Books of the Month: Women Trouble

The Independent

May 29, 2020

According to the glossary of Middle English at the end of Matthew Kneale’s Pilgrims (Atlantic Books), a “quarantine” is a “period of forty days” – so they clearly had shorter lockdowns in the 13th century. Kneale’s suspenseful historical novel is about a ragtag band of travellers who set off from England to Rome in 1289, finding plenty of adventure and sex along the way. The most startling entry in the glossary, however, is the revelation that those in the bad habit of seducing women from religious orders were known as “nun treaders”. 

Female suffering – and bravery – are themes running through some of the best novels and non-fiction books in June, another month in which publishers, booksellers and authors have battled the knock-on effects of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Judy Batalion has written a fascinating history about a little-known group who took on the Nazis. In The Light of Days: Women Fighters of the Jewish Resistance (Virago), Batalion tells the untold story of the “ghetto girls” who carried out espionage missions, bombed German train lines and assassinated Gestapo chiefs. The individual tales of these courageous young women are remarkable. 

The Seduction by Joanna Briscoe (Bloomsbury) is a gripping thriller about a woman who becomes entangled in an obsessive, toxic relationship with her female therapist. There are also tense thrillers from Gilly Macmillan (To Tell You the Truth, Century) and Louise Candlish (The Other Passenger, Simon & Schuster). Popular women writers with new fiction out this month include Karen Hamilton (The Last Wife, Wildfire), Joanna Nadin (The Talk of Pram Town, Mantle) and Jenny Oliver (The Summer We Ran Away, Harper Collins). 

Among the best debut novels this month are This Happy, a story about relationships by Niamh Campbell (W&N), and Nick Bradley’s intriguing The Cat and the City (Atlantic Books), which explores the dark underbelly of Japan. 

Another strong new release is David Trueba’s Rolling Fields (W&N), which is translated from the Spanish by Rahul Berry. This incisive novel is a bittersweet account of 40-year-old Dani Mosca’s road trip back to his childhood village after the death of his father. 

 Perhaps the most offbeat offering is Emmy-winning TV writer David Quantick’s darkly funny horror story Night Train (Titan Books), in which a woman wakes up in a carriage full of corpses – including two teenage girls with “mobiles placed carefully in their laps like precious dolls”. The horrifying creatures riding the rails have eerie stories to tell. 

A memoir from writer Susanne Moore and new fiction from Nikita Lalwani, TM Logan, Brit Bennett and Charlotte Wood are reviewed in full below.