Newsletter #40
Hello lovely people! You read the subject line correctly: after three long years away, Stoke Newington Literary Festival (Stokey LitFest to its friends) is finally making a triumphant return. We've got a little more information about the programme, tickets and the like later in the newsletter, but we thought we'd shout about it up top too. We'll be there hawking various wares, as is our wont, but we'll be open for business as usual throughout as well. In fact, why not come in and take a look at some of the new titles we're about to recommend in this very newsletter?
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New this week
Andrew Caldecott, bestselling author of Rotherweird, makes a welcome return to our shelves with the brilliantly bizarre Momenticon. In a far-flung future, humanity lives within sealed domes to protect itself from the toxic atmosphere. One of the more remote is a museum dome, run by young curator Fogg, who has collected treasures from humanity’s past. His isolated idyll is shattered when he finds a pill that allows him to enter the paintings and animate the artefacts in his care, kicking off a high-stakes adventure that owes more than a little to Lewis Carroll. Incredibly imaginative and compelling!
Back on planet Earth (mostly), Benjamin Myers combines his interests in British folklore and lonely men in The Perfect Golden Circle. This tragicomic odyssey sees two unlikely candidates — a crustpunk and a Falklands veteran — forming a bond as they create crop circles in the Wiltshire farmland. The Opposite of a Person is Lieke Marsman’s genre-defying debut novel, utilising the forms of poetry, fiction and essay. It tells the story of climatologist Ida, whose detachment from the world around her is only magnified when she takes a job in the Italian Alps and sees humanity’s devastating effects on the environment first-hand.
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We highly recommend the timely reissue of Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli. The Mexican-born author’s dazzling metafictional novel combines three separate stories: a mother of two writing a novel in modern Mexico City, a translator attempting to publish the (fabricated) work of an obscure Mexican poet, and the poet himself as he galivants about 1920s Harlem. Things get stickier when you realise said poet, Gilberto Owen, was a real person, and that the triptych of narrators go from alternating chapters to sharing space on the same page. A slippery, low-key supernatural meditation on displacement and art.
Bad Relations by Cressida Connolly navigates the twin minefields of familial relationships and, um, actual minefields. It chronicles three generations of the Gale family, from the Crimean War through to the present day, deftly exploring their unlikely connections spanning decades and continents. Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok by expat writer Emma Larkin offers a pluralistic survey of the Thai capital. The “silent politics” which mark its past and guide its future is present in the gap between the eponymous, homeless former insurgent and an urbane property developer. A complex novel befitting its labyrinthine setting.
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Kayo Chingonyi brings together the best of contemporary Black British poetry in More Fiya, an anthology featuring the likes of Dzifa Benson, Kim Squirrell, Keith Jarrett and Dean Atta. You can read a selection of the pieces included right here thanks to The Grauniad! Chingonyi was inspired, in part, by the 1998 anthology The Fire People, edited by Lemn Sissay, which has also been reissued with a complementary cover design. Both volumes are absolutely essential, covering a polyphony of styles, subject matter and approaches.
For both Brutalist faithful and sandblast-sceptics, Raw Concrete by Barnabas Calder offers a terrifically engaging and enlightening history of the much-maligned architectural style. A wide-ranging journey through British building history of the past sixty years, with eight buildings profiled from commission to construction. In our biography section, award-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan turns her attention inwards with This Is Not a Pity Memoir. With extraordinary care, she chronicles the effects of her husband’s catastrophic reaction to an experimental drug meant to treat his MS — complicated even further by the onset of the pandemic. An extraordinary, heartbreaking real-life drama.
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Catherine Munro had journeyed to the Shetlands to study the hardy ponies who lived there. When she faced personal tragedy, the archipelago and its four-legged inhabitants offered her a sense of stability and kinship, as described in the poignant The Ponies at the Edge of the World. Meanwhile, campaigner and Everyday Sexism founder Laura Bates returns with the strikingly strident Fix the System, Not the Women. Clear-eyed and laser-focussed in its approach, Bates pinpoints the structural misogyny built into our society, and what to do about it.
