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: Huma Qureshi

I met Huma when she was the guest author on an Editing Fiction and Non-fiction course I taught for Arvon. Huma came on Wednesday evening and read from her books and told the students about her writing and how she edits. She seemed such a warm and friendly person and was incredibly generous with her time and in answering the students’ questions. Here’s what she has to say about herself:

Huma Qureshi is an award-winning writer and author of four books. Her memoir, How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures, was published in 2021 (Elliott & Thompson), and shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards. Her debut short-story collection, Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love, also published in 2021 (Sceptre), was longlisted for both The Jhalak Prize Book of The Year and The Edge Hill Prize for excellence in a single authored short story collection. In 2020, she won the coveted Harper’s Bazaar short story literary prize. Her first book, In Spite of Oceans, was published in 2014 (The History Press) and received the John C. Laurence award from The Authors ’Foundation. Her debut novel, Playing Games, a poignant story of art and sisterhood, family, marriage and betrayal, was published to critical acclaim in 2023 (Sceptre). Huma writes the popular newsletter Dear Huma and teaches a range of creative writing courses via her website, http://www.humaqureshi.co.uk.

On Instagram: @humaqureshiwriter

Leaving by Roxana Robinson

Every now and again a book comes along that restores you and Leaving did that for me. I could have lived in its quiet, precise, subtle and understated prose for so much longer. It’s beautifully written.

Leaving is about a couple who once dated when young and then meet again in their sixties and fall in love again. But it is complicated, because they both have families of their own. Yet this story is so much more than just ‘having an affair.’ It’s about absence and intimacy and mothers and daughters, and fathers and daughters. Like the best books, it felt very real to me, and it left me with that yearning, longing to know how the author Roxana Robinson did it, what magic in those fingers? The ending in particular left my throat closed up and I had to read it more than once.

I had never heard of Roxana Robinson before but to me her writing felt similar to Ann Patchett and Elizabeth Strout and it surprised me that though she’s written so many books, I’d never heard of her before. I didn’t see any press reviews for Leaving at all in the UK, when I think it deserved it.

But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu

But The Girl was a book I stumbled upon by chance in a bookshop whilst visiting for a book signing. I’d not heard of it before, but I was intrigued by the fabulous cover and the fact that the blurb referenced a main character obsessed with Sylvia Plath. I too was obsessed with Sylvia Plath when I was younger (although aren’t we all?).

The main character, known just as Girl, comes to the UK from Australia for a research scholarship to continue her postgraduate studies on Sylvia Plath. Girl is Australian born to Malaysian parents and is so used to being typecast she carries some kind of lethargy about it and so doesn’t always stand up for herself. She has a terrible time on her scholarship and is finally able to realise how much her family means to her despite wanting to be away from them – a feeling I can relate to from when I was roughly the same age.

But The Girl reminded me of being young, unsure of yourself and the world, and your place in it. It’s such a clever novel, concise and sharply tuned, and the writing was so sharp – a blend of astute observation and Plath-like poetry, and it all felt very different from anything else I have read recently.

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel translated by Rosalind Harvey

This is such a beautiful study of the complexity of motherhood, or making the choice for motherhood. It’s also about the complexity of being. It explores that very precise feeling of wanting but also not wanting two contradictory things at once and being torn between the two.

Alina and Laura, friends in their mid-thirties, are trying to figure out whether or not they want to be mothers. Laura decides she doesn’t, whilst Alina realises she does. But then Alina encounters problems in her pregnancy and Laura becomes attached to her neighbour’s son and their questions about what they want remain muddled.

I loved Guadalupe Nettel’s voice, or rather her translated voice; I remember being struck by the novel’s stillness. The prose is simple and pared back but there is still so much space for tenderness. Some of this novel makes for painful reading, and yet it was so beautiful, I wanted to return to it. I remember being in quite a restless reading phase when I encountered Still Born, leaving a lot of books half-unfinished. But Still Born was one of the few books from that time I did finish. It reminded me of that magic of reading so intently, when all you want is to get back to your book.

 

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I saw Guadalupe Nettel at the Edinburgh Literary Festival some years ago and so Still Born has been on my radar for a while, but the other two are new to me. Have you read any of these? 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
Tamsin Hope Thomas newsletter subscriber
Patrick O’Donoghue book blogger
Adam Weymouth author of Lone Wolf
Adam Weymouth, author of Lone Wolf
Claire Thomson author of One Pan Beans
Sophie Haydock author of Madame Matisse
Beth O’Leary author of Swept Away