For any lovers of family-centric novels, like The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, comes Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson – the phenomenal new debut novel that is as propulsive as it is touching and moving.

When their mother Eleanor dies, estranged siblings Byron and Benny reunite for her funeral in California. Once there, they are given a strange inheritance – an eight hour voice recording in which Eleanor narrates her extraordinary family history, alongside a traditional Caribbean black cake. Across the length of the voice recording, Eleanor narrates a tumultuous story about a headstrong young woman who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder – finding a life in England eventually. The story is full of revelations for the siblings, making them question their relationship with their mother and their own heritage.

Black Cake is an extraordinary story, showcasing a lyrical and thoughtful writer, who characterises her protagonists with amazing sensitivity, dealing with broad issues from race to motherhood, the environment and family ties. It is without a doubt one of the most extraordinary novels of the year, positioning Wilkerson as an exciting new voice in the cultural zeitgeist.

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Michelle Zauner’s 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart was written following the publication of her viral New Yorker essay. In the essay, Zauner explored her grief and heritage, showing what she had learned from her mother, both emotionally and in the kitchen. Zauner found herself regularly taking pilgrimages to H Mart, looking at her cultural and culinary heritage and it is in H Mart that the memoir is rooted. ‘In the H Mart food court, I find myself again, searching for the first chapter of the story that I want to tell about my mother.’ This is more than just a memoir about grief, its an exploration of self and discovering Zauner’s own identity, both as the child of immigrants and finding her place and purpose in America as the front woman of the band Japanese Breakfast.

Zauner tenderly portrays her mother’s death, delicately unveiling the layers of the story and her deterioration during chemotherapy, in a way that allows room to explore the complications of the relationship both between Zauner and her mother and father. Upon this backdrop, food is the vehicle for much of the novel, laying out a love of Korean food that is rich and deep, from barchan to pine-nut porridge. 

Above all, Crying in H Mart is a story that explores the nuances of familial relationships, heritage and loss – a tender novel that will help anyone in times of loss or being lost.

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This one struck us at just the perfect point of summer, a light and fun romping romance, with enough depth and emotion to make it deeply compelling and propulsive. The story centres around January and Gus – two published authors who are both separately experiencing writers block, whilst living at their neighbouring beach homes. There’s a darker underbelly to the story, for both protagonists are battling with their own demons – Gus with his childhood and January with the complicated loss of her father and the discovery that he had a mistress. The premise of the book is that they both decide to switch genres as a bet to see who can write and sell a book first, conducting ‘research’ whilst spending time together.

Slowly, the duo develop a friendship that deepens, both unravelling their own layers and breaking down walls to each other. They both begin to be open and honest with each other, and it is this honesty that is the pivotal hook upon which the book hangs. Emily Henry writes with an easy, charming writing style that doesn’t feel fluffy or cheesy. More than anything, Beach Read is a swooning and fun romantic comedy book – a perfect Meg Ryan of a book – and, as the title suggests, the perfect beach read.

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Pick up a copy of the book here.

Natasha Lunn’s book Conversations on Love – published this week though Viking in the UK – is an earnest celebration of love in all its forms. It is an unmissable, riveting collection of explorations into love, and is the result of her hugely successful fortnightly email newsletter, interviewing an array of public figures from Candice Carty-Williams to Dolly Alderton, Esther Perel and Roxanne Gay. This is the ultimate post-lockdown read, for those contemplating and re-evaluating relationships, in all their forms, as we slowly come out of the pandemic. This shift will make us more alert to love and the ‘subtle opportunities for love which are woven through our daily lives.’ The book strikes a chord from start to finish – even the dedication ‘For anyone who feels lost in longing.’ I don’t think I’ve ever read a dedication so profound that gets so close to the heart and purpose of the reader, as those lines. Each chapter of the book are perfectly polished jewels that dive into the subtleties and nuance of love in a way that is deeply engaging, and touching without being sentimental. What Lunn accomplishes so masterfully throughout is an ability to show the breadth, depth and variety of the complex emotion we call love. Throughout, Lunn subtly weaves in the development of her own relationship and the mistakes she made when it comes to love throughout her twenties, while avoiding being patronising to those souls who are currently falling prey to the mistakes she made in the past, managing instead to display ‘older sister’ characteristics. Though this main thread involves romantic relationships, the more compelling pages of the book deal with friendships, parents and siblings – their complications, their failures and disappointments and their integral joys. 