Literary critic R. F. Foster has done his homework, and then some. His biography of the Nobel-winning Irish poet, On Seamus Heaney, is chock-a-block with insight into both the man and his work. Meticulously researched, Foster packs a lot into a relatively slight volume. Which is not to suggest it’s dense; instead, he proves a knowledgeable and adroit storyteller, weaving a close-reading of Heaney’s work into the parallel histories of the man’s life and contemporary Irish politics, creating a thrilling, enlightening narrative.
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We told you we'd have more Stokey LitFest details, and now here we are, making good on our promise! This year's festival has a fantastic programme of events for readers of all ages, shapes and sizes, with talks from bookshop favourites like Mick Herron, the aforementioned Laura Bates, local political disruptors Led By Donkeys, and a family disco. this year taking place in venues across Newington Green.
You can peruse the whole programme right here, but be warned: tickets are going fast, so book soon to avoid disappointment!
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Top pick for our younger readers this go around is the wonderful Pearly and Pig and the Great Hairy Beast by Sue Whiting and Rebecca Crane. Perpetual worrier Pearly must face her fears when she’s called up to join the top-secret Adventurologists’ Guild and her parents go missing. Thankfully, Pearly has an ace up her sleeve: she can talk to animals, which will help in saving her kidnapped pet pig, too. An enormously charming adventure story, with a relatable heroine and lovely illustrations.
Remi Blackwood kicks off a new series with a bang in Future Hero: Race to Fire Mountain. A fantasy adventure inspired by the mythology of Africa and its diaspora, it follows the awkward Jarell as he finds belonging in an alternate realm of magic and sci-fi technology. On the sillier end of the spectrum is Kevin Vs the Unicorns by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre, a playful mystery set in the fantasy land of Bumbleford. Kevin and his roly-poly flying pony enter a prestigious race, only to discover a shadowy conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of the Magical Pony Club…
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Award-winning artist Britta Treckenturp teamed up once more with writer Patricia Heagarty for Bugs! As with their children's non-fiction titles exploring trees, bees, the moon and the sea, this beautifully-illustrated book incorporates gently rhyming text and die-cut pages to lead your little one through an exploration of the insect world. Positively teeming with colour, character, and natural history factoids. Wonderful stuff!
In fact, it’s a banner issue for beautiful non-fiction for the youngsters. We also have the Book of Dinosaurs by Gabrielle Balkan and Sam Brewster, an interactive tome which brings together touch-and-feel skeletons and guessing games to reveal the secrets of the prehistoric world. Further below sea level, we have What a Shell Can Tell by Helen Scales and Sonia Pulido, a lavishly rendered, illustrated guide to what can be gleaned through the art of observing everything from seashells to snails.
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No, we haven't taken leave of our senses. This issue we're recommending two fantastic new puzzles from a bumper crop we've just had in! Each are 500 pieces, with bold colours befitting this blooming marvellous time of year: a rolling Painted Hills design and a complimentary flamboyant view of a Mosaic Hall, with a flamingo cameo. Lovely!
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What we're reading
- Tom highly recommends Hanif Abdurraqib's terrific A Little Devil In America, a wide-ranging essay collection touching on everything from Depression-era dance crazes to the Wu Tang Clan with grace and lyrical insight
- Paul has been enjoying the excellently-researched Nobody's Normal by Roy Richard Grinker, which charts the cultural history and stigma of mental illness
- Sam has had his mind blown by Shola von Reinhold's Lote, a highly intelligent and original novel centred on a young woman’s obsession with a forgotten Black modernist poet
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With that out of the way, we can start our LitFest exercise regime. Lots of lunges, multiple reps of tearing receipts out of card machines, deadlifting boxes of books, that sort of thing. We look forward to seeing you all there, but before then, we look forward to seeing you in the shop! All details about opening hours, ordering, and contacting us are below. Take care and we'll be back in your inbox soon!
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| We are open for browsing 10-6 Monday to Saturday, and 11-5 on Sunday. You can also email or call (020 7249 2808) to place an order, then pick up your items from the shop. If you're unable to get to the shop for any reason, you can order books to be delivered to you through our friends at Bookshop.org (and we receive a decent commission!) |
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