this World War Two-set novel has a very dark heart. But it’s also extremely funny. Patrick Hamilton was a novelist and dramatist whose play Gas Light was a hit in 1938 (it’s from this play, later made into a film, that we get the term ‘gaslighting’).

The Slaves of Solitude opens in winter 1943 in the fictional commuter town of Thames Lockdon, where Miss Enid Roach, a secretary in her late thirties, lives on the top floor of the Rosamund Tea Rooms boarding house. Much of the black comedy centres around life in the boarding house, where characters include penny-pinching landlady Mrs Payne and bullying boarder Mr Thwaites. The odious Mr Thwaites, ‘President in Hell’, has a particular fascination with Miss Roach, monitoring her every move and passing sly judgement on her habits (she brings literary magazines back from London, which Mr Thwaites deems ‘a diseased and obscurely Russian thing to do’).

Miss Roach meets an American lieutenant who plies her with cocktails and hints at marriage. As the plot unfolds, Hamilton delivers not just a gripping story but a biting critique of class and society in black-out Britain. You might need a gin & french (or three) when you reach the end.

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I love the sound of all of these, especially The Slaves of Solitude which gives me Barbara Pym vibes. I shall have to read it and see. Which of these do you like the sound of? 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.