2026/089: The Most Secret Memory of Men — Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

...just because you’re wounded doesn’t mean you have to write about it. It doesn’t even mean you have to consider writing about it. I won’t bother bringing up ability. Time heals? Wrong; it kills. It kills the illusion that our wounds are unique. They’re not. No wound is unique. Nothing human is unique. Everything becomes terribly banal over time. There’s the conundrum; but somewhere in there, literature has a chance to emerge.

Translated by Lara Vergnaud, and read by multiple narrators: Ayesha Antoine, Chris Thompson, Kyle Gabbidon, Masimba Ushe, Musu-kulla Massaquoi and Nile Faure-Bryan. (Not all the female-viewpoint chapters are read by women.)

It's a novel 'about' a lost Senegalese author, T C Elimane, and his infamous novel The Labyrinth of Inhumanity -- at first lauded by the French literary establishment as the work of 'a Negro Rimbaud', and later reviled as plagiarism. (This aspect of the novel mirrors the career of Malian author Yambo Ouologuem.) And it's also 'about' the narrator, another young Senegalese writer named Diégane Latyr Faye, living in Paris and hanging out with other African writers, bemoaning the lack of success of his own first novel, which sold 79 copies.

 One day he encounters another compatriot, the outrageous author Siga D, who lends him her copy of The Labyrinth of Inhumanity and tells him to visit her when he's read it. He is rivetted by Elimane's prose and desperate to learn more about the man -- and his subsequent conversations with Siga D (not to mention a visit home) help him to unravel the mystery of the author's disappearance. Via Argentina, wartime Paris, Senegal and Amsterdam, Elimane's legacy is discoverable.

I found parts of this novel hard going: for instance, there is a deeply unsettling scene featuring the depredations of soldiers in wartime. And Faye's sex life did not enthrall me. But the magic realism, the long feuds and deceptions of families, the ways in which lives are shaped by wars, racism, religion, colonialism... those aspects of the novel kept me listening. Faye is sometimes ridiculous, sometimes pompous, and sometimes very relatable: and I appreciated his growth over the course of The Most Secret Memory of Men.

Read because: a challenge prompt for Senegal. Looking for something that fit the prompt, I found this novel -- which won the Prix Goncourt, the first win by a sub-Saharan author -- and was intrigued by the sample chapters. Unlike some books I've read purely to fulfil a prompt, I have no regrets about having read this.

2026/088: The Widows' Guide to Murder — Amanda Ashby

... up until this week she’d never found a dead body, adopted a stray cat or drunk Drambuie on a Thursday night. [p. 72]

Ginny Cole is sixty years old and recently widowed. She's moved from Bristol to the village of Little Shaw to make a fresh start -- though she isn't sure she quite knows how to do that. And she's found a job as a library assistant, working for an unpleasant woman named Louisa.

On her second day at the library, she finds Louisa dead: murdered, it transpires. (Ginny used to work as a receptionist at her husband's surgery: she knows the signs of poisoning.) Then she's befriended by a trio of other widows -- Hen, Tuppence and JM -- who want to investigate the death... not least because Hen's daughter Alison is a suspect. And Ginny also finds herself adopted by a black cat whom she names Edgar.

Sufficient red herrings to keep me guessing, a lesbian character, a kitty, some distinct derring-do, and a cast of vividly-drawn characters: this was the perfect read for a summer's afternoon. I may even read the other books in the series...

Read because: I wanted a light, 'cosy' read, and the Something Bookish reading challenge prompted 'a book with widow or widows in the title': this one popped up on Amazon Prime.

2026/087: 1177 BC: A Graphic History of the Year Civilisation Collapsed — Eric H Cline & Glynnis Fawkes

A gorgeously illustrated update to Cline's original 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, featuring Cline and Fawkes as narrators with a modern viewpoint (for archaeological discoveries et cetera), as well as a pair of fictional characters -- Pel, of the Sea Peoples, and Shesha, an Egyptian scribe. 

