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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Torrey Peters released her whipsmart debut novel – Detransition, Baby – in 2021 that earned immense critical acclaim. The novel revolves around three women – Reese, Amy and Katrina – grappling with impending motherhood. Reese nearly had it all in her loving relationship with Amy, but the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. When Reese calls to ask if she wants to be a mother to his unplanned child, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina’s pregnant. The three of them decide to form an unconventional family and raise the baby together. The novel centres around the complexity of these relationships, particularly how these manifest in discussions of gender.

Detransition, Baby is an immensely charming novel – funny, smart and messy. Above all, it is full of emotion, showcasing the complexity of these kinds of relationships but it is not contrived. Peters delivers the novel with immense tenderness. More than anything, the novel will broaden public understanding of transness without “teaching”. The novel is filled with wonderful and joyful characters and it is overall an immensely enjoyable and delightful book.

Pick up a copy here.

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Hanya Yanaghiara’s 2015 novel A Little Life continues to stand the test of time as one of the most important, emotional reads of the last decade. Going into 2022, her new novel To Paradise was easily one of the most anticipated books of the year. For readers expecting the kind of emotional journey in A Little Life, one in which characters become family – loved for their failings and flaws as much as their strengths, To Paradise is not that. It seems unfair almost to the latter to compare the two novels, but given the seminal nature of both works from Yanagihara, comparisons are unavoidable. Yanagihara again proves her awe-inspiring ability to write an impressive work of fiction and portray emptiness and depression with a very real power, still To Paradise does not whack an emotional punch, owing in part to the unreachability of the main characters.

Standing alone, To Paradise is an awe-inspiring work of fiction – this you can not deny. Constructed in three sections – three stories of three centuries in a fictionalised American history. ‘America’ in this case, a deconstructed version of the USA we are familiar with today, in which different regions have been separated into different kingdoms. Yanagihara has thoughtfully and artfully constructed these sections, using emblems and themes to weave the parts together, rather than a through storyline. This idea though is not for everyone – there will doubtless be many readers who put down To Paradise – it’s an alright tome and given that it is in three separate parts, it does not move to the end with a propulsive force. However, in doing so, they will miss the magic of Yanagihara’s writing, her ability to give voice to contrasting and disparate characters, and paint a fictionalised, but eerily real picture of both a fictional historical realm and a dystopian society.

Part One tells the story of the bachelor David Bingham in 1893 New York who is being set up for an arranged marriage to Charles Griffith by his grandfather. However, David is drawn to a penniless but enigmatic music teacher, Edward Bishop and is forced to make the choice between a stable, gilded life in America with Charles or a potentially doomed love match with Edward. Part Two whisks forward to 1990s New York, another David Bingham lives with his rich, elder partner Charles – a partner at the law firm in which he is a paralegal. He is grappling with his relationship with his father back in Hawaii, letters from his father revealing the history of David’s life. The final section is the perhaps most emotionally-taxing, given the current climate. Part Three takes up most of the book. Set in 2090s New York, Charlie is a lab technician who lives with her husband in a semi-dystopian society riddled with different pandemics and illnesses. As she begins to understand her husband’s life, the reader is also told about her own family history, including her father’s fight against the State and her grandfather’s involvement in the quarantine camps of decades past. Each of these parts is a stand-alone novel in itself, brought together by the names of characters – Charles Griffith, David Bingham, Eden – and places, including Washington Square. At first, it seems that these motifs will draw the novel together, but it becomes clear that these really do little to serve the work as a whole, generally making these feel a little pointless. In all honesty, the first part of the novel is far more propulsive than the semi-dystopian final part, which is surprising given the currency of the issues at play in Part Three, and the endings of each part felt a little lacklustre.

