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Journalist, Editor-in-Chief of BookBrunch, reader, book pusher, writer-for-hire, event chair. Fond of a frock and an adjective. Newsletter: Book(ish)

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“I want to talk to you. For the rest of my days”

Stephanie Sy-Quia is the granddaughter of a Catholic priest who left holy orders to marry a laywoman. This is a fictionalised version of their love - and it makes for a beautiful, thoughtful, quietly brilliant novel. (It would have been a worthy addition to the Booker longlist.) It shows that even the satisfaction of a deep mutual love comes at a cost.

Margaret is sensual, fearless, clever - one of the first laywomen to study at Regina Mundi, a theology college in Rome. Sent back to the UK to lecture at a women’s college, she meets David - a “startlingly handsome” Catholic priest. Theirs is a marriage of minds before their bodies begin to keen towards each other.

This is set against the present, in which Margaret’s grandson, Adrian, tends to her with gentle grace, as her mind unravels into dementia. It makes the details of their love spark against the darkness of the end. There is such poignancy in the vibrancy of the younger Margaret - who burns so brightly and feels so deeply - and the price she and David paid for their love: ostracisation from the church and the country. by @natashapoliszczuk

As we enter what I fondly refer to as Brambly Hedge season, I give you a fine selection of the best wintery reads.

Not necessarily books to curl up with (cosy is not a pre-requisite here) but novels which are, for me, steeped in winter itself.

I was inspired by the first two titles: two excellent new reads.

As ever, this is by no means comprehensive so do feel free to add your favourites in the comments! by @natashapoliszczuk

$How’s your emotional state? Feeling chipper and perky? Recovered from Clare Leslie Hall’s Broken Country? Well, brace your heart - because it’s about break all over again with The Bright Years. The Bright Years is the story of a family that stretches over decades. Ryan and Lillian meet in the library, tumble into love and marriage, and have a baby, Georgette - Jet - and exist in a haze of love. But both carry secrets: Lillian had a son, who she gave up for adoption; Ryan - the son of an abusive alcoholic he loathes and the woman he adores who escaped with him - is struggling with his own addiction to drink. It swings from soaring highs to a shattering low, which fractures the family. This is a very human novel, which deals in grief and the destructive pinball effect of inherited trauma and alcoholism on a family. But before you sink into a decline, there are strong woman, chosen families, second chances, hope - and the possibility of redemption. Told via shifting viewpoints it builds a portrait of a family - who are broken and yet reminded me of kintsugi - the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold leaf to make something beautiful - and new. I must thank my friends @tillylovesbooks of @tillylovesbooks and @georginamooreauthor for recommending it. (And the ensuing emotional turmoil.) by @natashapoliszczuk$

What’s better than a brillant historical murder mystery? A triumvirate of brilliant historical murder mysteries. (And some outsize baubles.)

Get your bells jingling at PG Wells on 18 November with festive treats, three exceptional authors and merry, murderous chat. I am campaigning for a tree and may even dress as an elf. I’ll share the ticket link on stories or head to PG Wells website for all the details.

• Murder on the Royal Crescent - Harriet Evans - Dora Wildwood is back in this frankly glorious, witty, irresistibly charming festive mystery set in beautiful Bath.
• Pride, Prejudice and Peril - Jessica Bull - Jane Austen makes an impeccable (and very witty) sleuth on the trail of a blackmailer - and a murderer - in the next instalment of Jessica’s terrific Miss Austen Investigates.
• The Christmas Tree Murders - Katie Lumsden - Death at a Victorian Christmas house party - the very idea thrills me and Katie executes it with dazzling panache. by @natashapoliszczuk

Now that is what I call a sky full of possibility*. Ever since I interviewed Liz Earle at a literary festival, I’ve adhered to her mantra ‘sky before screen’. It’s a far more gentle, spirit-lifting way to start the day rather than diving into the day’s news.

(Admittedly, this is still my next step, but the sky comes first.)

*Not this morning. This’s morning’s is a sky full of rain. by @natashapoliszczuk

Or some of them!

I was talking to someone about the seminal books of my childhood and teenage years - the ones that made me a reader, fired my love of books and shaped my sensibility. This is an incomplete list: wither Shirley Hughes?! (I learned to read thanks to Lucy and Tom go to School.) But it is solidly representative. i might write more of this on my Substack.

What about you? I’d LOVE to hear about the books which shaped your reading - and childhood/teen years. by @natashapoliszczuk

Them: Why don’t you have a wild social life? Go to the gym? Watch that series which everyone is talking about?
Me. Have you seen my TBR pile?

Recent acquisitions from delightful publishing friends - the best type of people because they keep you in books. by @natashapoliszczuk

What a book!* I heard Barbara Kingsolver on Radio 4, saying that she was frequently asked how on earth you follow Demon Copperhead. Her reply? “With a little love story”. Well, it’s a love story, alright, but I’m not sure how little it is.

Partita moves between the present and the past, encompassing multitudes: grief, the complexity of families, love - from the toxic to the redemptive, and music as a passion, a religion, an obsession.

