Advent Books part 3 - and that's a wrap! Festive greetings to all our followers!

 

The final days of Advent bring us more great recommendations. Christmas greetings to all our contributors and followers!

Which have you read? Please tell us in the comments!

Reviewed by Cindy Jefferies: "In 2012, Hassan Akkad was a refugee from Syria, where he had been imprisoned and tortured for protesting against the regime. His story, including the perilous journey across Europe in 2015, as borders began to close, was told in the BBC series Exodus, our journey to Europe, some of which he filmed himself. The programmes won a BAFTA for Best Factual Series in 2017, by which time he had settled in London, spending a while with a family who hosted refugees through the charity Refugees At Home ... His excellent English meant that he was able to travel around the country, speaking about his experiences. Now he has put all this down, and more, in this challenging and moving book. It is a story that needed to be told."

Reviewed by Jane Rogers: "The book started life as four lectures presented at the University of Chicago, and it retains the lean essay structure, with each part pursuing a specific line of argument as to why humanity has failed to engage with the climate emergency. He calls that inability ‘the great derangement’. Why do we continue to live as if the earth’s resources are infinite? Why do we burn coal, drive petrol cars, take flights, drill for oil, heat our homes with gas and destroy trees across the world, from the Brazilian rainforest to the ancient English woodlands being felled for HS2? We know these activities will cause catastrophe for our grandchildren. What is wrong with us?"

Reviewed by Simon Mason: "Temple’s love of language is evident in the urgent, evocative writing which strips away inessentials. What’s left are shrewd, concentrated descriptions (‘wicked-eyed gulls’, ‘the beach tightly muscled’) and bursts of dialogue which capture the sounds, moods and evasions of taciturn Australian men who live in danger."Story-lines, as likely to be personal as investigative, spiral outwards and continue to proliferate even at the end. Though its virtues are literary, its plot grips like a thriller. Its immediate focus is crime but its deeper enquiry is into human nature. It asks Who are we now, and by what appalling path did we get here?"

Reviewed by Philip Womack: "One of the worries many authors have about the increasing professionalisation of the writing life - creative writing courses, residencies, prizes, university posts and so forth - is that everything will shape into a corporate blandness. Writers are becoming a kind of bureaucrat, efficient administrators, reliable colleagues to the Academy. Workshops hone away rough edges and controversial ideas in prose and poetry; large publishers, worried about reputational consequences, discourage eccentricity.

Plug is a delicious, delirious antidote to all that. There is something impish about him, a kind of naughty nature spirit thrust into the world of the mundane. His optimism in the face of disaster is a tonic."

Reviewed by Celia Rees: In recollection, it seems a much longer novel, so much is contained within it and much of that actually goes on within the reader’s own head. The elliptical style, the sudden changes, the refusal to provide any easy explanations mark it as a true Young Adult novel defined, not by content, but by narrative sophistication. There is nothing easy about it but it is utterly compelling. Challenging in the true sense, it makes demands on the reader and demands to be read and read again.

Reviewed by Sara Collins: What really sets Goon Squad apart for me is the shape-shifting quality of its prose. From powerfully lyrical (Egan describes Sasha’s urge to pilfer an unattended wallet as feeling herself “contract around the object in a single yawn of appetite”) to character conjuring (“I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery”) to sucker punching (“Time’s a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?").

Reviewed by Hazel Gaynor: "Part murder-mystery, part publishing industry satire, Yellowface is a clever, dark, witty, provocative story that I devoured in a couple of days. I’m a very slow reader so this is a very good sign.

Through her two brilliant protagonists, Athena Liu and June Hayward, Kuang not only navigates the moral conundrum of plagiarism, but also addresses complex issues of toxic friendships, cancel culture, and the highly topical question of cultural appropriation that has been raised many times in the publishing industry in recent years."

 

Reviewed by Jane Rogers: "Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and owns Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Elements of the novel are clearly rooted in this biography, since most of the action takes place in a similar Minneapolis bookstore, which specialises in books by and about indigenous people. Tookie is a one off; tough, funny, sarcastic, prickly, thoroughly off the rails (in her early life, at least), and convinced she is unlovable ..."

