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I read Deborah Levy’s My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein a few weeks ago, with the one and only @christine__al , and the more I think about it, the more impressed I am by what Levy has done.

From the first pages, I found the book very, very funny. I particularly loved the recurring play on “losing it”: the cat is lost, someone has “lost it”, perhaps we have all lost it—and occasionally you can’t help wondering whether Gertrude Stein herself had lost it. The meaning keeps shifting, and the joke keeps returning.

But I also found this a deeply political novel. Levy writes sharply about our present moment: the US political landscape, Gaza, fascism, ethnic cleansing and our reluctance to use words that history has already given us.

I underlined these passages while reading, but the more I think about them, the stronger Levy’s decision to write them feels.

And then there is Gertrude Stein.

Levy is clearly fascinated by Stein, both as an artist and as a personality, but I don’t think this is really a book about Stein. Stein becomes a lens through which Levy looks at our own times.

After finishing the novel, I read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, my first Stein, and became even more mesmerized by what Levy had done. I started encountering the original sentences, anecdotes and ideas that Levy had borrowed, paraphrased or altered. I imagine the more Stein I read, the more hidden references I will find.

But what I admire most is that I didn’t need to know any of this to enjoy Levy’s novel.

Sometimes literary references can feel like prerequisites, as though a book has a particular audience in mind, one that has done the necessary prior reading. Levy does something much more generous. Her novel is funny, intelligent and absorbing without knowing Stein at all. Then you read Stein and discover another layer.

Levy didn’t make me feel I had failed to read the books I was supposed to have read before hers.

She made me want to read them afterwards.

And so far she has convinced me: Stein is very funny, very strange—and spectacularly full of herself.

#deborahlevy #gertrudestein #bookstagram #literaryfiction #womenwriters by @daphne.reads.stuff

The South by Tash Aw
@4thestatebooks

Book eleven of my @thebookerprizes longlist marathon!

Tash Aw’s The South follows Jay Lim, who at sixteen travels with his family from the city to a rural farm they’ve inherited after his grandfather’s death. The shift is dramatic: failing crops, drought, economic uncertainty, and the uneasy quiet of a landscape that feels both familiar and estranging. Over one formative summer, Jay grows close to Chuan, the farm manager’s son, and their friendship becomes a site of emotional and sexual awakening. Around them, his family unravels, tensions simmer beneath the heat, memories surface, and the land itself seems to echo their instability. This novel is the first in a planned quartet tracing the Lim family across generations.

Aw’s prose is gorgeously restrained; he builds atmosphere with precision, letting heat, stillness, and silence do much of the narrative work. The landscape is vividly drawn and often feels as alive as the characters. Themes of memory, inheritance, desire, and the slow violence of change are handled with care. I admired how Aw approaches sexuality and class difference with nuance, never sensationalizing.

However, despite the beauty of the writing, I struggled to connect with the characters. Their emotional lives remained muted, and I often felt more like an observer than a participant. This distance may be intentional, Jay narrates in retrospect, which flattens immediacy, but it left me wanting a deeper sense of interiority. I suspect some of this will unfold across future volumes, yet on its own, this novel felt slightly incomplete.

Still, I’m intrigued to see where Aw takes the Lim family next. Have you read it? What did you think?

#tashaw #thesouth #bookerprize #bookerlonglist2025 #literaryfiction #bookstagram #bookreview #bookrecommendations #booklovers #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #bibliophile #bookaddict #bookobsessed
#bookstagramgreece #diavazo #diavazopantou #vivlio by @daphne.reads.stuff

Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga
@dauntbooks

Book ten of my @thebookerprizes longlist marathon!

Our unnamed narrator is an Albanian-born woman living in New York and working as an interpreter. She accepts a job helping Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, communicate during his therapy sessions; work that begins to unearth her own buried memories and trauma. She also becomes involved with a Kurdish poet, a relationship that leads her into risky decisions and potentially dangerous situations. As her mental state deteriorates, her desire to help others begins to strain her marriage. The book moves between her life in the US and a spontaneous trip back to Albania.

As the title suggests, Xhoga explores how meaning slips between people, languages, and cultures, inviting us to consider what is being misinterpreted: the words, the emotions, the self. Alongside this central thread, the novel probes the cost of empathy, where (and whether) boundaries should exist when helping others, especially when one carries one’s own trauma. Themes of immigrant identity, home, and belonging run throughout.

I’m very glad the longlist brought this book into the spotlight, I might not have encountered it otherwise. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Xhoga’s next work!

Have you read it? What did you think?

