How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair is a very literary and lushly written memoir about growing up with a Rastafarian father in Jamaica who imposed his tyrannical will on his children, especially his daughters, to such an extent that it was suffocating and psychologically damaging. Eventually Sinclair escapes his grip and finds freedom and self-determination in the US, where she becomes a writer, initially a poet. Shockingly honest and brave, but also beautifully immersive and ultimately uplifting, this is a stunning book.
I just finished one of the great reading experiences of my life: Virginia Woolf’s diaries . All the seasons of life are in there, but she’s especially acute on the joys of summer. My own summer project is reading Huckleberry Finn in preparation for Percival Everett’s James .
Halle Butler’s Banal Nightmare (out in August, Orion) will end summer with a bang. It’s about turning 37 and realising you hate everybody you know. It’s also about trying to become an adult while living in – and through – this unregulated, neoliberal, late-capitalist version of the internet with which we are presently saddled.
So funny, so smart, utterly vicious – just brilliant. In the summer in Ireland you need two kinds of book: one for sunny weather and the other kind for most other days. For the first, I recommend Erotic Vagrancy by Roger Lewis, which is a witty and wise account of the lives of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
Lewis is a brilliant writer; his.