Livia Cable is a middle-aged piano teacher who lives quietly on a dairy farm with her decent, devoted husband Charlie, but in her youth she was - like Kingsolver - a piano prodigy whose myopic drive and dazzling talent propelled her to a music conservatory in Indiana. She left behind her silent father, her emotionally frigid mother, and a house haunted by the absence of her brother. But fate conspired to compel her reluctant return: she makes ominous reference to a “ruined” right hand; there is the brief line, “I’d carried a child”, cast into a deep well - you listen for the echo.

At college, she met Sigurd - a passion which burned with such intensity it exploded her life - and her nascent career. Now, he wants to return and make a reckoning of sorts.

I am not the only reader to find that Livia reminds me, almost irresistibly so, of Hardy’s Tess. At one section of the novel, tragedy upon misfortune are heaped upon Livia by fate and an unsympathetic world. I turned the pages in a fever.

*Also: what a woman Kingsolver is. One of those who does genuine good. by @natashapoliszczuk

I know there are far, far more important things going on in the world, and yet here I am, rearranging my bookshelves. You may recall I recognised them by author surname to help my ageing brain. But did it please my eyes? It did not. So back up the ladder I went. This time I’ve ordered them alphabetically within their hue. Let us hope this pleases both the demands of my mind and my eye.

Doubtless there will be some judgmental types who think you cannot possibly be a ‘real’ reader with shelves arranged thus. To them I say “What nonsense!” in a brisk manner: you can be both a serious reader and passionate about the aesthetics of your books. I know it’s unfashionable in this age of binary opinions, but two things can be true at the same time.

NB I have a Big Birthday next year and a library ladder is atop my wish list. by @natashapoliszczuk

An obsession is born.

I must thank @zaraklak for sending me Mary Lawson’s Solace in Winter - for it has sparked a new literary love affair. It was so remarkable, I finished it and promptly ordered more Mary. She is one of those writers who - like Ann(e)s Patchett and Tyler - writes with deep compassion, wisdom and stunning emotional acuity. She sees much, somehow conveying the innermost workings of the heart and how lives become knitted together. She knows about the fathoms-deep feelings that linger in even the quietest life and the seemingly ordinary moments on which lives turn. I’m almost ashamed of myself for not discovering her sooner. (She’s been Booker long-listed, but is - to my mind - criminally undersung.)

In Solace in Winter, Jack is a widower, who lives along in a cabin in the small Canadian town of Solace. He has sunk into a solitary existence - until he discovers a stray dog, and finds himself responsible for her convalescence. And then Chris, a young draft dodger (the Vietnam war found droves of young Americans seeking refuge over the border) is found, injured, and becomes Jack’s second house guest. Gradually, Jack’s life beings to unfurl with unexpected consequences. This is a quiet, graceful masterpiece.

I’ve also read Crow Lake - the story of the four Morrison siblings, whose lives are cruelly upended with their parents are killed in a car crash. It is a tender story of sacrifice and love, which - I am pleased to note because at times I was worried - lifted my heart.

I’m now onto A Town Called Solace and my greedy eye has Mary’s other novels - The Other Side of the Bridge and Road Ends - in my sights. by @natashapoliszczuk

The turn of the season - the swirl of falling leaves, the lash of rain, the nip in the air - is the perfect time to return to academia. The school book is (or it was for me) a rite-of-passage classic: The Chalet School! Trebizon! Bliss.

School and campus-set novels are a classic autumnal read. Be it a campus romp, dark academia, boarding school or ivory towers, I cannot resist. I’ve rounded up some of my favourites - although I realise I have forgotten Lucky Jim and David Lodge’s Campus Trilogy. Tut, tut. Miss Brodie would give me a Hard Stare.

(Also, the outfits in this photo are splendid.) by @natashapoliszczuk

I cannot believe I have yet to talk about this - a novel I enjoyed even more than Bonnie Garmus’s zillion-selling debut, Lessons in Chemistry. Here is a novelist who gives every impression of having a glorious time. Peck & Peck is exuberant, clever, and paints a world so vivid it is a joy to step inside it. It stands against the march of AI and the theft of ideas and words. It champions creativity, imagination, humanity and love. In other words: it is just what we need right now. (Published 13 October so not long to wait.)

Batter Gray (named after his mother’s preternaturally intelligent dog, about whom she spins what are surely apocryphal tales) is young, idealistic - and broke. He longs to work at Peck & Peck, the legendary poetry journal housed in the Aviary – an Aladdin’s cave of wonder - where poets are made, or broken. By a fluke of fate, Batter accidentally lands a job - not on the hallowed editorial floor in the post room. From here he observes the wildly dysfunctional goings-on, the power struggles between editors, the desperate poets longing for a career-making, and the ruthlessly hierarchical set-up, headed by Saton Peck who is an absolute megalomaniacal monster. (And m have been a hoot to write.) He has ousted his twin brother and has dastardly plans to turn Peck & Peck from lauded journal to commercial empire, with one eye on the emperor’s new clothes syndrome. Could Batter Gray be the unlikely hero poetry (and creativity) requires?

I loved diffident, at times hapless Batter, who grows into himself, and I adored his mother, Rainey, an Elizabeth Zott type: upright, truthful, a catalyst for change and good. There is a courtroom scene in which she is so spectacular, I waned to leap up and punch the air. (It’s also very funny.)

(Featuring two of the writers who converted young me to the delights of poetry - Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson - and some truly excellent pencils.) by @natashapoliszczuk

Natasha Poliszczuk

@natashapoliszczuk