Together Pel and Shesha time-travel through the Bronze Age, the centuries leading up to the collapse: and they travel physically too, from Amenhotep’s palace to the city of Hattusa via shipwrecks, battles and quayside bartering. Their interactions help to humanise the stories of the people affected by the collapse: migrants (with a comparison to Syrian refugees), merchants (whose luxury goods are no longer obtainable), families listening to grandfather's stories about the good old days...

The book has been updated with recent archaeological discoveries, and there's more emphasis on the probable mega-drought that contributed to the collapse. The format lends itself to maps and images, which was extremely helpful (the original book, read on Kindle, was sometimes difficult to follow because the maps were separate from the text), and though it's dense with facts, names, and theories, there is also plenty of humour. Fantastic, and highly recommended. 

Read because: I was fascinated by the original version (1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed) and happened upon this marvellously illustrated, updated version. Shamefully I bought it as a gift for someone else before purchasing it for, and reading it, myself!

2026/086: Glyph — Ali Smith

Whoever you thought you weren’t speaking to must’ve heard you after all. [loc. 607]

This is indeed connected to Gliff, but not in the way I think I expected. The roughly contemporary setting allows the characters -- Petra, her estranged younger sister Patricia ('Patch'), and Patricia's adopted daughter Billie -- to literally and figuratively protest the war in Gaza, and to tie society's lack of empathy to the Covid pandemic. But there are parallels with other wars: with the First World War, and a story about a man leading a blind horse out of the trenches; and with the Second, and a story about a person being flattened to two dimensions by a tank convoy.

This second story prompts Petra and Patch, as children, to invent (and in Petra's case to 'speak to') a ghost they call Glyph, so named because the only sound he can make -- 'partly like a cough, partly like someone breathing out very suddenly' -- sounds like 'glyph'. But Glyph is not the only ghost in the novel: one night Petra's bedroom is trashed by what seems to be the ghost of a blind horse...

The seeds of Gliff are being sown in this world. When Patricia tells Billie about Glyph, the girl responds with 'like the word at the start of the weedkiller?' and talks about glyphosphate -- the cause of the ecocide underlying Gliff's dystopian future. 

But the most blatant connection is the strangest: the novel Gliff exists in the world of Glyph, and all three women have read it. Petra says it's 'a bit too dark for me. A bit too clever-clever, a bit too on the nose politically, for a novel. I’d have preferred a bit more world building. And what’s with all that horse stuff? It could’ve been a bit more sci-fi.' Patricia, who sent it to Petra, thinks it's 'rather good about siblings'. Billie, who read it first, says 'What if nobody knows what happened to them? ...And what if that’s the thing that makes you care?'

I'm not sure that the connections in the other direction are as effective: that Glyph is a story 'hidden in' Gliff. I found it at once more relatable and more ordinary.

Read because: I recently read Gliff, and was hoping this paired novel would shed further light on it. Yes and no. But Ali Smith's prose is always a delight.

2026/085: The Cat and The Masked Woman — Colette (translated by Helen Constantine)

Though Saha, like a human, was watching Camille leave, Alain was sprawling in the chair, his upturned palm like a paw, skillfully playing with the first green prickly conkers of August. [final line of The Cat]

The Cat (original French title La Chatte, feminising the masculine noun) is a short novel set in 1920s Paris. It opens with Alain about to marry his childhood friend, the gorgeous Camille. Alain's pleasure in her company is tempered by his reluctance to leave his childhood home: the servants he's known all his life, his mother's luxuriant garden, and especially his cat Saha. The plan is for Alain and Camille to move into a nearby property, but it's not yet finished: instead, after the wedding, they stay at a friend's chic high-rise apartment in Paris. Meanwhile, Saha pines, and Alain soon decides to bring her to the apartment. Camille -- who is bourgeois, insensitive and shallow -- becomes increasingly jealous of Saha, and tries to kill her. Saha survives, Alain realises what's happened, and the marriage is over.

