Welcome to Dust Jackets, our monthly feature where we highlight brilliant backlist books the Mr B’s booksellers have been reading.
This month, Becky and Nethmi each devour the first book in a middle-grade series, Kate reads Madonna in a Fur Coat through tears, and Leah tackles a deeply moving modern Japanese classic. Read on for reviews of all these and more…
Our Children’s Lead Becky‘s been reading The Nowhere Emporium, a magical middle-grade adventure from one of her favourite children’s authors, Ross Mackenzie.
Becky says: “When the mysterious Nowhere Emporium arrives in Glasgow, orphan Daniel Holmes stumbles upon it quite by accident. No-one ever visits the emporium twice, until Daniel finds it for the second time. Before long, the emporium and its owner, Mr Silver draw Daniel into a breath-taking world of magic and enchantment. Recruited as Mr Silver’s apprentice, Daniel learns the secrets of the Emporium’s vast labyrinth of passageways that contain wonders beyond anything Daniel has ever imagined. If you can imagine it, you can create it. But when Mr Silver disappears, and a shadow from the past threatens everything, the Emporium and all its wonders begin to crumble. Can Daniel save his home, and his new friends, before the Nowhere Emporium is destroyed forever? Another superb book from Ross Mackenzie, a true master in storytelling and imagination.”
Kate has been reading (and loving!) Madonna in a Fur Coat, a Turkish classic by Sabahattin Ali first published in 1943.
Kate says: “This book initially follows the friendship between our young, down-on-his luck narrator and his mysterious older colleague, who becomes ill early in the story. The old man, Raif, instructs the narrator to go to the top drawer of his desk and retrieve a small black notebook, which he is then told to burn. Our narrator begs Raif for the chance to read it, and is granted one night to read the story of Raif’s life.
What follows is an immensely moving story of Raif’s true love, set against the backdrop of 1920s Berlin. Now heralded by writers like Elif Shafak, this slim modern classic is a feat of Turkish literature, and I’m so glad it was translated so English-speakers can enjoy this gem of a novel.”
Buy Madonna in a Fur Coat now!
Romance-lover Liv has been expanding her back-catalogue of Lily King novels with Euphoria.
Liv says: “Papua New Guinea, 1933. Three young, gifted anthropologists find themselves drawn together in the depths of the jungle. Intense, passionate, and completely enthralled by each other – within months the trio are producing their best work. But their ever-shifting dynamics will have devastating consequences… Euphoria was completely electric, it’s almost unbearably good – Lily King’s writing reminds me why I love reading.”
Always one for older reads, this month Leah has been reading Heaven—a modern Japanese classic from Mieko Kawakami, author of Breast and Eggs and, most recently, Sisters in Yellow.
Leah says: “Heaven is a deeply moving novel, following a young unnamed narrator who is severely bullied in his Japanese middle school. One day, he receives a note on his desk, which he discovers is from his quiet classmate Kojima, sparking an unlikely friendship. As the novel goes on, he discovers how Kojima utterly transforms when she is outside of school, becoming talkative and bubbly, fully contrasting his awkwardness and paranoia. Kojima becomes an escape from his own harsh reality, but he wonders if he will ever be able to truly detach himself from his life at school like Kojima does. Heart-warming yet heart-breaking, Heaven beautifully explores what it is to be an outsider and how long escaping to your own heaven can last.
Our other resident backlist-lover Laura has been raving about Nevil Shute‘s emotional gut-punch of a novel, On the Beach.
Laura says: “It’s been just over one year since the end of the third war, a nuclear battle between Russia and China, which was an escalation of the Russia-N.A.T.O. war, itself ignited by the Israeli-Arab conflict. All human life in the Northern Hemisphere has most likely been extinguished.
We follow Commander Dwight Towers on his final recon mission up the West coast of America, as his crew search for any signs of human activity from the safety of their submarine. We also witness Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes in the simple comforts still awarded by domesticity with his wife and child somewhere on the outskirts of Melbourne, where life goes on, for now. Scientists have given Southern Australia until September. It is now December. These are the final months before a radioactive cloud reaches first Cape Town, then Melbourne, the final city to go dark.
Yet farms continue to be tended, flowers planted, children clothed, brandy drunk, and flirtations had.
First serialized in 1957 under the name The Last Days on Earth, this novel would have been timely then, as it is now. Haunting in the necessary brevity of its scope, this work of classic science fiction is the best thing I’ve read in a long time. Its reality is both crushing and absurd almost to the point of hilarity – if you knew the end was coming, would you too take part in an amateur car race just to crash and burn? Remain faithful to a family long dead? What would be considered acceptable behaviour when the world is no longer watching?
Nevil Shute was an aeronautical engineer who pursued a literary career alongside his military one, for which he designed both planes and secret weapons. The mindset of his main characters is one where this chain of events in their world feels sad and unjust, but maybe most interestingly, inevitable.”
And finally, I’ve stepped away from my thrilling adult mysteries… to read a thrilling middle-grade mystery—Agatha Oddly: The Secret Key by Lena Jones.
Ever since she changed schools and started at prestigious St Regis, Agatha Oddlow has been an outcast. Oddly, Odball, Odd Socks, she’s heard it all. True, she opened a detective agency with her best (and only) friend Liam Lau, but how else is she going to live up to her namesake Agatha Christie’s greatest detective character, Hercule Poirot? So far, her investigations have resulted in more trouble than glory, but she knows she’s just one big case away from making it to the big leagues. So when she witnesses a motorbike hit-and-run on the same day that London’s entire water supply becomes infected with a mysterious red slime, Agatha knows this is her chance to put her detective skills to the test!
This book was a wild ride from start to finish, with secret societies, tunnels under London, and a widespread water shortage. Agatha is a delightfully cheeky detective, playing by her own rules and donning fabulous disguises whenever she gets the chance. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series!