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: Tamsin Hope Thomson

Read This: Books Under the Radar will be coming to an end in a couple of months, and I had every Monday scheduled with a different author apart from one slot, so I asked my newsletter subscribers whether any of them would like to be a guest and I would pick a name out of a hat, and Tamsin Hope Thomson won. (Sign up here, if you’re interested.) And weirdly two of her choices would absolutely be contenders for my own list, which means we must have very similar tastes and I must read her third recommendation. Here’s what she has to say about herself:

Tamsin Hope Thomson is a gardening writer and editor and has written on all kinds of topics from Snowdrop societies to Mary Berry’s veg patch. She grew up in Scotland and now lives in Sussex with her husband and two children. Tamsin is currently editing her first novel, very slowly, and has started a substack for book recommendations.

You can find her on: https://tamsinht.substack.com/

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff

R C Sherriff couldn’t get going on this novel at first because he was trying to write in a fancy way, searching for “highfalutin words”. When he realised that he wanted to write about “simple, uncomplicated people doing normal things,” the book came easily. The result was ‘Fortnight in September’, a story about the Stevens family going on their two week holiday to Bognor Regis. Mr and Mrs Stevens have two older children and a younger son; this year’s holiday could be their last one together.

This book focuses on the small moments of worry, fear and joy that make up an ordinary family life. The kind of worries they have – what will Mr Stevens do if a lady faints in front of him on the way to their train – are not the stuff of major drama, but it’s impossible not to get caught up in their lives. This is what makes it such a compelling book. It’s lovely reading about the simple joy they get from deciding to spend a significant part of their holiday budget on a bathing hut. It made me laugh when Mrs Stevens admits to herself that her favourite part of the holiday is having her one glass of port when everyone else goes out for the evening.

I talked so much about this book that my husband started asking what Mr Stevens had been up to, once I finished reading for the night.

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann

David Vann’s father committed suicide when he was 13 and this novel is his way of attempting to understand it. It’s based on a real event, but the six stories within the novel look at the suicide, and the relationship between Roy and his father, from different angles. Each story challenges the events of another story, making you constantly ask, which version is true?

The main story, Sukkwan Island, is about Roy accepting his Dad’s offer to live in a cabin with him in the middle of nowhere for a year. David Vann is brilliant at creating the claustrophobic atmosphere of two people trapped in a place where nothing is going right. Roy wants to leave and his Dad is breaking apart in front of him. The end of the story comes as a sharp shock.

Vann’s writing is also beautiful. He’s especially good on fish: “Their side fins rippled as delicately as fine lace”. The fish appear in several stories giving an eerie sense of the emotional tone – when two fish suck the eyes out of another, you know things aren’t going to end well.

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

This book made me want to learn Japanese. And Greek. I loved the assumption behind the narrative – why wouldn’t you learn these things?

The Last Samurai is about a single mother bringing up her son, Ludo, who is a genius. Sibylla’s opinion though is that anyone’s child would be a genius if they put the effort in and taught them the right things. She teaches Ludo Greek, Japanese and Hebrew and in his spare time he reads the Odyssey.

She is worried that her son doesn’t have a male role model. They watch and rewatch the film Seven Samurai, so that he has seven examples to follow. But at age 11 Ludo decides to set off on a secret quest to find his father.

I think this book has a rare combination – it’s challenging, but in an exciting not dense way, and there’s a great story, about the hunt for meaning in life, and where we find it.

 

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I am so excited that Tamsin has chosen The Fortnight in September and Legend of a Suicide. Although I love hearing new recommendations, which of course is what Read This is all about, there is something very satisfying in finding another reader who loves particular books as much as me. I highly recommend them; all of them. 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
Sally Hughes, book blogger
Chloe Lane author of Arms and Legs