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

Read This: Freyer North

Freyer North is the author of a great many novels and an amazing supporter of other authors. She hosts a brilliant Live series on Instagram called Wednesday Writers where she chats to a published author about their books and writing, and it’s worth watching. I met her in real life at Society of Women Writers and Journalists in London where we bonded over tea and an excess of scones. Here’s what she has to say about herself:

Freya North has written 16 novels, exploring the emotion and complexities of everyday relationships and families including The Turning Point, Little Wing and The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne. A sense of place is crucial to her work. Never a backdrop, always a leading character, her novels have been set in New England, British Columbia, North Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Norfolk and the Outer Hebrides. Freya holds degrees in History of Art from the University of Manchester and the Courtauld Institute, London. She founded and ran the Hertford Children’s Book Festival and is an ambassador for Bowel Cancer UK. You can find more about her on her website, and on Instagram.

Here are Freya’s recommendations:

Lottery by Patricia Wood

This may seem like a simple book with a deceptively easy premise – someone poor winning the lottery, someone winning the lottery whose estranged family then come circling, someone with a low IQ who is taken advantage of, someone with a low IQ who has innate wisdom and a good heart… but Lottery soars above tropes. Unlike, say, Forrest Gump – nothing here is on-the-nose, there’s no saccharine or whimsy. 31 year old Perry L. Crandall’s learning difficulties are never used cynically to seduce the reader or serve the plot. There are brutal incidents of ignorance, of Perry being teased, insulted, hurt, taken advantage of – but ultimately, this is a novel looking at the world through Perry’s eyes – as well as how so many are quick to judge the Perrys of the world.

Set atmospherically in a small coastal town where it is always cold, this novel features blue-collar folk and life is hard. Character-led, the thoughtful prose sings off the page. This is a book about dignity – not just Perry’s but also his misfit group of friends. He asks one of the characters if he’s too slow – the answer is he’s fast enough for them. And this is true, he’s fast enough for us.

Crusoe’s Daughter by Jane Gardam

This is a deeply moving coming of age story. Actually, it’s a full life story – we meet Polly Flint at 6 years old and we’re still with her when she’s 88. In this novel, setting is a central character, aiding and abetting the story – both the Yellow House in which Polly lives her whole life, and the unforgiving, bleak marshland of the North East coast which is intrinsic to the life of the novel. Crusoe’s Daughter is a beautifully crafted portrait of a long and sometimes lonely life – both of a woman and of a building, from 1904 until 1986. While world history unfolds, Polly and the Yellow House become more and more insular and entwined. Polly herself is a quirky, often prickly character and I love the profound connection she forges with a fictitious character – her love for Robinson Crusoe himself is far greater than her admiration for Daniel Defoe. When I was a fledging author, I learned through Polly Flint that it’s ok to have friends who might not actually exist – and Jane Gardam taught me that it’s normal to talk to your characters.

Mother Ship by Francesca Segal

Oh this book. When I’m writing, I choose to read non-fiction. This fierce and searing account of the novelist’s experience of the premature birth of her twin girls – and the care they, and she, received from the NHS – had me gripped. It is harrowing, uplifting, terrifying, triumphant. Barely venturing beyond the setting of a NICU in the NHS, this memoire is set during the months that the author kept her crib-side vigil. She takes us with her in an almost vice-like grip and I am so grateful to her for the experience. This book is beautiful, painful, funny, irreverent, sobering and humbling – not just the many challenges thrown at the author, but also at the other mothers with whom she lived cheek-by-jowl in the NICU, who became her tribe. It’s part diary, part love letter, part thriller – and its blistering honesty has had a lasting impact on me. These days I have only to skim read the acknowledgments to be in pieces

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I haven’t read any of these but I’ve read quite a few other Jane Gardam novels, so Crusoe’s daughter is going straight on my to read list. Any here that catch your eye? And if you’d like to be told about future Read This recommendations, you can follow me on Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter.

More Read This: Books Under the Radar

Lou Morrish author of Women of War
Francesca Ramsay author of Pinch Me
Sarah Leipciger author of Moon Road
Tim Chapman university librarian
Juliet West author of The Faithful
Lindsay Hunter author of Hot Springs Drive
Gina Chung author of Sea Change
Susmita Bhattacharya author of Table Manners
Vanessa Harbour author of Safe