Reviewed by Paula Knight: "Despite being left with no illusions as to the potential challenges of life in a remote and wild location, I still found myself searching Orkney house prices on the internet for a few weeks after reading The Outrun. The book confirmed a distinct notion that it’s as plausible to suffer loneliness living in close proximity to millions of human beings as it is on a far-flung island with mainly wildlife for company. The latter seems more palatable to me."

And finally: our joint tribute to the much-loved, much-missed Helen Dunmore. Celia: "Helen Dunmore was one of those writers who could do everything, seemingly effortlessly. As well as her prize-winning adult fiction, she wrote for children and young adults and she wrote poetry. It seems wrong to be writing about her in the past tense. She was the kind of writer you thought would always be there to show the rest of us how it is done ... 

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We hope you've enjoyed revisiting our Advent Books. Follow us for more great recommendations in 2025!

Guest review by Philip Womack: FRANCIS PLUG - WRITER IN RESIDENCE by Paul Ewen

 

"There is something impish about Plug, a kind of naughty nature spirit thrust into the world of the mundane ..."

Photograph: Tatiana von Preussen

Philip Womack has written eight novels for the young, including, most recently, Wildlord. He has also published How to Teach Classics to Your Dog: A Quirky Introduction to the Greeks and Romans, for adults.

I had not read Francis Plug: How to Be A Public Author by Paul Ewen, but had heard good things, and so fell upon this sequel with eagerness, hoovering it up over the course of three days during the Christmas break.

Francis Plug is an author on the edge. He’s had some success with his first book, but even so, still lives in a garage. Despite his constant, heroic drunkenness, and a disastrous interview on Radio 4 (in the course of which he yells KNICKERS, though thankfully it is not broadcast), he is offered a position as Writer in Residence at Greenwich University. The writer’s dream. A stipend, congenial colleagues, eager students. He decides to take the “in residence” bit literally, and surreptitiously commandeers an empty office, putting a camp-bed up, and making the campus his playground.

Plug is both menace and maverick. He slopes off to the pub when he should be researching his novel or performing the (very limited duties) of his post. In speech and thought he rushes from non sequitur to non sequitur. His cultural range is vast, ranging from Doctor Who to Doestoevsky. One minute he is informing you that the singer Moby is descended from Herman Melville, the next he is buying a Hello Kitty purse. And yet, it all makes a strange kind of sense, as when he is supposed to teach a creative writing session, and brings a tyre he’s fished out of the Thames:

“Student: What’s with the stinky tyre?

FP: This tyre is from the past. It’s embedded with stones. See? They represent the passing of time. I have reunited it with solid, dry land.”

His other task is to bring in famous authors for the university’s literary festival. He wildly overpromises, offering Philip Roth, amongst others. There are many encounters with real-life scribblers, which range from the surreal to the hilarious. The comic set pieces are finely judged and, often, thrillingly close to the bone. Which of us writers has not had a moment when we would rather bury ourselves in a wine glass than give a talk? The only author he manages to hook in for the Festival ends up feeding the pages of his book to a shredder. Wonderful.

Interwoven with the action are Plug’s ruminations on his next novel, in which a nuclear bomb explodes in Greenwich; there are also well-considered literary critiques on campus novels (Plug is supposed to be writing one himself - the joke, of course, being that we are reading it). Some serious points are also made (a little too seriously, if you ask me - my only complaint) about tuition fees and writer’s incomes.

One of the worries many authors have about the increasing professionalisation of the writing life - creative writing courses, residencies, prizes, university posts and so forth - is that everything will shape into a corporate blandness. Writers are becoming a kind of bureaucrat, efficient administrators, reliable colleagues to the Academy. Workshops hone away rough edges and controversial ideas in prose and poetry; large publishers, worried about reputational consequences, discourage eccentricity.

Plug is a delicious, delirious antidote to all that. There is something impish about him, a kind of naughty nature spirit thrust into the world of the mundane. His optimism in the face of disaster is a tonic. Long may he reign - and I'd like to see him dancing on the tables at the Booker Prize dinner, please.

Francis Plug - Writer in Residence is published by Galley Beggars Press.

Philip Womack's Wildlord is published by Little Island Press.