#lediaxhoga #misinterpretation #bookerprize #bookerlonglist2025 #literaryfiction #bookstagram #bookreview #bookrecommendations #booklovers #readersofinstagramً #bookcommunity #bibliophile #bookaddict #bookobsessed
#diavazo #diavazopantou #bookstagramgreece #vivlio by @daphne.reads.stuff

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
@faberbooks

Book nine of my @thebookerprizes longlist marathon, and one of the most divisive titles this year, especially after making the shortlist.

I loved this novel and think it’s one of the most misunderstood books on the longlist. The comparison to All Fours by Miranda July doesn’t do it justice.

Tom drives his youngest daughter to Pittsburgh to start university and, once she’s settled, keeps driving instead of going home. With the nest now empty, he’s forced to confront the life he’s built. He’s middle-aged, his marriage is hanging by a thread after a betrayal he hasn’t forgiven, his career is in limbo (a fact he’s hiding), and he refuses to face a troubling health issue.

What happens when you wake up and realize that many of your life choices may have been wrong? When every attempt you make, as a partner, parent, colleague, friend, is misunderstood, no matter your good intentions? Markovits lets us inhabit the inner life of a man we might easily judge or dismiss, reminding us that people, and their failures, are layered and complex.

As A. Preston wrote in The Guardian:

“… it’s a devastating book that lays bare the way time calcifies our failures, how we find ourselves trapped not by circumstance but by the slow erosion of the will to escape.”

One passage that sums Tom up:

“You spend your life as a guy getting shamed for objectifying women, and then you have a daughter and you’re supposed to stand back and let her spend however long she wants in front of the bathroom mirror, basically turning herself into an object. Well, whatever.”

Put the negative comments aside and give this a try. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

#benmarkovits #therestofourlives #bookerprize #bookerlonglist2025 #bookershortlist #literaryfiction #bookstagram #bookreview #bookrecommendations #booklovers #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #bibliophile #bookaddict #bookobsessed
#bookstagramgreece #diavazo #diavazopantou #vivlio #readthisbook by @daphne.reads.stuff

Love Forms by Claire Adam
@faberbooks

Book eight of my @thebookerprizes longlist reading marathon!

I wouldn’t have picked this one if it wasn’t on the list, but I’m glad I did.

Sixteen-year-old Dawn is forced by her family to make a suspicious, dangerous boat trip from Trinidad to Venezuela. There, she gives birth to a baby girl who is immediately given up for adoption. Dawn and her family continue as if nothing ever happened.

Years later, we catch up with our protagonist and narrator in London. Now middle-aged, divorced, and mother to two adult sons, she has never forgotten the child she left behind and has begun searching for her.

Adam’s prose is restrained and precise. The first-person voice explores how that early rupture has shaped Dawn’s identity and relationships, the things families choose not to speak about, and what it’s like to live with a wound that can’t be named.

Dawn’s quiet, almost avoidant voice amplifies everything she doesn’t say; the contrast between her public, everyday life and her internal one intensifies the surrounding silence. I also loved the cultural texture, Trinidadian influences and the experience of migrant life in London.

Have you read it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

#claireadam #loveforms #bookerprize #bookerlonglist2025 #literaryfiction
#bookstagram #bookreview #bookrecommendations #booklovers #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #bibliophile #bookaddict #bookobsessed
#bookstagramgreece #diavazo #diavazopantou #vivlio by @daphne.reads.stuff

One Boat by Jonathan Buckley
@fitzcarraldoeditions

Book seven of my @thebookerprizes longlist reading marathon!

I have mixed feelings about this one. When I first read One Boat back in late August, I found it elegant, intellectually stimulating, and quietly absorbing, but I felt something was missing. Then again, I was deep in my Booker frenzy, plus I had just finished A Separation by Katie Kitamura, a novel with a similar Greek setting.

Yesterday, skimming through the e-book and the passages I’d highlighted, I couldn’t help but wonder: in my reading mania, had I not done this book justice? I’m pretty sure that’s the case.

Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast to come to terms with her father’s death. A few years earlier, she had come to the same place mourning her mother. The narrative unfolds non-linearly, moving between scenes from both trips, entries from her journal, dream sequences, and her everyday encounters with the locals.

This fragmentation, together with the absence of dramatic events, mirrors the novel’s central concerns: grief and loss, the fluid and unreliable nature of memory, and questions of identity, responsibility, and free will.

By weaving together journal entries, dreams, and recollections, Buckley invites us to ask whose story we are actually reading. Is Teresa writing a private journal, drafting a book, or are we witnessing the author’s reimagining of her words? The final chapter, in which Teresa’s manuscript is critiqued by another writer, only deepens this ambiguity and beautifully complicates the relationship between experience and its representation.

