🔗 Share this article

Andrew O’Hagan's Picks

I find myself deeply moved by Namanlagh, this first poetry collection after ten years by the esteemed Tom Paulin. This exquisitely crafted meditation on sickness and recovery, companionship and authorship, violence & historical neglect, this work is a true masterpiece. There are graceful references to Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney, and many verses are filled with the feeling of mature artistry & unfinished business.

Political memoirs are usually terrible, frequently screeds of self-justification & revenge, however Nicola Sturgeon’s Frankly redefines the rules. She’s a proper writer, for a start, and knows how to consort with uncertainty, ambivalence, remorse, love & compassion, openness to change, and numerous of the things which truly define humanity. I look forward to what she writes next.

I came across an unfamiliar author – new to me, yet beloved by Norwegians for years. He is the late Dag Solstad and I devoured his novel Shyness and Dignity over two sessions. It tells the story about an English instructor with a quarter-century career who abruptly breaks down while trying to handle a malfunctioning parasol. He is having a breakdown and the novel charts it with insightful, straightforward way, creating something beautiful.

I want to offer more homemade treats for my companions. Soon, I plan to host a coffee morning from my dining table laden with fresh pastries, tattie scones, artisan loaves and whimsical desserts. I’m hoping to be helped in this quest by Helen Goh’s Baking and the Meaning of Life.

A Reader's Choice

Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions by Akshat Rathi came out last year. Each chapter details a success story within the economic shift away from the fossil fuel economy to sustainable power and climate solutions, focusing on individuals who have made significant impact. There is abundant detail and data I hadn’t come across previously, despite my thorough research on the subject.

Although certain topics are contentious, such as CO2 sequestration – and Bill Gates has proved to be less of a environmental champion as portrayed in the book, with his fossil fuel investments – on the whole, the developments outlined give a tremendous amount of optimism. They show that certain governments have worked in tandem with businesses , are already moving toward a positive future, as innovative tools is developing rapidly. The scientific explanations are excellent, as well. I was unaware how solar panels worked, for example.

An Acclaimed Writer's Favorites

Elaine Kraf’s Find Him! will be reprinted this fall, making it the perfect time to read it, or reread her shimmery, patterned The Princess of 72nd Street.

Down Below from Leonora Carrington is a classic. It’s not the direct model for my latest novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, but I recall reading it outdoors in summer of 2020 and thinking: this is what is happening to me. Moreover, it contains the nearest depiction one might find to a diagram the divine anatomy.

A significant release – Airless Spaces from Shulamith Firestone first appeared in 1998, ten years following her mental health condition and retreat from public life. She stood as an influential leader, already somewhat remote to feminists of my generation, but these sketches, that explore her institutional stays, seem current, close, rebellious.

Another Reader's Insight

Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter offers a subtle and calm complex narrative. It’s set in the stark winter of the early sixties and follows the experiences of two couples residing across from one another across a field in the West Country. Confined in their surroundings, the main characters – Eric & Irene, Rita & Bill – wrestle with their past & present, moving toward an unravelling. It is an exquisitely penned book that reaffirms Miller among Britain’s most talented authors on human nature.