Benjamin Wood’s 176-page short novel Seascraper was released on July 17, 2025. The book made the 2025 Booker Prize long list.The plot, which takes place in the made-up northern English coastal town of Longferry, revolves around Thomas Flett, a young man who works as a “shanker” (horse-cart-dragging the seashore for shrimp) and secretly dreams of…
Tag: Wordy Wednesday
The Painter by Peter Heller
Jim Steinner, the main character in Peter Heller’s The Painter, is a prosperous but troubled expressionist painter who has fled to the Colorado highlands following his imprisonment for a shooting. After witnessing brutality to a horse, acting aggressively, and becoming entangled in a moral dilemma and a pursuit combining retaliation, remorse, and the art world,…
Or What You Will by Jo Walton
Jo Walton’s metafictional fantasy book, Or What You Will, was released in 2020. The narrative centres on Sylvia Harrison, a 73-year-old Canadian author with a lengthy career who is facing death. Her imaginary friend/inner narrator has both shaped and resided inside her creation. She has been creating fantasy novels, including a trilogy set in a…
Me and Kaminski by Daniel Kehlmann
In the novel Me and Kaminski, Sebastian Zöllner, an aspirational but superficial arts critic, aims to advance his career by penning the definitive biography of Manuel Kaminski, an elderly, reclusive, and almost blind painter. With all the accompanying manipulation and self-promotion, Zöllner sets out to win Kaminski over. What starts out as a form of…
Jackdaw by Tade Thompson
British-Nigerian novelist Tade Thompson’s novella Jackdaw veers between psychological drama, dark comedy, horror, and metafiction. The main character, also known as “Tade Thompson,” is a writer and psychiatrist who has been hired to write a biography of Francis Bacon, a painter. Thompson’s own mind unravels as he tries to analyse Bacon’s life: hallucinations, apparitions (including…
The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger
The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger is a witty, caustic, and unnerving book that peeks inside the cutthroat, occasionally brutal world of contemporary parenting and education. The story, which is set in the made-up wealthy town of Crystal, Colorado, centers on a group of lifelong friends whose bonds fall apart when a new public school…
My Education by Susan Choi
My Education by Susan Choi is a witty, intense book that examines obsession, desire, and the intricacies of interpersonal relationships. The book is fundamentally a coming-of-age tale that challenges our understanding of love as well as the ways in which memory rewrites and reinterprets our past. In the early 1990s, Regina Gottlieb, a 21-year-old graduate…
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2019, is a heartbreaking and exquisitely written book that addresses two of America’s most sinister realities: the pervasive brutality of reform schools and the lingering effects of racial injustice. The novel, which draws inspiration from the real-life Dozier School for Boys…
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse – A Journey of Personal Development
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is a timeless examination of the human search for self-realization, inner serenity, and significance that goes beyond simple fiction. Because it addresses the universal battle of personal development—how one learns, develops, and eventually finds fulfillment—the book, which was first published in 1922, has remained relevant to readers of many ages and…
Educated by Tara Westover
More than just a tale of a young woman’s quest for knowledge, Tara Westover’s book – Educated delves deeply into the themes of identity, personal development, and perseverance in the face of hardship. Westover was born into a survivalist household in rural Idaho, far from access to modern healthcare and education. Her father’s strict views…