If you’re looking for an incredible and thought-provoking novel to tuck into during this time of social distancing, we highly recommend the following 5 novels. They are all available for purchase and delivery from Long Story Short, a website, tour centre, and business run by Bermudian blogger and entrepreneur, Kristen White.
The Ensemble by Aja Gabel
“The Ensemble concerns the four members of a string quartet over the span of their time together, from 1994, when they are just about to graduate from conservatory and launch their professional careers, to 2010, when one of the four departs. In between, the four play at various concerts, make their way through various romantic entanglements and family bereavements, and weather the ups and downs of life as professional musicians.
The ensemble here is the overarching metaphor for how friend groups and found families reconcile themselves into an overarching whole. Each of the four main characters is an archetype, a distinct voice that the group must integrate into a complex and coherent sound.” – Vox
Click HERE to buy.
The City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
“It is spring 1940 and 19-year-old Vivian Morris has dropped out of her Ivy League college and been “banished” to a New York City in the midst of will-we-won’t-we-join-the-war indecision. But as Vivian puts it, “exile in New York is no exile at all”. The city is all glamour and excitement, with a hysterical edge familiar to readers in a contemporary world on the brink of global crisis.
It would be easy to dismiss City of Girls as joyous escapism, and God knows there’s little enough of that around right now. But look more closely and what you’ll see is an eloquently persuasive treatise on the judgment and punishment of women, and a heartfelt call to reclaim female sexual agency.” – The Guardian
Click HERE to buy.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
“Within the first few pages of US author Kiley Reid’s best-selling debut novel, Such a Fun Age, an unusual Saturday night has spiralled into a deeply uneasy confrontation. Its lead character, 25-year-old Emira Tucker, is called out on an emergency babysitting job by her wealthy employer, Alix Chamberlain. When Emira takes Alix’s toddler to a fancy grocery store, the young black woman is racially profiled by security, and accused of abducting the white child she’s takng care of. Meanwhile, a passing shopper films everything on his phone.
Reid delivers this turbulent opening, and everything that ensues, with a glorious fluidity and wit, and often devastating relatability. In Such a Fun Age, the devil really is in the details.” – The BBC
Click HERE to buy.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
The Booker Prize Judges write, “A must-read about modern Britain and womanhood… An impressive, fierce novel about the lives of black British families, their struggles, pains, laughter, longings and loves… Her style is passionate, razor-sharp, brimming with energy and humor. There is never a single moment of dullness in this book and the pace does not allow you to turn away from its momentum.”
“Bernardine Evaristo is the winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and the first black woman to receive this highest literary honor in the English language. Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.” – Grove Atlantic
Click HERE to buy.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Washington Post writes, “The linguistic antics that have long dazzled Whitehead’s readers have been set aside here for a style that feels restrained and transparent. And the plot of “The Nickel Boys” tolerates no fissures in the fabric of ordinary reality; no surreal intrusions complicate the grim progress of this story. That groundedness in the soil of natural life is, perhaps, an implicit admission that the treatment of African Americans has been so bizarre and grotesque that fantastical enhancements are unnecessary.
And what a deeply troubling novel this is. It shreds our easy confidence in the triumph of goodness and leaves in its place a hard and bitter truth about the ongoing American experiment.”
If you’re interested in other ways to help support local businesses during COVID-19, click here.
