Book of the Week
Coventry by Rachel Cusk
After the publication of Outline, Transit and Kudos - in which Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction - this writer of uncommon brilliance returns with a series of essays that offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her life's work. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, this collection is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and rewarding to behold. The result is a cumulative sense of how the frank, deeply intelligent sensibility - so evident in her stories and novels - reverberates in the wider context of Cusk's literary process. Coventry grants its readers a rare opportunity to see a mind at work that will influence literature for time to come.
Book at Bedtime
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel discovers that her husband is in love with another woman. The fact that this woman has a 'neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb' is no consolation.
Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel is a cookery writer, and between trying to win Mark back and wishing him dead, she offers us some of her favourite recipes.
Heartburn is a roller coaster of love, betrayal, loss and - most satisfyingly - revenge.
Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
The Women's Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes. It is awarded annually to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year.
This year, the Prize has been awarded to Tayari Jones for 'An American Marriage', a novel which records the damage done to a young black couple by the husband’s wrongful jailing.
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of the American Dream. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. Until one day they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Devastated and unmoored, Celestial finds herself struggling to hold on to the love that has been her centre, taking comfort in Andre, their closest friend. When Roy's conviction is suddenly overturned, he returns home ready to resume their life together.
A masterpiece of storytelling, An American Marriage offers a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three unforgettable characters who are at once bound together and separated by forces beyond their control.
These are the books that were most popular with our customers last week......
1. No One is too Small to make a Difference by Greta Thunberg
2. Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks
3. Transcription by Kate Atkinson
4. Cookie and the Most Annoying Boy in the World by Konnie Huq
5. Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
6. So Much Life Left Over by Louis de Bernieres
7. Murder in Midsummer
8. Middle England by Jonathan Coe
9. In Extremis by Lindsey Hilsum
10. Oi! Duck-billed Platypus by Kes Grey
If you would like to read any of these books, please send us a message from our contacts page, and we will reserve a copy for you.
The Favourite
This film starring Olivia Coleman is about Queen Anne and her close relationship with Sarah Churchill, all of which is covered in this excellent book by Joanne Limburg.
Every time I see the King and the Queen, I am reminded of what it is I have done, and then I am afraid, I am beyond all expression afraid. The wicked, bawdy Restoration court is no place for a child princess. Ten-year-old Anne cuts an odd figure: a sickly child, she is drawn towards improper pursuits. Cards, sweetmeats, scandal and gossip with her Ladies of the Bedchamber figure large in her life. But as King Charles's niece, Anne is also a political pawn, who will be forced to play her part in the troubled Stuart dynasty. As Anne grows to maturity, she is transformed from overlooked Princess to the heiress of England. Forced to overcome grief for her lost children, the political manoeuvrings of her sister and her closest friends and her own betrayal of her father, she becomes one of the most complex and fascinating figures of English history.
Pitshanger Bookshop has been a feature on Pitshanger Lane for nearly 20 years. My name is Fiona Kennedy and I've owned the shop since August 2011.
