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: Viv Groskop
Viv and I have known each other for ten years, when my debut, Our Endless Numbered Days won the Desmond Elliott Prize and she was one of the judges – and the chair of the judges let it slip that Viv didn’t vote for my book! I’m not sure whether it was embarrassment at the reveal but when she was booking authors for the Bath Literary Festival she invited me, and since then (and because I’ve of course forgiven her) we’ve bumped into each other at many literary events. I’ve read most of her books and they’re always an inspiration, and I particularly loved her latest, One Ukrainian Summer, a memoir of her time in the 1980s in the USSR and Ukraine. I highly recommend it. Here’s what she has to say about herself:
Viv Groskop is an author, comedian and playwright. She is the author of seven non-fiction books including the best-seller How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking. Her latest book One Ukrainian Summer is a memoir set after the fall of the Iron Curtain and is about being young and stupidly in love with a Ukrainian punk rock guitarist who repeatedly gives you headlice. It comes out in paperback in April 2025. All author proceeds for this book go to PEN International for their work with Writers at Risk.
Find her on Instagram @vivgroskop and subscribe to her weekly newsletter at vivgroskop.com.
Here are the books Viv chose:
Envy by Yuri Olesha, translated by Marian Schwartz
This novella is wild and crazy and has stayed with me for years. It’s one of those books that you never forget and that — years later — you can’t believe no-one ever talks about. It’s not even a fashionable book for anyone who is into translated literature, as far as I know. Nonetheless, I love it. Published in 1927, Envy is a strange Soviet fable about the relationship between “the perfect Soviet man” and a total loser. Andrei Babichev is Comrade Perfect. He runs a successful sausage factory and is determined to invent a sausage that will make everyone’s lives even better than they already are. If that’s even possible! The loser is Nikolai Kavalerov. He purports to hate all things Soviet but is consumed with envy for the popularity and happiness of Andrei Babichev. Determined to get his revenge and “stick it to the man”, Nikolai Kavalerov hatches a plot to wipe the smile off Andrei Babichev’s smug face once and for all. Obviously this plan is doomed to utter failure because Nikolai Kavalerov is such a loser. I’m sure I don’t have to point out that this book is satire. And I’m equally sure I don’t have to point out that it’s very important to identify with Nikolai Kavalerov, both as a reader and as a human being.
Black Milk by Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak’s beautiful novels need no recommendations — this Booker-nominated author is published in more than fifty languages and has built an extraordinarily powerful backlist over the past twenty years. (For the record, The Bastard of Istanbul is probably my favourite.) So instead I want to recommend an overlooked rare piece of non-fiction from her archive: Black Milk. My own children are in their teens and early twenties now and I rarely read much non-fiction about parenting or family life anymore. But I first read this in 2013 when it came out and when I was obsessed with reading about parenthood. How are you meant to fit children into your life? Or are you supposed to fit your life around your children? In a sea of books that were either too finger-wagging and practical (Gina Ford was popular when I had my first baby) or too hippy-ish and impractical (I was obsessed with a book called The Mother Dance for a long time), Black Milk really stood out. This is a serious, slightly weird, lyrical analysis of what it means to become a parent when you are someone who is probably a bit too much in their own head. Which many of us are.
The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer
This fictional examination of the mess of parenting, feminism and unrealistic expectations. The “ten-year nap” of the title describes the way some women “disappear” from life and into child-rearing — or if they don’t physically disappear (to become stay-at-home mothers) then they mentally disappear and are no longer as engaged in adult life as they used to be. Discuss… This story plays out amidst a group of angsty mum friends in New York. If you like Taffy Brodesser-Akner or Curtis Sittenfeld, this will be the book for you. It’s really about whether you should put yourself second at some points in your life — or whether you should feel bad if you’re not prepared to do that. Obviously because it’s Meg Wolitzer (who is always reliably brilliant) it’s entertaining and caustic all at the same time. (As a side note, when I was thinking about what to choose for this series, I really wanted to choose Meg Wolitzer’s This Is My Life, a wonderful novel about a Joan Rivers-type comedian who completely fails to have a relationship with her children. It’s such a prototype for both Mrs Maisel and Deborah Vance in Hacks. And yet it’s out of print. Probably the only of Meg Wolitzer’s novels that is out of print. That is astounding and wrong to me. And a great lesson to all writers: even your best books can go out of print.)
Who can resist a Russian novel about a loser and a sausage factory? (And only Viv Groskop could choose a book with a premise like this.) I haven’t read any of these, although I do know the last two authors. They are all going on my tbr. 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
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Sarah Leipciger author of Moon Road
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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
Claire Thomson author of One Pan Beans
Sophie Haydock author of Madame Matisse
Huma Qureshi author of Playing Games
Beth O’Leary author of Swept Away