The Summer's Over. Suggestions of What to Read Next.
This is a mood list for early September and getting back on the train when you'd rather be back on a beach.
When you're not ready to go back to work
The Trespasser by Tana French. Tana French writes crime the way other people write literary fiction - the sentences good, the psychology sharp. The plot pulls you through, but it's the voice that keeps you reading past your bedtime. If you need to disappear into a book for two days, this is it.
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak. Three characters across centuries, connected by a single drop of water that remanifests through time. It sounds like a lot, and it is - Shafak doesn't do small. But the ambition is the point. This is a book that demands you sit down and pay attention, which is what you need when your mind won't stop drifting to last week. The Tigris and the Thames run through it, and by the time you surface, you'll have forgotten what day it is.
To while away the commute
Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers. 1960s London, an art therapist, a woman who arrives at a hospital unable to speak. Chambers writes about quiet lives with warmth and precision, and it's gentle book but not bland. It's a style that suits September, when you're raw and tired and you don't want to be shouted at by a book.
You Are Here by David Nicholls. Two lonely people end up walking across England together. That's it. That's the plot. And Nicholls makes it funny, painful, hopeful, and British in a way that makes you laugh on the train and not care who hears. It's the kind of book that makes you look up and think, "I should go for a walk," which is the right feeling for early autumn. Nicholls has been writing about the gap between where people are and where they want to be for his whole career, and this might be his most generous book. It's not a romance. It's a book about two people learning to be in the same place at the same time, which is harder than it sounds and more moving than you'd expect.
The Couple at the Table by Sophie Hannah. For the days when you need something with pace. Honeymooners at an exclusive resort, a warning note slipped under the door, five other couples at dinner, and someone is dead. Hannah writes puzzles the way other people do crosswords, and this one is tight enough to keep you guessing the whole way to work. It's not a book that will change your life. It's a book that will make your commute disappear, and that's enough.
So that's the list. Five books for the return to routine - two for when you can't face the desk, three for when you can't face the train. And if what you need isn't a book for the desk or the commute but something for the first rainy afternoon - something slower, stranger, more atmospheric – watch this space!