Yanagihara’s talent is immensely clear throughout To Paradise, but it feels like she has just missed the mark to make this a really seminal work of fiction. Some of the side plots and fixations – a mother trying to save her twin sons while she falls prey to a new virus, confinements due to mental illness and the beginnings of an intended ‘cult’ like existence in Hawaii – seem almost more promising than some of the main plot lines with which the novel deals. If it is possible, To Paradise feels almost more unsettling, darker and more tense than A Little Life, yet it is definitely less accessible and is a novel that will not be universally loved. The central question remains, what is the ideal of paradise, is it possible and what will we give up in order to attain it? The answers may be contained within this mammoth novel, yet it is not immediately obvious.

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As the lockdowns hit in 2020 and 2021, reports highlighted the increased risk of harm for those affected by domestic abuse. For one of the first times, people began to fully understand how trapped people in these situations feel. Many have questioned why those who are the victims of domestic abuse do not leave, and perhaps the answer can be found in Colleen Hoover’s devastating novel It Ends With Us. The novel – based on her parents’ relationship – is a blistering and painfully honest look at the ways in which a seemingly perfect relationship (that between Ryle and Lily) can twist and turn into one of abuse. It explores the ways that victims can explain away and make deals with themselves to forgive abusive behaviour, but also explores how love and hatred toward their abuser can become intermingled and unable to delineate between the two.

In a sea of Colleen Hoover novels, It Ends With Us stands aside as an incredibly delicate, painful and raw novel – it is clear perhaps that this book more than any other meant something very important to Hoover. The delicate and tender care she takes with her prose is testament to that. Whilst the novel is propulsive and immensely readable, it is heart wrenchingly raw – a novel that shatters the heart with every turn of the page.

Pick up a copy here.

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The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, though released in 2011, has earned a new surge of popularity thanks to social media platform – TikTok. It’s an unexpectedly tender and emotional retelling of the story of the siege of Troy and the life of Achilles and his companion Patroclus.

It’s a surprisingly romantic retelling of Greek mythology given that Achilles is not often cast in the role of the romantic hero, unlike the background figures in the book – Paris and Odysseus, who filter in and out of the novel. Yet, there is something hopelessly and yearningly romantic about the plight of Achilles as he watches his lover Patroclus die in battle and avenge himself, taking revenge on Hector, until the pair are ultimately reunited in the underworld.

Madeline Miller took 10 years to write the book, yet the details she weaves throughout the book are so deftly done that the prose seems to have flowed easily out of her pen. More than anything, Miller paints a picture of a deeply flawed hero – Achilles’ pride makes him deeply unlikeable – yet, it is this very fact that makes the novel so compelling. Given that the novel is told from Patroclus’ perspective, it is the lens of a lover, seeing his beloved’s flaws and loving him anyway. Miller’s prose is as poetic as any of the great poets – her handling of battle itself is dizzying in its pace and enigmatic language. It is little wonder that the novel has earned a legion of followers on TikTok, given its blood-thirst and lust that remain at the core of the novel.

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Without a doubt, there has been a newly burgeoning fascination with con artists – in particular female culprits and those hiding in plain sight; Anna Delvey, Caroline Calloway and Elizabeth Holmes. These wide-eyed, un-nerving ‘heroines’ are traced at the edges of the titular character in Susie Yang’s 2020 novel White Ivy. Ivy is the daughter of Chinese immigrants to America, who struggles to find her place in society, starting off shoplifting in high school and drifting through life as a teacher, while having an unnerving fascination for glitz and glamour. By chance, she meets the sister of her childhood crush, Gideon and pursues him with a vengeance – infiltrating his social circle and absorbing herself into the fabric of his family and social set. When Roux – the boy to whom she lost her virginity – by happenstance, re-enters her life, Ivy’s newly created persona is thrown into jeopardy, although she herself is continually drawn back to Roux.

It was unnerving to be placed inside the head of a protagonist who feels so devoid of emotion, so selfishly intent on her own upward trajectory, but Susie Yang has accomplished a masterstroke in her ability to create simultaneously a deeply unlikeable but also intoxicatingly interesting heroine. It is little wonder that the book is now being developed into a series for Netflix, by none other than Shonda Rhimes – the book fits squarely within the modern preoccupation with crime, con artists and problematic characters and it is this dark underbelly to the story that makes it so propulsive.

