What Are You Reading Today?

Full disclosure I don’t feel that anything I write can do justice to this book. I was completely blown away by it. Ordinarily, a book that deals with the pain and sufferings of World War II would not feature on the Pep Me Up section but though the book will make you laugh and cry in equal proportions the underlying message is one of hope. It’s written in letters and full of quirky characters and stories within the story. The biggest take away from this book is the power of literature to save and heal and bring people together. It debunks the common idea of literature being a lofty intellectual subject for conversations over canapés. It brings you pig herders with a love of Charles Lamb and ironmongers and everyday people who would never have time to read except for the extraordinary circumstances of war. It shows you how literature kept them sane during these unspeakably difficult times.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie caught me by the throat and sucked me right in. It is a powerful book about identity politics and the increasingly hostile and polarised times we are living in.  The characters are compelling and the story stays with you even after you put the book down. The book was a visceral read. The way Kamila built the tension increasing the pressure as we got closer to the climax had my body coursing with adrenaline even though I was doing nothing more active than lying in bed eyes glued to the page. The unpredictability of the narrative, the pace and how she laced even the tensest bits with a dark and derisive humour was what made this novel for me.

This is a warm and delicious read. It is the literary equivalent of a cup of hot cocoa with lashings of cinnamon sugar. Set on a floating bookshop housed on a barge on the Seine it tells the story of Monsieur Perdu. Perdu is a slightly eccentric self-professed literally apothecary. He prescribes books to help people through all of life’s ups and downs. (Often against their will) Like most of us, he is better at solving others problems than his own. This book follows him on a journey both literally down the river and metaphorically as he confronts his past, finds peace in the present and makes new friends along the way.

This book is not for the fainthearted. If you read The Girl on the Train and enjoyed it this book is her grungier and wilder country cousin. If you take sex, drugs, despair and murder and throw them in a blender with self-harm you get this book.  Set in a small town Missouri this book is about a mysterious journalist with a past who goes back to the town she grew up in to investigate the gruesome death of two little girls. However, things start unraveling when she starts identifying closely with the victims and her past turns out to hold clues to the present murders.