I’m genuinely sad that One Boat didn’t make the shortlist. It’s a quiet, luminous novel that deserves far more readers than it’s likely to find. I know I’ll return to it and I’ll be recommending it to friends.

Have you read it? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

#jonathanbuckley #oneboat #bookerprize #bookerlonglist2025 #literaryfiction
#bookstagram #bookreview #bookrecommendations #booklovers #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #bibliophile #bookaddict #bookobsessed by @daphne.reads.stuff

Flashlight by Susan Choi
@vintagebooks

This was the sixth book in @thebookerprizes longlist marathon we got into with @tasosreads and now it has made it into the shortlist!

Serk, a Korean man who grew up in Japan during WWII and later became a professor at an American university, mysteriously disappears on a Japanese beach. Decades later, his absence still casts its light, and shadow, on those he left behind: Louisa, his daughter who was with him that night, and Anne, his American wife. Through their voices, and that of the somewhat irritating Tobias (Anne’s son given up for adoption), we slowly come to understand what happened.

An ambitious novel about belonging, memory, and the way history shapes ordinary lives across generations, Flashlight dazzles with Choi’s writing, every page holds a sentence you want to underline. I loved the layered plotline and how the story unfolds through shifting perspectives.

What didn’t quite work for me was how heavily the flashlight metaphor was used, by the end it felt a bit too obvious. I also struggled with Louisa’s half-brother: his role felt underdeveloped, and sometimes his involvement made key plot turns feel a little too convenient. And though I usually love long novels, this one could have been shorter; some beautifully written passages didn’t add much to the story or to the characters.

Still, I had a wonderful time reading Flashlight. It kept me curious until the very end, and I can see why it’s on the Booker shortlist: it’s ambitious, haunting, and full of light and shadow in all the right ways.

#flashligh #susanchoi #bookerprize #bookerlonglist2025 #bookershortlist2025 #literaryfiction
#bookstagram #bookreview #bookrecommendations #booklovers #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #bibliophile #bookaddict #bookobsessed by @daphne.reads.stuff

Flesh by David Szalay
@vintagebooks

What is it like to be (just) a body of flesh in the world?

Book 5 in my @thebookerprizes 2025 longlist marathon with @tasosreads !

When I first opened Flesh by David Szalay, I wasn’t convinced. The prose felt stripped back, and István, the protagonist, so muted; he mostly says “yeah, no, maybe.” How could a story like that hold me?

But page by page, it did. As István drifts from a confused teenager to an equally adrift middle-aged man, Szalay shows what it’s like to live without drive, letting chance, setbacks, and other people’s expectations push you along. It’s unsettling because we’re used to protagonists with purpose, yet strangely hypnotic.

While often described as a novel about masculinity, Flesh reaches much further: it’s about trauma, class, racism, politics, desire, and the things we can’t quite put into words. As Szalay himself says:

“So it would be, to some extent, a novel about contemporary Europe, and about the cultural and economic divides that characterise it. I also wanted to write about life as a physical experience… whatever divides us, we all share that.”

Raw, quiet, and expansive, I’m definitely expecting to see this one on the shortlist next week. Have you read Flesh? Let’s talk about it!

#flesh #davidszalay #bookerprize #bookerlonglist2025 #bookerpredictions2025 #literaryfiction
#bookstagram #bookreviewer #bookreview #bookrecommendations #booklovers #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #bibliophile #bookaddict #bookobsessed by @daphne.reads.stuff

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
@vikingbooksuk

Is artistic expression the root of personal salvation, a refuge from a mundane life, or a way to both make amends and escape tradition?

Book 4 down in my @thebookerprizes 2025 longlist marathon with @tasosreads , another one I was especially excited for!

Thomas Flett, a young man in his early 20s, lives with his mother in an English coastal town, sometime around the 1960s. He works as a shanker, scraping for shrimp with a horse and cart to barely making a living, a trade inherited from his grandfather. All the while, he dreams of being a folk musician, though he lacks the courage to share that passion publicly. Into Thomas’s drab, repetitive existence steps a glamorous American film director scouting locations. Hiring Thomas as a guide promises escape, inspiration, and a glimpse beyond his rigid world.

Through visceral, sensory, and poetic prose, Wood draws our attention to the minutiae of daily life; harnessing a horse, cooking, the gritty physicality of shanking and coastal labor. All those mundane details become lyrical and emotionally charged.

