There are 10 novel suggestions listed in this posting, each so different from the other in plot and setting – and style.
THE ANNIVERSARY by Andrea Bajani, translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock, /2025
This slim novel (135 pages),was the winner of the Strega Prize 2025 for outstanding work of fiction written in the Italian language. The story is a recount of an abusive marriage in patriarchal Italy. A completely self-centred, misoyginistic dominates his wife who silently accepts him and carries on doing without any anger or confrontations which she believes is her duty. The son makes a decision to abandon his family and now a decade later, he tells his story, hoping to be free, to be himself. The novel raises the questions: Can you ever leave your family behind? Can you escape the grips of a traumatic past? Moreover, as I read this intriguing story, i wondered, ‘Why would a woman stay with such a horrible horrivble man’ which is a central question to many abusive relationships. The Anniversary reads like a memoir as Bajani records events of a woman trapped under a the spell of a domineering asshole.
BAD QUEER by Gayathiri Kamalaanthan / Trans identity / YA +
Surya is queer. She thinks of herself as a bad queer because she is struggling with self-acceptance and with open honesty with those who are important to her in her life. The opening sentence of the book reads: “I’m not a girl’ so readers, along with Surya navigate what it means for someone to live an authentic trans life. Suraya is perplexed by a first love, her about-to-be entry into university, and her faithfulness to her Tamil culture and her loyalty to her two loving mothers. The verse style of this novel not only provides clear narrative but takes us into the questions, reflections and soul of being true to one’s identity. For readers connecting too, or seeking understanding of what being non-binary teenager means, Bad Queer is a compassionate, vivid journey into family, acceptance and transness. .
Author’s note:
Bad Queer explores issues including bullying, transphobia, homophobia, gender dysphoria, racism, the Tamil genocide and experience of a refugee familuy. My focus ws to think abou these issues with care and present some of the realities that people live with.
A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF by Megha Majumdar / 2025
I was invited to lead a book club discussion on this book so i decided to re-read thsi title that was on my 2025 top five list of favourites. It
The setting of this book is in the near future in Kolkata.. Flood and family has had dire consequences on the citizens of India ravaged by climate change and scarcity of food. The story is centred on two protagonists. Ma, her two year-old daughter and her elderly father are days away from departing the collapsing city. Ma is desperate to join her husband who has been working in Michigan. All seems to be in order but Ma awakens to discover that =immigration documents has been stolen from her purse. Boomba who we come to learn is the one responsible for stealing the treasured papers is desperate to care for his family as food shortage worsens. Boomba is both a guardian and a thief and as we come to learn, so is Ma. The novel unfolds in a one week time period adding tension to the story. Megha Majumdar’s novel is a tale of desperation, hope and ferocious love of family. From the reviews I’ve read for A Guardian and a Thief, much praise has shone on this novel. When it was recently deemed an Oprah’s Book Club choice, I decided to get a copy. I’m so glad that I did. Thank you Oprah. Five stars from Dr. Larry.
Excerpts
“It was her duty, as a guardian, to put into action the beautiful ideal of hope. Ma thought harshly: This is what it looked like. Hope for the future was no shy bloom but a blood-maddened creature, fanged and toothed, with is own knowledge of history’s hostilities and the cages of he present.” (126)
“A different toss of the die, and Robi would have Mishti’s life, a life of health and comfort. A different toss of the die, and Robi would have had the billionaire’s child’s life. A different toss of the die, and Robie Would have been the billionaire, looming over Boomba the beggar.” (p. 147)
HOLLYWOOD ENDING by John Green
John Green is the bestselling author of YA books (The Fault in the Stars, Looking for Alaska, Turtles All the Way Down). His next two publications were fascinating nonfiction selections for adults (The Anthropocene Reviewed (terrific essays) and Everything is Tuberculosis (an encyclopedic thesis on the topic). Hollywood Ending is his first adult novel and since its release in the past month it has shot to #1 on the New York Times bestseller’s list. It is a terrific read – observant, funny, and a critical look at the tension between private and public life centred on the life of two young actors. A biopic movie Andy Warhol Never Gets Old is being made starring Kai Laramie and Juniper Castillo. Maybe this movie will be the turning point in their career. Green seems to know as much about the movie-making business as much as he does about tuberculosis: the auditions, rehearsals, the filming of the scenes, the temperaments of directors and producers and especially the publicity junkets. All through this, Kai and Juniper struggle to find out who they are, both alone and together. Can find true love in a tinseltown world? Hollywood Ending is a wildly entertaining story about this business called show. Irving Berlin claimed that ‘there’s no business like show business’. John Green takes readers on a fascinating ride into the world of that business, of show, the world of image and truth, fame and despair. A great read!
