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: Chloe Lane

I read Chloe’s debut novel The Swimmers back in 2022, and it made my and my husband’s top books of the year. I also loved her second novel, Arms and Legs, and I’m really looking forward to what she writes next. Here’s what she has to say about herself:

Chloe Lane earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Florida. She is also a graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington and the founding editor of Hue+Cry Press. Her first novel, The Swimmers, was longlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the NZ Book Awards. Her second novel, Arms & Legs, is out now. She lives and teaches in Gainesville, Florida.

You can find her on:
Instagram @cv_lane

The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story by Glenway Wescott

I was introduced to this novel by David Leavitt when I was in the MFA program at the University of Florida. It’s a perfect 108 pages. A short novel I turn to again and again, each time newly mesmerized by what it manages to do in such a short space. The story is set over the course of an afternoon in the late 1920s, in a house in the French countryside—a group of friends and acquaintances gathered for a meal. The narrator is a friend of the house’s owner—an American. However, the novel’s main tension stems from the arrival and interactions of an Irish couple—Mr. and Mrs. Cullen—and Mrs. Cullen’s pet hawk, Lucy. These three characters make for an unusual, tense, and oftentimes extremely funny love triangle. Lucy the hawk more than holds her own. Watching The Cullens unravel is incredibly entertaining. Though it is the depth of the narrator’s observations—on love, marriage, how we communicate and fail to communicate—that give the book its satisfying, emotional core.

The Body in Question by Jill Ciment

This book is fresh and alive in my mind as I taught it to my fiction grad students in the fall semester. Though I read and adored it when it first came out, it was a whole different kind of pleasure examining it on a craft level. The story follows a murder trial, beginning with the central character’s selection to the jury. The trial itself is gripping, the details of the crime unusual. Then the central character begins an affair with another person on the jury. Parallel to this, is the decline in health of the central character’s elderly husband. What’s so incredible about this book, is how carefully, painfully, these three narrative threads are braided together. Every scene is tense—though often funny too. One lesson I learned from Ciment—who was also one of my professors at the University of Florida—is the importance of not looking away. This book is a superb object lesson in this. Just when you think things couldn’t possibly get any worse for these characters, they do. And then they get worse again. There is so much humanity in this writing.

The Details by Ia Genberg translated by Kira Josefsson

I picked up this book on a whim at my local bookstore, The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida, and wow am I glad that I did! Very little happens in this novel—in some ways it could be described as a collection of character studies. With each of the novel’s chapters bearing the name of a character who has had an impact on the narrator’s life. These include lovers, friends, a parent. The narrator, herself, is sick and in a feverish state, which is how she has the time and inclination to be thinking about these people, and to be analyzing these events in such detail for us. Some of the people and stories overlap. Some don’t. It’s pure reflection. And yet it’s gripping in its depth and clarity. Though this is another super short novel—coming in under 140 pages—by the end of it, I felt like I’d been on an epic, and ultimately moving, journey.

 

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I haven’t heard of any of these authors, let alone the books. My to read list has just grown by several centimeters. 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
Nussaibah Younis author of Fundamentally
Cara Hunter author of Making a Killing
Leena Norms author of Half-Arsed Human
Cherie Jones author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House
Cate Baum author of The Land of Hope
Carole Burns author of Another Country