A beautifully written complicated love story: a child searching for love after being abandoned by her mother, and falling in love with a neighbour boy who can’t reciprocate what is for her an obsessive love.
Category: Female author
The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes
A serial killer and time travel, for an imaginative thriller.
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
Introspective book about relationships (my favourite topic); a single woman teacher and a Lebanese-Parisian family of three. The “woman upstairs” is a female construct – quiet, polite and causes no trouble; because of putting oneself down, becomes invisible and discounted. There is a terrific section describing the difference between longing and desire.
What David Read 