Five Books to Read This Month

Believe it or not, this marks the first year anniversary of this column. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. But enough of that. Here are five more for you.

THE LIFE, OLD AGE, AND DEATH OF A WORKING-CLASS WOMAN, Didier Eribon

Allen Lane, pp. 256

Eribon is the author of Return to Reims, a classic, sociologically-minded memoir which—together with books by recent Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux—inspired a new crop of literary works that similarly look at the complex nature of working class identity, as well as the challenges and hidden costs of social mobility. (I recommended one of them, What Is Mine by José Henrique Bortoluci, in a column from back in May 2024).

Like his most famous book, which had as its inciting accident the death of his father—The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman takes the death of the author’s mother as the starting point for a wide-raging reflection on old age: how we as society treat the elderly and seem to live largely in denial of one of most fundamental human experiences.

Translated from French by Michael Lucey.

FLESH, David Szalay

Fern Press, pp. 368

I’m not usually a huge fan of clipped, pared-down prose, which often reads as more of an affectation than baroque verbosity but boy, doesn’t it work in the case of David Szalay’s latest novel Flesh. 

Following the coming-of-age of István, a lonely Hungarian teenager who, almost despite himself, finds himself climbing the social ladder in London. It would almost read a typical rags-to-riches story if it wasn’t for the passive, withdrawn nature of the main character and the grey atmosphere in which he exists. But what really sets the book apart and makes the reader barrel through the pages is the writing style itself, which in this case is entirely fit for purpose.

UNIVERSALITY, Natasha Brown

Faber Books, pp. 224

Universality is a formally daring, purposefully frustrating deconstruction of how certain cultural narratives or journalistic agendas gain traction and become dominant in the current UK media landscape. It Brown’s follow-up to her debut novel Assembly, which was about a Black woman preparing for a party as she examined the toll middle-class assimilation had taken on her.

I read Universality while at my previous job almost two years ago (I used to scout books for film adaptation) and remember finding it positively maddening. The fact that I remember it so clearly I think must count for something. Prepare to be puzzled.

HUNCHBACK, Saou Ichikawa

Viking, pp. 112

Like the entry above, I first read Hunchback while it was nothing more than a writing sample, when my eye was caught by the stir it caused after winning one of Japan’s most important literary prizes, the Akutagawa Prize, and the risqué synopsis. At the time, I would have never imagined that it would be longlisted for the most prestigious prize for literary translation here, the International Booker, but that is testament to a novella that is as racy and shocking as it is thought-provoking, and the “in-yer-face” attitude with which it approaches the difficult, repressed subject of disability. 

Translated from Japanese by Polly Barton.

THOSE PASSIONS: ON ART & POLITICS, T. J. Clark

Thames & Hudson, pp. 384

Bringing together essays he wrote over the course of 25 years for the London Review of Books, for which he basically acts the de facto in-house art critic—Those Passions by T.J Clark is a loosely connected, wide-raging meditation on the relationship between art and politics. 

Except perhaps for the introduction to the volume (which I will admit is a little ponderous), don’t be discouraged by what the book says on the cover. Each of the essays—whose subjects vary from Hieronymus Bosch to Malevich and the October Revolution—is a treasure trove of unique observations, divagations, and elucidations on some of the most famous episodes in Western art.

Bartolomeo Sala is a writer and reader based in London. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Vittles, and The Brooklyn Rail. Read more of Bart’s writing for Something Curated here.

Header image courtesy of Thames & Hudson.