Book Club | Imogen Edwards-Jones shares her top 3 reads
I’m a proud member of a book club. Although reading is a solitary pastime, sharing a love of books and stories is so communal, and can be just as (and occasionally more) rewarding than the reading itself. Since lockdown, my book club obviously hasn’t been able to meet in person and I have to admit, I’ve felt that absence.
One of my most recent book club reads was The Witches of St Petersburg by Imogen Edwards-Jones (such a page-turner, I couldn’t put it down), who, like me, felt equally bereft of her own literary socials during lockdown.It inspired her to co-found The Great Big Book Club, a virtual temple for book lovers built by authors. As well as offering exclusive interviews with renowned and emerging writers, it also offers reviews, recommendations and even cocktail recipes (for the full book club experience). With her unparalleled knowledge of what’s on the book hot list, I asked Imogen to share her top 3 must-reads to tide us over until we can meet in person again.
In the last twelve months I have read a lot of books. I have stacks of them piled up in my office. Fiction, fantasy, biography - I know what’s new, what’s hot, what’s to get excited about. Why? Almost exactly this time last year, as we were all ordered to stay at home, I launched a website called The Great Big Book Club, with the idea that authors who were publishing their books into the cavernous void of lockdown would have a platform to discuss their work and find an audience to read their wise and wickedly funny words. And what a ride it’s been. I have to say I have really enjoyed my new role as the poacher turned gamekeeper, or writer turned reader, or author turned critic! And I have discovered some very delicious gems along the way.
Love after Love, Ingrid Persaud
Love After Love was one of the brightest debuts we first championed as part of a frenetic week of Debut Authors back in the early summer.
This lyrical, beautiful masterpiece by Ingrid Persaud has since gone on to win The Costa First Novel Award 2020 and it’s easy to see why. With an unconventional family unit at its heart, Persaud’s novel explores the intricate connection between love and trust, and what happens to the former, when the latter is disrupted. Set in Persaud’s native Trinidad, the prose sings and the turns of phrase are playful. The story itself centres on the Ramdin-Chetan family who are happy and loving, until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart. It has just been published in paperback and I can’t recommend it enough.
The Last Thing to Burn, Will Dean
One of the other great joys of last year was immersing myself in the world of thrillers. We had so many good thriller writers release brilliant books, and I was lucky enough to talk to quite of few of them, including the fabulous Lisa Jewell on The Upstairs Family, Rosamund Lupton on her novel Three Hours, Harriet Tyce on The Lies You Told and Hannah Begbie spoke about her post #MeToo novel Blurred Lines.
They were all sharp and tight twisting works, enough to keep you up way past your bedtime. Will Dean’s The Last Thing to Burn, released at the beginning of this year, is another bold, bright, taut, terrifying pulse-racer in the same genre. Written in the first person, about a young woman held against her will in the bleak, flat Fens, the cover sell is: “He is her husband. She is his captive. Her husband calls her Jane. That is not her name.” I’m in!
Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell
Sadly, I have not met Maggie O’Farrell, but I did read Hamnet – the story of the tragic death of William Shakespeare’s son - with my own Book Club gang at the end of last year and I have to say that I loved it.
As a writer of historical fiction, it was fascinating to see what she had done with the very few facts there are to hand about the life of Shakespeare. I also loved the mystical elements she wove into the story and the very present writing style that makes you, as a reader, feel like a voyeur to most of the action. It also has as rocking sex scene, quite literally! It was an extremely fresh perspective on historical fiction and inspired me to be a little braver and take more risks with my own books. No wonder it won the Women’s Prize For Fiction 2020.
Imogen Edwards-Jones is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, novelist and screenwriter.
Her new novel, The Witches of St Petersburg, was published in 2019 and has recently been optioned in Los Angeles.