Book of the month
My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
The fictional Walsh family has provided plenty of grist for the bestselling author Marian Keyes’s mill. My Favourite Mistake, the seventh novel dealing with the misadventures of the five Irish sisters, focuses on Anna, whose struggles with grief were the subject of Anybody Out There. Nearing 50, newly single and tussling with the menopause, she has left her glamorous life in New York and returned home. A friend in need draws her to the tiny Connemara town of Maumtully, where her PR skills are needed to save a luxury retreat from the wrath of the locals. The problem is that Anna will have to work with “Narky” Joey Armstrong, the broodingly handsome “world-famous wandering lad” with whom she has shared a chequered history and had hoped not to see again. Keyes’s prose picks you up and whisks you through her tales — she has an instantly endearing turn of phrase and an acute sense of comic timing. Welcome to a world of “feathery strokers”, “beardy glarers” and “go-boys”, and amusingly unabashed discussions of dismaying menopause symptoms. All the Walsh sisters (and their indomitable mammy) show up, and the hotel receptionist Courtney is a no-nonsense delight. Anna’s rejection of the glossy life we’re all supposed to want is also Keyes’s opportunity for some incisive social commentary. But my goodness, it’s about 200 pages too long.
Michael Joseph, 595pp; £22
A Greek island honeymoon goes startlingly wrong in Scarlett Thomas’s latest novel, a dark, twisty, savagely humorous plunge into a cauldron of toxic relationships. The story is pieced together through letters and documents, itemised like an evidence cache. Letter 1 (“partial, burn marks, blue ink on hotel notepaper”) is written by Evelyn, explaining to her new husband Richard why she is leaving him. Their end-of-season stay at the Villa Rosa has been a disaster, not least because of Isabella, the hotelier, who gaslights Evelyn while fawning over Richard. Storms are brewing, and not just meteorological — something poisonous lurks in this couple’s backstory. The town, too, seems to be harbouring sinister secrets, and the death by drowning of a couple last year (the sleepwalkers of the title) hangs over everything like a portent of doom. The unconventional, fractured way we learn what’s happened (such as an audio transcript where predictive text has run riot) and the sheer White Lotus-like unlikeability of all the characters may prove frustrating for some, intriguing for others. I was in the latter camp — as well as a mystery loaded with menace, this is a smart, layered, stinging look at power and its abuse. “Do you regret any of them?” Margot’s friend asks her at the start of As Young as This. Roxy Dunn’s debut, confrontingly related in the second person, is her consideration of this question, each chapter based around a man she has been involved with. At 17, when life “feels as infinite as an unpolluted sky littered with stars”, there’s Elliott. She loses her virginity to Joe before leaving Norwich for drama school. Nathanael is, she thinks, her first love — until she meets the (married) actor Wren. Oliver the stand-up comedian becomes a friend; Malik takes her to a sex spa. And all the while Margot’s finding her space in the world, a flawed, earnest, sometimes insufferably self-obsessed young woman, never short of a smart retort, who finally ends up, 11 men down and in her thirties, on the verge of a life-changing decision. It’s a vividly sketched, involvingly intense evocation of how we’re shaped by those we know, sure to find favour with Dolly Alderton fans. • The best books of 2024 — our critics’ top 12 readsThe Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
Scribner, 289pp; £16.99As Young as This by Roxy Dunn
Fig Tree, 278pp; £16.99
Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson
Don’t read this book while hungry — Ishi Robinson’s debut serves up a taste of Jamaica that will have you craving coconut drops, gizzada and sweet potato pudding. Akisha “Pumkin” Patterson is caught in a tug-of-war between her largely absent mother, Paulette, and her devoted Auntie Sophie. The sisters have had a wedge driven between them by their mother’s blatant favouritism for light-skinned Sophie. Paulette cares nothing for her 14-year-old daughter yet when Sophie lands a job in Paris she won’t let Akisha leave with her. Pumkin, left alone with her vindictive mother and dealing with the return of her no-good dad, is determined to go — she sets her sights on paying for and passing the exam that will let her study in France and get her out of her impoverished Kingston neighbourhood. As she navigates the politics of class and colourism, and puts her baking skills to good use, she finds friends in unexpected places in this engaging coming-of-age tale that shows a challenging side of Jamaican life through the eyes of an appealing protagonist.
Michael Joseph, 359pp; £16.99
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Funny Story by Emily Henry
It takes some chutzpah to start a book with your narrator stating she’s rubbish at telling stories. But Emily Henry, whose rom-coms have sold more than four million copies, largely thanks to BookTok, knows her fans will lap it up. Nice-as-pie librarian Daphne is given her marching orders when her fiancé returns from his bachelor party announcing he’s in love with his best friend Petra. Far from family and friends, in desperation she moves in with Petra’s heartbroken ex, a scruffy stoner named Miles. And what do you know, under that scraggly break-up beard is a pretty hot guy. Their attempt to annoy their exes by pretending they’re dating soon causes all sorts of overwrought, frankly painful-sounding reactions in Daphne — a look “makes me feel like I swallowed a sword inside of a helium balloon” etc. Meanwhile, she’s making friends in the small town of Waning Bay, Michigan, and having lots of therapy-speak-heavy heart-to-hearts. It all ticks along merrily enough, but is likely to leave you with a sugar hangover.
Viking, 384pp; £18.99
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