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The Paper Palace tells the story of Elle Bishop, a young mother, who is haunted by memories of the past in ‘The Paper Palace’ – the decaying summer camp in the back woods of Cape Cod, where her family has spent every summer. The novel starts with a sudden passionate encounter she had the night before, with her childhood friend, as her husband and mother entertained guests inside. The story then toggles back and forth between the story that unfolds over twenty-four hours and her childhood memories of The Paper Palace, unveiling family legacies of love, lies and secrets, the disintegration of the fabric of her family. Elle, ultimately has to decide between the life she has created with her husband Peter and her love for her childhood friend, Jonas.

On the surface then, the novel appears to be one of family ties and the complicated relationships between parents and children, yet the story goes a layer deeper than that, with a darker, earthier underbelly to the story that makes it more compelling. Cowley Heller emerges from the narrative as one of the next great American writers, capturing a fast-pace storyline that manages to seamlessly weave together the past and present in an intoxicating way – an immensely addictive and intoxicating story that will stay with you long after the final page.

Pick up a copy of The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller here.

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When Benson is left with his partner Mike’s mother, when Mike goes to leave to see his dying father, the two are forced to bond, even despite the fact that the relationship itself – between Mike and Benson – is on the cusp of disintegration.

The novel is formed in three sections – the first focussing around Benson left in Houston with Mike’s mother, the second around Mike in Osaka as his father is dying and the third around the relationship between Mike and Benson when Mike returns.Washington shows incredible poise in his handling of the delicate relationships between the characters, his handling of interracial relationships and the disintegration of romance and daily intimacies. Washington exercises incredible restraint in his pacing of the novel, balancing the steady unravelling of the relationships with a steady pace moving between the start of the relationship to its current context. There are so many layers in the novel and intricacies in how a relationship can come together and fall apart – offering the benefit of the dual perspective, seen from Benson and Mike’s individual perspectives. It is in these shifting perspectives that the real tensions of the novel are created.

Memorial is a phenomenal debut novel by Bryan Washington that positions him as an author capable of handling intimacy and its nuances with zeal.

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Taylor Jenkins Reid paints the glamour of the past century like no other commercial novelist of the moment. So in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, she painted a picture of Hollywood glamour in the 1960s and in Daisy Jones and the Six, she describes the gritty underbelly of rock n’ roll in the 1960s. Now, she is back with a new novel situated in the surfing culture of the 1970s – for those paying attention, it builds on the story of Mick Riva, one of Evelyn Hugo’s ex-husbands, his first wife June and their four children – Nina, Hud, Jay and Kit.

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Published in January of this year, The Push is a psychological drama about motherhood, its hopes and disappointments. The book centres around a woman named Blythe, who is experiencing motherhood for the first time, but it’s not how she expected. When her first child, Violet, is born, she feels no connection to her and remains convinced that there is something ‘off’ about Violet. Blythe’s husband, Fox is convinced that it is all in her head, and instead is critical of her lack of affection and care for Violet. The novel flits back and forth between Blythe’s childhood and the present – Blythe was abandoned by her unloving mother Cecilia and Cecilia was traumatised by her abusive mother Etta. Audrain seamlessly weaves a tapestry of a family history full of trauma and neglect. Yet Blythe instantly connects with her son when he is born, building on her extant anxieties about Violet’s true nature.

The Push is a thoughtfully crafted, gripping novel. Thematically, the novel is incendiary, delving into the ideas around bonds between mother and child and how these relationships can impact marriages – either strengthening them or wearing them down. Successfully, Audrain erodes the fantastical idea of motherhood as a universally pure and joyful realm. Perenially filled with an anxious energy, the novel is psychologically thrilling and clever and offers a propulsive and compelling narrative all the way through.

The book is already set to become a TV show, with Audrain serving as executive producer on the project and it will be interesting to see how the book is translated to screen.

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