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. You can see the full list of books which have been selected, as well as the author’s latest book on Bookshop.org, where you can have a browse and buy any that take your fancy. Happy reading!

Read This: Clare Pollard

Clare Pollard is published by the same imprint of Penguin as I am: Fig Tree. And although I’ve read some of her books, we still haven’t met in real life but there are plans afoot, because Clare is also Artist Director of the Winchester Poetry Festival – not a million miles from where I live. Here’s what she has to say about herself:

Clare Pollard’s sixth collection of poetry, Lives of the Female Poets, will be published by Bloodaxe in 2025. Her translations include Ovid’s Heroines, which she toured as a one-woman show with Jaybird Live Literature. She has also written a play, The Weather, that was performed at The Royal Court Theatre; a non-fiction title, Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Childrens’ Picture Books; her first children’s novel, The Untameables, and two adult novels, Delphi, and The Modern Fairies. She has recently been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is the current Artistic Director of the Winchester Poetry Festival.

Substack: clarespoetrycircle.substack.com
Instagram and Threads: @poetclare

Cassandra by Christa Wolf, trans Jan van Heurk 

Go into a bookshop these says, and you’ll see innumerable novels retelling classical myths from womens’ perspectives. But these feminist versions aren’t as new as you might think. Firstly, Ovid himself, around 20BC, retold many of the stories from a female point of view in his book Heroides (Heroines). More recently, in the 1980s and 1990s, East German writer Christa Wolf also revised the stories of Cassandra and Medea. Wolf’s Cassandra, whose Troy is a police state like the one she grew up with in East Germany, discovers that Helen is not there – the whole war is premised on a lie. But of course, no one will believe her, drowned out as her voice is by propaganda. It is an incredibly political, intelligent, furious novel that deserves more credit for the current boom in retellings – none of which, for me, touch Wolf’s.

Crazy by Jane Feaver

This is one of the best pieces of autofiction I have ever read, an absolutely brutally honest account of the mess of middle-age, and the fallout of a complicated, obsessive and in many ways abusive relationship with a man who gives the narrator the nickname ‘Crazy’ after the Yeats poem ‘Crazy Jane and the Bishop’. It looks at the stories we tell about our romantic lives, and how such narratives can obscure awful truths. Feaver is such a precise, darkly funny writer, and this book feels like the culmination of a lifetime of experience and craft. It should have been nominated for all the prizes, were there any justice in prize lists, which there is not.

The Book of Desire by Meena Kandasamy

Meena Kandasamy is a genius. This book is her translation of the Kāmattu-p-pāl – the third part of the one of the most important texts in Tamil literature, the Thirukkural, and a 2000-year-old song of sensuality. Although there have been hundreds of male translations of the text, it has only been translated by a woman once before, and Meena’s version is radical, intimate, and a revelation. ‘Achingly gorgeous’, as I said in the blurb – but despite being beautifully published by the independent Galley Beggar Press, as with most translated poetry it struggled to find reviewers or shelf-space in the shops. I hope in time it will recognised as a translation as important as Emily Wilson’s of The Iliad.

 

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This is maybe only the second time that I haven’t even heard of the three authors chosen by my guest author. Had you? I am putting the reading world to rights three books at a time. Any of these 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
Freya North author of The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne
Judith Heneghan author of Birdeye
Clare Mackintosh author of I Promise it won’t always Hurt like This
Barney Norris author of Undercurrent
Jo Leevers author of The Last Time I saw You
Alice Winn author of In Memmoriam
Anna Mazzola author of The House of Secrets
Alice Peterson author of The Saturday Place
Jenna Smith bookblogger
Lucy Atkins author of Windmill Hill
LV Matthews author of To Love a Liar
Ruth Thomas author of The Snow and the Works on the Northern Line
Jo Furniss author of Dead Mile
Nina Stibbe author of Went to London, Took the Dog