Conversations on Love is a deeply compelling read that feels profound, a call to value every relationship in life with just as much weight and importance as the value with which we hold romantic relationships, even with strangers as Melanie Reid details. Although, importantly it should be noted that the lens of the participants she interviews is narrow – Lunn only interviews two men for the collection and Roxane Gay’s analysis of love is the only one that is not heteronormative – still the breath of love she covers is vast. More than anything, Conversations on Love will leave you with a profound joy and appreciation for love in all its forms and an ability to appreciate every kind of love with as much zeal as the value with which we hold romantic love. Lunn will leave you in love with the very concept of love itself.

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The Final Revival of Opal and Nev is a blisteringly hot, gritty and realistic portrayal of the 1970s rock and roll era – the portrayal of the rise and fall of fictional Afro-Punk duo Opal & Nev. 

The novel is written as an oral history of the band, from conception to its ultimate demise. From the moment the premise of the novel was published, the comparisons to Daisy Jones and the Six began. Both novels indeed are fictional oral histories, handling the 1970s era of rock and roll, with deeply complex female protagonists – Daisy Jones and Opal Jewel – with fictional ‘editors/authors’ whose parents are embedded within the story. However, though the skeletons of both stories are similar, the meat of both novels should not be compared. Enjoyable as Daisy Jones and the Six was, it was a frothier story of the glamour of 1970s rock and roll – where there was grit, the grit still sparkled. Dawnie Walton, by contrast, has created a deeply layered and textured novel that grabs a history of race relations in America with both hands, moulding it into a deeply compelling novel that breathes a life of its own. It is a vital novel.

Opal Jewel is a singer from Detroit who is discovered by Nev and his label owner Bob Hize – when touring America to find a black female singer to join him as he is not yet ready to go solo. Moving to New York to create their first record together, Polychrome, the duo experience limited success with their heavily political record, owing in major part to the outlandish and creative fashion statements that Opal creates with her stylist Virgil La Fleur. Their success pales in comparison though to that of their label mates, the Bond Brothers – a highly problematic band from the South. In an attempt to boost the popularity of the entire roster, Hize decides to stage a showcase for the entire Rivington label. The showcase descends into a riot, after one of the brothers brandishes the Confederate flag. After he attempts to defend Opal, after her bold protest using the flag, their drummer – and the ‘editor’s’ father – Jimmy Curtis is killed by friends of the brothers. Whilst the violence makes a name for Opal & Nev overnight, the duo only go on to make one further record together, before going their separate ways. 

What Walton has created in her debut novel, is an eye-watering raw account of racism, with characters that feel frustratingly recognisable – from the black woman fighting to get her voice heard to the white man who turns a blind eye, rather than calling out evil as he sees it. The book is horrifyingly relevant, whilst remaining to stay deeply engaging and compelling, brimming with life and urgency. If readers were introduced to the oral history concept in Daisy Jones, then Walton has elevated this to another level, making it relevant to modern times – creating a candid and authentic voice through her narrator Sunny Shelton. Though it may take a minute to get into, once you are in the thick of this novel packs a weighty punch and Walton’s writing proves addictive. Readers will be impressed again and again by the way that Walton has crafted and sculpted this novel with masterful precision, both in structure and form. This is a novel that will stay with you and be on many a ‘top debuts of 2021’ list. 

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Pick up a copy of Pachinko here.

Min Jin Lee’s sophomore novel is a masterpiece of intricate storytelling – it’s a universal story of family, love and faith – outlining the story of one Korean family. The story is divided into three parts. In Book 1 – Gohyang/Hometown (1910-1933), Lee begins the story in Busan, Korea with the marriage between Hoonie (a boy born with a cleft palate and twisted foot) and his marriage to Yangjin, against the background of the Japanese occupation of Korea. Their daughter Sunja is then the focus of the main part of this book, following the death of Hoonie. The girl begins an affair with Koh Hansu – an older mysterious gentleman, who saves her from a gang. She idolises Hansu, before falling pregnant and only then facing the realisation that he is married. Baek Isaak, a Protestant minister, offers to marry her and raise the child as his own. Moving to Osaka with Baek, the young couple move in with Isaak’s brother Yoseb and wife Kyunghee, before giving birth to Noa. Book 2 – Homeland (1939-1962), details the family’s life in Japan after the breakout of the second world war. The couple now have two sons – Noa and Mozasu – who are drastically different, the former is studious and aims to go to university and Mosazu having dropped out of school begins work at a pachinko parlour. Baek Isaak dies having been imprisoned for failing to worship the Emperor and later it is revealed that much of the good fortune of the family – escaping the most severe bombings and finding a job that pays Sunja well – has been engineered by Hansu. Fatefully, Noa comes to discover his paternity and becomes estranged from the family, leaving them and his education behind. The final book three – Pachinko (1962-1969) deals with the lives of Sunja and her sons – Sunja tracks Noa down but not long after he commits suicide, Mozasu gains a small fortune owning pachinko parlours and his son Solomon moves to America for further education. This is the barebones of the story, yet this grossly simplifies Pachinko – a book that is stunningly intricate and well-crafted.

