This week’s BEST BOOKS
1
I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson (Faber & Faber, £14.99)
Rebecca Watson’s I Will Crash asks how we grieve the people who’ve hurt us the most. Written in the style of an inner monologue, Rosa is told her brother has been killed in a crash. However, the news is not unexpected to her as she spent her childhood being tormented by him. Complicating matters, her brother turned up unannounced at her doorstep just weeks before, but she turned him away before discovering the reason for his visit. Rosa, and the reader, is left wondering what could have been.
Although the novel is written more like poetry than prose, Watson is a gifted storyteller who has turned a work about grief, sibling violence and memory into a gripping page turner. One of the most exciting novelists today.
Luke O’reilly
2
Pity Party by Daisy Buchanan (Sphere, £18.99)
Daisy Buchanan excels at bringing complex women to life, and she’s outdone herself in the heartbreakingly beautiful Pity Party. The novel focuses on widow Katherine, whose sassy comments pepper the pages, bringing relief from the raw sadness. It also takes aim at the wellness industry after our heroine enters a treatment centre at the urging of her mother-in-law and best friend, and takes a sharp look at her own grief, which she’s tried to push from her mind.
The book will have you gripped, as Katherine does not meet what she expects when she finally faces herself and figures out challenging truths.
Buchanan nd has dealt with similar themes of selfdiscovery, but Pity Party enthuses with more humanity.
Charlotte Mclaughlin
3
A Poisoner’s Tale by Cathryn Kemp (Bantam, £16.99)
This reimagining of the life of 17th-century Italian poisoner Giulia Tofana is a dark tale set against a backdrop of Papal power, pestilence and patriarchy. Freedom is in short supply for the desperate wives and lovers of abusive men who see Giulia’s deadly potion as the only way out. There is no charge for her blend of arsenic, belladonna and lead – but the ultimate price of this clandestine business is high. With seemingly healthy men dropping like flies, it’s with a sense of inevitability and dread that the authorities start to take notice.
Kemp has brought Giulia back to life through rich layers of detail in her first historical novel. This gruesome story is not for the faint-hearted. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Giulia’s mission, it leaves a grim legacy and the question of how far society has come – and far it has yet to go. Emily Pennink