I read fiction every day – always before I sleep, and often during the day, too.  I have a Kindle which I carry in my handbag in case I arrive early for an appointment and have time for a coffee and a quick chapter!  In the summer, or on holiday, my idea of bliss is sitting in the sun, working on my tan while reading a good book.

But I recognise not everyone is like me!  And many of those in my networks may well not be able to find as much time for fiction reading as I can.  But I hope that perhaps the longer school holidays – Christmas, Easter and the summer – may be a time when educators have the space to catch up with some reading, especially if they find reading both relaxing and energising, as I do.  I find it absorbing, and a great relief from stress, too.  I’m just about to go in for my second knee replacement surgery, and I know that reading good fiction will help me to manage the post-operative pain and support me through my recovery.

About a year ago, I decided to write a short blog recommending recent fiction I’d read and enjoyed, and have so far published posts about this before Christmas 2022, Easter 2023, and Summer 2023. This post offers my Christmas 2023 suggestions.

Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng

I have read Celeste’s previous novels, and also very much enjoyed the serialisation of ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ this summer.  Her latest novel is set in the near future, when an authoritarian regime in America fuels fear of ‘PAO’ (People of Asian origin) and passes a bill, ‘PACT’ (Preserving American Culture and Traditions).  I have always found interesting futuristic fiction which is rooted in current disturbing trends, and which shows how these trends might be extrapolated to become something dystopian and terrifying.

Noah, nicknamed ‘Bird’, is the child of an American father Ethan, a linguist now demoted by the regime to work as a librarian (though books are tightly controlled in this society), and a Chinese American mother, Margaret Miu, who is a poet.  Bird is 12 when the book opens, his mother having apparently abandoned the family when he was 8.  The story unfolds when he receives a cryptic message from Margaret, and goes in search of her in New York.  I found the description of Bird’s journey, what he finds his mother doing, and his and her subsequent choices tense and compelling.  The novel deals with the themes of racial oppression, of resistance, of family, and of the power of storytelling.

The Female Persuasion, Meg Wolitzer

I read and enjoyed Meg Wolitzer’s ‘The Interestings’ on holiday a couple of years ago, and was motivated to look up what else she had written.  ‘The Female Persuasion’ begins in 2006, when the central character Greer Kadetsky meets second-wave feminist icon Faith Frank, (the author of a manifesto called ‘The Female Persuasion’) and becomes mesmerised by her.  The story follows Greer’s life through and after college, her professional development, including her continuing fixation with Faith Frank, and her relationship with her High School first love Cory, whose life takes a dramatic, unexpected turn.  In due course Greer finds her own ‘voice’, achieving fame through her book, ‘Outside Voices’, and by 2019 she is successful and feted.  But she has learnt some painful lessons along the way.

The novel explores modern day feminism and the relationship between different generations of women, mentorship, and the choices we make in a sometimes murky landscape.  It is populated by well-drawn characters and complex, believable relationships.  There are many cloaked modern day references which you might enjoy identifying – ‘Teach for America’, for example, becomes ‘Teach and Reach’ (and receives short shrift).  Obama and Trump are never named, but they are there.  This is a book which might make you think – it certainly had that effect on me. 

We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman

I was given this book as a gift when I was recuperating from my first knee surgery.  I found it fascinating – and the friend who gave it to me correctly identified that it deals with themes I am interested in and attracted to in my fiction choices: friendships, parenthood, love, and loss.  However, it comes with a health warning, and I thought carefully about this before including it in a pre-Christmas reading list: the focus of the story involves the central character, Ash, coming to terms with the terminal illness of her closest friend, Edi, now in a hospice.  As I read it, I cried at fairly regular intervals…

But it is very well-written, with sharp, witty dialogue; interesting people in a range of different relationships; atmospheric description; unexpected humour and a great deal of warmth.  I felt I knew and cared about these people as the novel progressed.  It is a stunning depiction of friendship.  I never know whether reading about loss might be therapeutic, and a way of helping to process experiences, for some who have faced grief.  If this is the case, I would say it’s definitely worth considering reading ‘We All Want Impossible Things’.  

The Whalebone Theatre, Joanna Quinn

I was very impressed with this debut novel, set in Dorset, written by an author who lives there.  The story spans the period from 1919 to 1945, and it features the Seagrave family, the children of whom find a dead whale on the nearby beach, from the bones of which is constructed an open-air theatre for their amateur dramatics.

The focus of the novel is Cristabel, appealingly feisty and strong-minded even at three years old in 1919, when she meets her new, young stepmother, Rosalind.  In time Cristabel is presented with a younger sister, Flossie.  Eventually, following the death of her father – who never recovered from the loss of his first wife – the Seagrave heir, Digby, is born to Rosalind and Cristabel’s dashing uncle, Willoughby.  Cristabel loses nothing of her spark as she grows up, and the novel follows her fortunes and choices, and those of her family, in the wake of the First World War, throughout the inter-war years in privileged society, and then through the Second World War. It is a story which makes the most of references to play-acting, pretence, and the wearing of masks which conceal who we are.  I enjoyed the dialogue, the humour, and following the exploits of characters in whom I felt invested.

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett  

My last choice in this selection is set in a fictional town in Louisiana which is populated by light-skinned African Americans, a community which is committed to maintaining what they see as their racial ‘purity’.  The twins, Desiree and Stella Vignes, are initially inseparable, but feeling confined and limited by their birthplace, and traumatised by their father’s violent death, they run away to New Orleans.  There, Stella disappears, having met and married a white man who believes her also to be white.  Desiree returns to her home with her daughter, Jude, born to a dark-skinned African American, and the novel follows Jude’s struggle to be accepted and respected in her mother’s home town. 

Later in her life, Jude meets Kennedy, Stella’s light-skinned daughter, in a mesmerising party scene. The book tells the story of the twins and their daughters from the 1940s to the 1990s.  I found the time shifts in the narrative, which is not chronologically structured, and the changing perspectives, added to the richness of the reading experience.  This is a novel which deals with racial politics, with gender transition, with choices and how the past shapes the present. It is original, thoughtful, and strongly character-driven.  It’s a book I feel I learnt from, and one that will stay with me.

My own writing

In terms of my own writing, I am pleased with sales of the Three Short Novels, both paperback and the e-version. I am currently enjoying talking about them, and including short readings, to WI and Inner Wheel groups, who are responding very positively (and going on to buy copies!) I hope to do more of this in 2024, perhaps to U3A groups, too. The novels are being picked up by several Book Clubs – their relatively short length making them particularly suitable, I think – and I am receiving heartening feedback from groups which have discussed one of them. I have suggested the novels might make a useful Christmas present for women aged 40+ who are fiction readers: they are my principal target audience!

And I have finished the first draft of a fourth, longer novel. ‘Eighteen Months’ follows the experiences of a family of four navigating the pandemic in the UK between March 2020 and August 2021. I have enjoyed researching and writing it, reminding myself of what living through Covid was actually like (how quickly we forget…) I will share it with my group of beta readers in early 2024 and decide whether to self-publish in the spring.

Wishing you all a positive Christmas and New Year break. Happy fiction reading in the year ahead.