It’s a powerful work that teaches you as much about Korean-Japanese relations as any long-form history, getting under the skin of racism and prejudice that will be eye-opening to many readers. Clearly, Lee based the novel on an extraordinary amount of close research in order to bring the story to life with detail, from the difficulty that Solomon experiences with his girlfriend seeing him as ‘Korean’ rather than himself and the complications involved with racial identity to Noa hiding his race in order to gain a job and generally where the Koreans are treated as second-class citizens by the Japanese. Layered upon this are lines of gender identities, where Yoseb seeks to prevent the women of his household from having an independent career.

The story is incredibly tender and touching – there is so much love between the members of the family that bonds them even during the hardships they undergo. Sunja’s love for her sons and Kyunghee is paramountly clear. The women in the story are incredible sources of strength, acting as the real backbones to the family. Min Jin Lee’s characterisation is phenomenal, giving intense colour to every person in the story. It really is an incredible work of literature that has the ability to provide an eye-opening look into Japanese-Korean race relations, familial love and faith in all its forms.

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Patricia Engel’s 2020 novel Infinite Country has seemingly already become part of the literary zeitgeist – shooting onto the New York Times bestseller list.

‘There are innumerable joys left out of these pages. Sorrows too. A life rendered will always be incomplete.’ Much like Villavicencio’s creative non-fiction work The Undocumented Americans last year, Engel’s novel explores the trauma of separation and isolation across borderlines, but also tells the joys of the human experience lived despite and during this time of hardship. The novel tells the intricate story of a family, initially from Colombia, who move to the US and are ultimately separated when the father (Mauro) is deported, with the youngest daughter Talia sent to live with him in Bogota. Through telling the story, Engel’s tells a wider story about migration and different cultures – seamlessly weaving in details of Colombian folkloric tales in a way that is both tasteful and necessary rather than totemic.

At its core though, Infinite Country is a story about family and family ties that supersede borders and individual experiences, along with a question of identity – Talia, one of only two members of the family to be born in America resides in Colombia with Mauro, yet Elena and Karina live as undocumented Americans. Engel gives each member of their family their turn and perspective. Talia, the initial protagonist of the story, throughout is trying to make her way through Colombia back to Bogota, having been detained at a girls’ reform school, in order to get back to Mauro and the plane ticket out of the country to be reunited with her mother Elena in New Jersey. Initially, it does feel that this will be a ‘chase against time’ tale, but the question that runs through the novel is not a question of ‘if’ Talia will get back to America, but ‘how’ the family got to a state where this is a question, bringing in the story of Mauro and Elena’s love story and journey to America before their ultimate separation.

Much like Colson Whitehead, Engel’s writing contains a breathless energy that propels it from the start to the conclusion of the novel, containing the entirety of her world in under 200 pages. It’s succinctness is a mark of the poise of her writing, weaving seamlessly the story of three generations of this multinational family, with a light touch characterisation that does not feel lacking – the story is more about the ideas and the family history when viewed from a distance rather than in its detail. Although the story could have been fleshed out in double the amount of pages – so breathless is its narrative arc – still thematically she covers vast swathes of ground without it feeling superfluous or light touch. Engel is a masterful writer and this is a phenomenal, propulsive tale of family and immigration that captures the experience of the individual and of so many.

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The novel is available for purchase here. 

Rare is the novel that is able to delicately and competently handle feminism, political activism, rape culture or the intricate workings of modern families – Ali Benjamin’s novel artfully handles all this and more, in her phenomenal 2021 novel The Smash-Up that is fast queued up to be one of our favourite novels of the year so far. Focussing on the years after the Trump election and the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, the novel is a compulsive, satirical look at protest and America. The novel focusses on Ethan Frome and his relationship with the three women he lives with. Frome used to be the co-founder of a lucrative and immensely innovative media start-up – Bränd – but moved to Starkfield, Massachusetts, giving up his share in the company when his wife refused to move to Los Angeles. Zo, his wife, has been transformed by her newly found political activism, into a barely recognisable ball of fury, centred around the confirmation for a Supreme Court Justice and whipped up by her activist sisterhood – All Them Witches. The novel also deals with his interactions with his hyperactive, Wicked-obsessed daughter Alex and her live-in babysitter Maddy – a blue-haired millennial, making her way through an online gig economy on TenSpot.