HUNGERED by Amanda Rizkalla
In my book, Teaching Tough Topics, one of those topics is Poverty (chapter 6) which can be considered a sensitive, challenging issue to explore in classrooms. According to statistics, one in six families live in poverty. I believe, which is at the heart of my book, that literature can help make the topic visible, Build empathy, make students. aware that poverty and hunger are global in scope and take the opportunity to promote kindness. Picture books such as Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts, Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting and The Day of Broken Bicycles by Maria Testa. Many novels tell stories of young people trapped under poverty conditions (Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate, Willow and Twig by Jean Little, And then, Boom! by Lisa Fipps. In the book How To Steal a Dog by Barbara O’Connor takes us into the live of Georgina, her brother and her mother who are forced to live in the family car. Such narratives touch the heart, break the heart and so when Oprah announced in October that Hungered, is centred on a struggling mother who is forced to survive day by day with their only home being a car, I was intrigued. That the novel is told from the viewpoint of twelve-year-old Sofia, I was especially intrigued. I like grown-up fiction told from the point of view of young people.
Hungered is told as a series of vignettes, mostly from one to three pages. Mother is doing her best to help her family survive, but Sophia and her younger brother have no choice but to succumb to the dire circumstances of living off granola bars, of depending on free samples at grocery stores of washing themselves in supermarket washrooms.,of doing without birthday presents. Sophia is the daughter of a Spanish mother and Egyptian father (an unlikeable character). For the most part the young teenager goes along with her mother’s choices and demands. Hungered is a story of a family in crisis. Background stories are filtered throughout, helping us to better to get the know the family and their circumstances. It is also a coming-of-age story as Sofia examines the world around her and wants, like any young adolescent to find a place of belonging. This is a remarkable novel, a heartbreaking story of survival and and of searching for a place called home. This story connect to one in six family stories. This is a very special debut novel told in a lyrical style filled with poignant images. Thank you, Amanda Riskalla. Thank you, Oprah. Thank you, Sofia.
Excerpts
“If the car is a museum, I am looking at the other exhibits around me. Plastic Rice Bowl Under seat, Blue Scrubs Draped Over Headrest, Tissues Stuffed into Door Pocket, Dirty Socks in Plastic Bag. Outside: Overfilled Fly-Bussing Green Dumpster, Flattened Oil-Stained Pizza Box, White Napkins Covering Ground Like Snow.” (pages 14-15)
“I show mama my favourite bedspread. Peach with white polka dots.”Soon, ” she says. “Soon, okay?”
I think that must be her favourite word. She says it all the tine, firmly, the one syllable. / When I am bored I write it over and over again in my notebook. And when the pencil lead snaps, breaking off like a small gray tooth, I trace the word on the line paper with my fingertips until I get drowsy. (pages 38-39)
THE LIVING REALM by Jordan Tannahill
In this rather short novel (145 pages), Tannahill takes readers into the life of a middle-age archaelogist living in Berlin. The setting of the story , a city park with a glacial lake and a forest known for cruising encounters, plays is significant to this narrative. When the man encounters a stranger, he is convinced that the handsome man is Lukas, a former lover who died almost three decades previously. When ther lovers – other ghosts -appear, the man questions his sanity, his memories, and his connections to the relationships in his past and his present life. Jordan Tannahill writes with strong meditation and in this book about desire, regret, and time. His writing is both audacious, and poetic. Some vocabulary that is unfamiliar (to me) spills onto pages through the novel (e.g. aquifer, bitterlings, preternaturally, Mancunian, hypostyle, gremlining). Each sentence in the book is crafted with precise detail of atmosphere, emotion, and/or meditation. Tannahill is a great – ambitious – playwright and novelist.
Tannahill does like to write long sentences. For example
“Teufelssee belonged to deep time, geological time, a great shard of cice calved from the tongue of a retreating glacier, left to slowly melt, carving a kettle-hole into the substrata two hectares in area, with no inflow or outflow, no stream, no aquifer, the melted water gradually replaced by twenty thousand years of rain. ” (p.,4)
MAY WE FEED THE KING by Rebecca Perry
That this novel won the Waterstone’s 2026 Debut Fictional Prize and that it has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize prompted me to buy this book. I’m glad that I did. The story begins with the introduction of a gifted curator who spends time reconstructing the past. To celebrate the 750 anniversary of a palace, she has been hired to arrange rooms and replicate food to bring medieval world back to life as authentically as possible. The narrative then turns to the story of a king, a reluctant king, who was rather oblivious to his duties. Like the curator she has invented, Rebecca Perry examines the details of the relationships, desires, power struggles, decisions, of a stubborn aloof king. Perry is the author of two poetry collections and her language and storytelling in May We Feed the King is obviously painted with a poet’s brush. In fact, the novel is presented as a series of short vignettes of one to three, each with a finely crafted title. This format captivated me in as I became immersed in a story of the merging of past and present.