It's effectively a love triangle, except that one of the contenders for Alain's affection is a cat. Colette doesn't anthropomorphise Saha, or gild her essentially animal nature (litter trays are mentioned): but Saha is as much a character as Camille, and a more likeable one. The critical interpretation seems to be that Saha symbolises Alain's childhood, which he doesn't want to let go of. I am perfectly happy to take the novel as literal: I would absolutely leave a partner who tried to murder my cat.

The Masked Woman is a series of vignettes and short stories about men and women dealing with love. The stories focus on the moments that change a life, from the apprehension of a murderer to a woman who apparently revels in living alone, yet is full of regrets. The writing is perceptive, dwelling on little details (the more mundane the better) and evoking French life between the wars.

Narrated by Machteld van der Gaag, who's Dutch but grew up in Paris: her pronunciation of French names was really evocative, and she injects just the right amount of emotion into the prose.

Read because: 'Storygraph Reads the World' challenge, 'France': and I read, or attempted to read, La Chatte as a teenager, an optimistic gift from a French cousin: I wanted to see how much I remembered ... and discovered how much I had not understood.

2026/084: Heaven's Graveyard — Grace Curtis

"No one can decide if it was a mass hallucination or a -- a mir --" Her lips convulsed. "Some kind of divine event... But I know what this is. It's fuckery." [loc. 3613]

Heaven's Graveyard is a fantasy novel, set in the same world as, though long after the events in, Curtis' earlier Idolfire (which I have not read), and featuring archaeology, sapphic romance, a protagonist who mostly lives in her head, and a murder mystery.

Cod -- short for Coda -- is an archivist, working in blissful solitude in Asha's Civic Museum. One day, she receives a message saying 'historic discovery, come home urgently'. It's signed by her friend Denali Marr. Since she first encountered his Ashan Myths for Children, Cod has been captivated by the story of Aleya Ana-Ulai, and she and Marr both believe that the legendary heroine really existed. Surely it's worth taking leave of absence and heading back to Palgaro, where she grew up in poverty with an emotionally-distant mother.

Except, of course, it's never that simple. Cod encounters her ex, Sparrow, who is apparently now a travelling saleswoman; she learns more about Marr's great discovery, and makes discoveries of her own -- not least that there is, after all, some truth in the old stories.

I didn't initially warm to Cod, but as her own history was revealed, and as she began to connect to people (and indeed to the world in which she lives, which is on the brink of war; which has 'rattlers' and 'rails' instead of cars and buses; which is plagued by religious schism) I became more engrossed in her story. That said, I found the book's climax frustratingly rushed, and the epilogue -- though it provides closure to one element of the story, and opens up new possibilities -- doesn't give much idea of just how much the world has changed. Though perhaps that's Cod (who is autistic-coded) simply not paying much attention to it...

From the author's afterword: "I'd like to ask [you] to keep this book's surprises to yourself, at least for a little while. Together we can horribly betray many more people to come."

Read because: I recently read and enjoyed Floating Hotel (which is more SFnal). Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 18th June 2026.

2026/083: A Trade of Blood — Robert Jackson Bennett

We have stolen secrets from the bloods of the titans and taught all of nature to grow and warp and shift at our pleasing. [loc. 545]

Cat-herders! Unexpected siblings! More of Ana's background! Another ill-judged liaison! Blue grass! And a very knotty murder mystery... This was an excellent read, and very much not the culmination of a trilogy: this series could run and run, and I for one will be grateful for each new volume.

Full review nearer publication date, but I note that the 'Shadow of the Leviathan' series is rooted firmly in the mundane world, the place where we're reading. The first novel, The Tainted Cup, explored civil servants and builders, and regulatory frameworks: the second, A Drop of Corruption, tackled autocracy, with a side order of shady banking practises. This time...

Farms are not sites of hallowed tradition. They are, if anything, laboratories for profound biological change. [Author's Note]

Read because: I enjoyed the first two books so much, and leapt at the chance to get an ARC. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for the full honest review I'll write closer to UK publication date -- 4th August 2026.