Ali Benjamin’s debut novel takes inspiration from Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton’s classic story about a small-town love triangle, yet broadens the perspective. Though the actual links to the original inspiration are a bit heavy-handed (the town and protagonist’s names are both the same) still, but this is forgiven for the generally delicate and artful way that she weaves the story. Indeed, the core of Wharton’s novel – the disintegration of the protagonist’s marriage – is shifted to the background in this story and only reaches a proper examination and culmination in the epilogue, instead issues around #MeToo, political activism and learning disabilities are placed to the fore. All of the characters are deeply sympathetic, yet also deeply complicated and layered and Benjamin does a phenomenal job of creating a narrative that is compulsive to the final page, immensely engaging, uncomfortable at times, this is a novel that you’ll be wanting to discuss with those around you, offering an eye-opening satirical commentary on modern activist culture. An important read.

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The novel is available to purchase now here.

Kiley Reid’s debut novel Such a Fun Age offers a breathtakingly fresh perspective on privilege. The novel tells the story of Emira Tucker, a 25 year old who works in Philadelphia as a part-time babysitter for the Chamberlain’s toddler – Briar, opening when she is confronted in a supermarket by a security guard who accuses her of kidnapping Briar because the child is white and Emira is black. The scene is only broken up when Emira calls Peter Chamberlain to intervene. This scene though is only the beginning of this extraordinary novel that deals with the spiralling internalising thoughts of Alix Chamberlain after the incident. Reid masterfully contrasts Emira – a lost twenty-something year old – and Alix – an incredibly rich self-made woman, leaving the reader feeling that Emira herself is the one with her life together and Alix, by contrast, seems rootless, desperate to secure Emira’s friendship. It is a desperation so intense that it seems almost psychotic and addictive.

This story alone could have been deeply engaging, but Reid layers this with the developments of Emira’s relationship with Kelley Copeland – the man who filmed the original supermarket incident on his phone. He is intent on her handing the video over to the media. What complicates the relationship more is that Kelley actually dated Alix back when they were in high school and Alix seems as wrapped up with Kelley and his life as he is with Emira’s.

Reid tenderly and delicately deals with the issues around race – both Alix and Kelley constantly refer to Emira’s race, objectifying her and characterising her more by her racial make-up than by her character or by actually listening to what she has to say. The main message of the novel though is not just confined to race. Reid deals with privilege in all its forms, motherhood, marriage, love and friendship in all its forms. It is a masterful feat that positions Reid as the next great literary sensation. The novel is fresh, real and authentic. It’s a masterpiece.

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Brandon Taylor’s debut novel – Real Life – is set across a long weekend in the midwest of America and tells the story of Wallace, a black gay postgraduate student raised in the deep south and the prejudice and pain that he endures at the hands of his white colleagues. The novel earned a spot on the 2020 Booker Prize shortlist and is an important novel dealing with prejudice in all its forms. The main thread of the story revolves around Wallace’s newly sexual relationship with one of the men in his immediate social circle, Miller, a white and openly straight fellow student that is simultaneously complicated, violent and uneasy. These increasingly painful and uncomfortable interactions are laid against a background of prejudice and racism at work – Dana, a ‘gifted’ and frustratingly admired white colleague labels Wallace a ‘misogynist,’ a term that his white female boss is all too ready to support. This thread of prejudice and uncomfortable interactions overlays Wallace’s interactions with all those he comes into contact with and the background of the abuse he suffered as a child is an important hinge around which he navigates his friendships, from his bizarre interactions with one of his female friends – she consoles him on the death of his father by kissing him – and his jealousy-tinged interventionist tendencies in one of his friend’s relationships.

Despite the uncomfortable nature of the novel, Taylor’s prose is compelling and pacy – though there is no traditional plot that drives through to conclusion, still the novel moves at a pace that makes it utterly compelling, not least in the frustrating injustice that will hold up a mirror to white readers. This is a must read for the innate understanding of the human experience with prejudice and the complicated reactions to that prejudice.

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