Excerpts
“His favourite thing, if one of the cats has jumped up nd in through the window, is to wipe the crust from the corner of his eyes with his thumb.’ To feel their bellies for tiny scraps of seeds they have carried in from the garden. He places his nose next to their mouth and smells the stink of their breath.” (p. 106)
“The weight of his unhappiness is so palpable it emanates from him like a smell./ Papers sit in a pile at the edge of the table – all requesting violence, a royal sanction for it. All unsigned.” (p. 110)
“Someone looking in through a crack in the door and into the King’s room, and in turn inside the King’s own head as he sits at his desk spinning the quill between his thumb and forefinger, would see what the King is thinking./ There are places in the garden bed that need to be filled.”(p. 166)
“How doe we know anything about history?” (p. 247)
THEO OF GOLDEN by Allen Levi / 2023
Originally a self-published book. this successful novel has been on the New York Times bestseller’s list for almost a year. Reading reviews, it seems that people either love it or are not particularly enthusiastic about this warm story about a senior citizen who visits the town of Golden, Georgia where he becomes enamoured with ninety-two pencil portraits displayed on the walls of the local coffeehouse. One by one, Theo is determined to pass each artwork on to the citizens depicted by the local artist. They are, after all, the rightful owners. And so we meet a cast of characters that include a book store owner, a homeless character, a musician, a janitor, each with their own story. Why is Theo being so generous? What drew Theo to Golden? What is Theo’s story? It is a novel that helps us consider that everyone has a story; everyone is a story. Theo of Golden is a novel about friendship kindness, connection and art. I liked this book a lot, but am I am not as enthusiastic as some fans are of this popular book.
VERA, OR FAITH by Gary Shteyngart / 2025
A friend recommended this novel to me and since I rather like book with protagonists that are young characters I was intrigued to read the story of Vera, half Jewish, half Koren. Shteyngart gives a strong, funny voice of this ten-year0ld who is determined to 1. make a friend at school 2. keep her parents together 3. meet up with her birth mother, Mom Mom who will provide Vera some truths about who she really is. I enjoyed the first third of the book but as I continued reading, I was confused about the father’s life as struggling editor who gets involved with a scheme to get rich, and Anne Mom, a Wasp mother who isn’t great at holding her family together and some into the future narratives that involve a talking computer, a driverless card. A central story about five to three immigration status didn’t gel for me. A description of the book suggests that this book is set in a future dystopian society. Dystopia is not a draw for me and I should have stuck to my guns and avoided this novel because I lost faith in Vera n- and in Shteyngart’s storytelling.
SHOUT OUT
THE WEIGHT OF ANGELS by John Boyne
I am a big fan of the books John Boyne. In the past decade or so, i was also thrilled to encounter any new releases by this Irish author. I certainly looked forward to his recently released novel, The Weight of Angels, even though it’s 577 pages (I mostly prefer books that are less than 400 pages). The story provides a ‘what-if” scenario by offering the premise that, instead of undergoing a disastrous trial, serving a hard jail term, and dying in 1900, Oscar Wilde goes on to live an alternate life throughout the 20th century. And what a life Boyne conjures up for the celebrated literary hero!: Wilde continues to write popular plays and novels, he experience a long term love relationship, he mourns the loss of his wife and his son, he still can be seduced by any handsome bloke who crosses his path, attends the coronation of three monarchs, wins the Nobel prize for literature with and he encounters a cast of historical and cultural figures (Winston Churchill, Bram Stoker, Emmeline Pankhurst, Rudyard Kipling, Agatha Christie, Katherine Hepburn, Mickey Rooney. (The oh-so-funny episode meeting Virginia Woolf is worth the price of admission / ”Thrown to the Woolfs’, pages, 380-403#) Moreover, the invented premise of this novel immerses Wilde in gay rights milestones, and considers how Oscar’s notoriety might have an impact on equality for LGBTQ lives.
John Boyne is a brilliant, inventive writer. In this book he devises script, newspaper report, theatre review, letter formats to tell this story. As the narrative journeys through the decades, readers are treated to scenes with other authors, politicians, activists and performers. Each encounter with these characters is artfully rendered in a scene that could be in any of Oscar Wilde’s plays. Boyne’s fictitious character has the same observant, acerbic, opinionated, egoistical, quips that seem remarkably true to the celebrated figure that history has known. To quote O.W. The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. Bravo to John Boyne for this ambitious, oh-so-clever, oh-so-funny writing of an imaginative, alternative history. The Weight of the Angels will be at the top of the list of favourite reads of 2026.
A sampling:
“Thanks for introducing me, Oscar. I never imagined that I’d find myself standing next to greatness.”
“You’ve been standing next to greatness since our first enounter, you insolent fellow.” (p. 161)
~~~~~
Kipling:Although I should point out that I have no objection to your lifestyle.
Oscar: Is it a lifestyle, though? Or simply a life? (p. 230)
~~~~~
“You think you lack gravitas.”
“Not at all. But like applause, champagne or sex, one can never have enough of it.” (p. 316)
~~~~~
“Ambition,” said Oscar, ‘is like an orgasm. If it takes too long to achieve, one might as well give up the ghost.” (p. 322)