Aruba’s colonial history also meant documents were spread all over the place. “Our collection was scattered,” says Edric Croes, the head of archival conservation and management at the National Archives of Aruba. There were works to be scanned across the world, including in the Netherlands, Spain, the United States, and other islands like Curaçao. Establishing … Read more
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Helen, the mononymous narrator of Marissa Higgins’s new novel, A Good Happy Girl, isn’t anything that by-the-book female protagonists are supposed to be. She’s not perky, perfect, adorkable, or straight—and it’s that genuine complexity that makes her one of the most exciting literary characters in recent memory. A lawyer–slash–foot model, Helen struggles in solitude with … Read more
If you could travel back in time, where would you go, and when? For readers of historical fiction, there’s no need to settle on just one place or period when journeying into the past. At their best, these literary works are deft and authentic—rigorously researched but effortlessly executed. They introduce you to figures whose concerns … Read more
In the early 1970s, the artist Audrey Flack traveled to the Basílica de la Macarena in Seville, Spain, to see a carved-wood statue called Macarena Esperanza, a polychrome depiction of a weeping Virgin Mary adorned with jewels, crystal tears, and false eyelashes. Flack is Jewish, but she was no less overcome by the Macarena’s sorrowful … Read more
Amazon is giving shoppers the chance to bag three months of audiobooks for just 99p and the options are seemingly endless. Audible is the shopping giant’s audiobook service and would usually set you back £7.99 a month for one credit which you can cash in for any book on the site – which includes bundles … Read more
The idea of “going home” is, for many members of the LGBTQ+ community, a complicated one. Take, for example, Akúa, the protagonist of Christina Cooke’s debut novel, Broughtupsy, who returns to Jamaica from Canada to connect with her sister after the loss of their younger brother. Akúa is soon forced to question what it means … Read more
We like to think of this list of the best books of 2024 as the anti-algorithm, a collection of highly specific, highly individual, and somewhat eclectic books. (Our interests are varied! Make no mistake.) At a moment when the act of curation threatens to be overwhelmed by whatever cookies you’ve unflinchingly accepted to track your … Read more
“Like Scheherazade…I know I can only be powerful if people are listening, and I must be powerful if I want to survive,” Cameron Russell writes in How to Make Herself Agreebale to Everyone: A Memoir. When we meet Russell, who would become a world-famous supermodel by the mid-2000s, she is still a sporty teenage Bostonite … Read more
Millions of holidaymakers have chosen a destination based on a book they’ve read – with “Under the Tuscan Sun”, by Frances Mayes, named as the top inspiration. A study of 2,000 adults found one in four have booked a holiday in order to visit a location referenced in a novel. Some of the most popular … Read more
Putting the book together and conceiving of arguing something over various essays was kind of a different process, though. There are so many different threads in the book. In a poetry book, I can kind of just lay all those threads out, whereas with this one, I felt more compelled to do some braiding and … Read more
