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Andrew O’Hagan's Selections

I am truly captivated by Namanlagh, the first verse compilation after ten years from the renowned Tom Paulin. A tone-perfect meditation about illness and healing, partnership & authorship, violence & forgotten pasts, it is a true masterpiece. There are graceful references to Derek Mahon & Seamus Heaney, while many of the poems are filled with the feeling of mature artistry & unfinished business.

Autobiographies by politicians tend to be terrible, frequently rants of self-justification & revenge, however Nicola Sturgeon’s Frankly rewrites the genre. She’s a skilled author, for a start, and skillfully explore uncertainty, ambivalence, regret, affection and kindness, adaptability, along with numerous aspects that actually define humanity. I eagerly anticipate what she writes next.

I came across a new writer – new to me, though beloved by Norwegians over decades. He is the deceased Dag Solstad , I devoured his novel Shyness and Dignity in two sittings. It tells the tale of a literature teacher with a quarter-century career who abruptly breaks down while trying to deal with a malfunctioning parasol. He experiences a crisis , the novel charts it with insightful, unfussy way, creating something beautiful.

I wish to provide additional freshly baked goods for my companions. In the near future, I plan to run a coffee morning from a kitchen table covered with fresh pastries, potato bread, sourdough bread & mad cakes. I’m hoping to be helped in this quest from 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 describes a success story in the capitalist transition from oil-dependent systems toward sustainable power & climate solutions, highlighting individuals who have made a huge difference. It includes abundant information & information I was unaware of previously, even with my thorough research on this topic.

Although certain topics spark debate, such as carbon capture and storage – and Bill Gates turned out to be less of a environmental champion than is claimed in the book, with his fossil fuel investments – on the whole, the progress described provide a tremendous amount of hope. They show that some nations collaborated in tandem with private enterprise and are now moving toward the right direction, while innovative tools advance rapidly. The technical details are superb, too. I was unaware the way photovoltaic cells functioned, for example.

An Acclaimed Writer's Top Reads

Elaine Kraf’s Find Him! will be reprinted this fall, so it’s an ideal moment to read it, or reread her shimmery, patterned The Princess of 72nd Street.

Down Below from Leonora Carrington is a classic. Although not the exact blueprint of my newest book, Will There Ever Be Another You, but I recall reading it outdoors during the pandemic and thinking: this is exactly what’s occurring to me. Also, it includes the closest approximation you can get of an illustration the divine anatomy.

Another major event – Airless Spaces by Shulamith Firestone first appeared over two decades ago, ten years following her mental health condition and withdrawal from society. She was a towering figure, even then partly distant to feminists in my age group, however these vignettes, which deal with her hospitalisations, seem current, close, defiant.

Another Reader's Perspective

Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter offers an understated & calm complex narrative. It’s set in the stark winter of the early sixties and traces the experiences of two couples residing opposite each other in the countryside in the West Country. Closed in by their environment, the protagonists – Eric and Irene, Rita and Bill – wrestle with their past and present, heading towards an unravelling. This is a beautifully written book that reaffirms Miller as one of Britain’s most talented authors on human nature.