A short book that can be read in a day or two (just as its story takes place in only a few days), Seascraper captivates with beautiful descriptions and impeccable atmosphere, while making you contemplate on issues of class, family, art, dreams and love.

Have you read Seascraper yet or are you planning to? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

#benjaminwood #seascraper #bookerprize #bookerlonglist2025 #literaryfiction
#bookstagram #bookreview #bookrecommendations #booklovers #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #bibliophile #bookaddict #bookobsessed by @daphne.reads.stuff

$Endling, Maria Reva @viragopress What does it mean to be the last of your kind? Maria Reva’s Endling wrestles with that question on every level, from endangered snails to the survival of stories during war. Book 3 down in my @thebookerprizes 2025 longlist marathon with @tasosreads , this one I was especially excited for! The blurb sounded fascinating, and Maria Reva’s Endling didn’t disappoint in ambition. It’s a daring, inventive novel that tackles so much at once: environmental collapse and extinction, the mail-order bride industry and women’s precarious positions within it, the colonial logic behind global power politics, and finally, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the difficult, conflicted role of the artist writing from afar. I admired the book’s satire, its sharp humor, and above all its courage to fracture itself when war enters the frame. The metafictional turn works brilliantly in theory to underline the impossibility of telling a neat story when reality is ruptured. And yet… as much as I appreciated its ambition, Endling didn’t fully work for me. The metafictional break, though powerful, tipped a bit too far for my taste. Still, I’m left impressed by its scope, its audacity, and its refusal to let readers stay comfortable. Have you read Endling yet or are you planning to? I’d love to hear your thoughts! #endling #mariareva #thebookerprize2025 #thebookerprize #metafiction #satiricalfiction #experimentalfiction #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookreview #bookdiscussion #readersofinstagram #bookishthoughts #litfiction #contemporaryfiction #bookstagramcommunity by @daphne.reads.stuff$

Audition, @_katiekitamura  @vintagebooks
Book 2 of the @thebookerprizes 2025 longlist reading marathon we have going on with @tasosreads
Katie Kitamura’s Audition left me lingering in uncertainty and I loved every bit of it! My favorite book of the longlist so far and possibly a new favorite author (after finishing Audition I bought and immediately read A Separation).
What struck me most was the narrator’s precise, almost restrained voice, paired with prose that feels both elegant and unsettling. So many events and issues remain unresolved; we never quite know what’s true, or how (or if) the two parts of the novel connect. And yet, that ambiguity is exactly what makes the book so compelling.
Kitamura mirrors the position of the interpreter: always translating, always in between, never fully inside or outside the moment. The novel thrives on gaps, silences, and what’s left unsaid, and it asks us to live with not knowing.
Reading it felt like stepping into a space where clarity isn’t the goal, but attention is. And for me, that was more powerful than any resolution could ever be. As the author says in her interview on #thebookerprize : “Reading the book requires holding two separate versions of events in your head at the same time. It’s either/or, and also and. As a culture, we’re becoming quite bad at holding a contradiction in our heads. And yet we live in a time of profound and increasing cognitive dissonance”.
#audition #katiekitamura #thebookerprize2025 #fiction #literaryfiction #bookawards  #bookstagram #books #bookrecommendations #booklover #reading #readingtime  #favoritebook #favoriteauthor by @daphne.reads.stuff

Universality, Natasha Brown
@faberbooks

Book 1 of the @thebookerprizes 2025 longlist reading marathon we have going on with @tasosreads

Natasha Brown’s Universality gripped me from the start. Its sharp structure and propulsive plot made it impossible to put down. Each new chapter shifts perspective, and with every change the “truth” of what came before is destabilized, reframed, sometimes contradicted. The result is both disorienting and exhilarating.

What struck me most, though, is the biting satire. No one is spared, woke or unwoke, left or right, radical or conservative, every stance is exposed, questioned, even mocked. And beneath all of this Brown calls us to think about language itself; its power, its slipperiness, and how easily it can be twisted to serve those who use it.

As the author herself says in her interview on #thebookerprize : “I’m deeply interested in the ways people talk and write – and how the lines between truth and fiction, or real life and entertainment, can become blurred. Universality explores these ideas by shining a light on people who are exceptionally good at using their words: for power, profit, or shaping cultural narratives”.

Sharp, funny, and unsettling, Universality is a novel that refuses to let you stay comfortable. Although I still have a few books left to complete the longlist, it definitely makes it into my shortlist!

#universality #natashabrown #thebookerprize2025
#bookstagram #fiction #newbook #books #bookrecommendations #justread
#bookworm #booklover by @daphne.reads.stuff

Daphne

@daphne.reads.stuff