5 new books to read this week

Award-winning writers George Saunders and Ali Smith return with thought-provoking new works…

Fiction

Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray is published in hardback by W&N, priced £20 (ebook £9.99). Available January 29

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Madeleine Gray (@madeleine_gray_)

In the early Noughties Nell and Eve are both chronic misfits. Friendless, with shoddy parents, they’re at the mercy of the ‘cool’ kids at their fancy all-girls school. But in each other they find a powerful respite, which, when it fractures, damages them both seemingly irrevocably. Fast forward and Eve, 30, is parenting her daughter Lake, alone, grappling with being the queer mum at pick-up and thoroughly missing her co-parent Nell. Madeleine Gray perfectly captures the agonies of young adulthood and the torture of trying to find your place in the world, especially if you’re gay and have kids young too. She asks compelling questions about what it means to be – and make – a family, but the mystery of why Nell has left Eve and Lake is somewhat drawn out, and both Eve and Nell are frustrating at times (just tell each other how you feel already!!!), but Chosen Family is an engrossing look at the blurriness of love.
7/10
Review by Ella Walker

Vigil by George Saunders is published in hardback by Bloomsbury Publishing, priced £18.99 (ebook £8.03). Available now

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Random House (@randomhousebooks)

Vigil is American author George Saunders’ first full-length novel since he won the Booker Prize in 2017 with Lincoln in the Bardo. Death and the afterlife remain his focus in this slim story about a dying oil tycoon/tyrant whose last hours are spent being visited by spirits from his past, distraught family members and an ‘elevated’ spirit whose job it is to provide comfort as he passes on. He’s too curmudgeonly for much comfort though, and as we learn more about the duplicitous, world-wrecking life he’s led and the impact he’s had on humanity’s future, the consensus is he doesn’t deserve it either. The premise is compelling, but it’s hard to extricate yourself from simply analysing Saunders’ writing craft and the way he constructs sentences. You can imagine this novel appearing on A-level syllabuses in the very near future, and so, while it’s a worthy, meaty, prescient read, it also feels a little like hard work.
6/10
Review by Ella Walker

Glyph by Ali Smith is published in hardback by Hamish Hamilton, priced £20 (ebook £10.99). Available January 29

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pantheon Books (@pantheonbooks)

A family party and a ghostly story kick off Ali Smith’s latest novel – a sister book to 2024’s dystopian Gliff – that reunites two estranged sisters in a blend of the ethereal and the familiar. The story Petra and Patricia were told as children about a dead, flattened soldier in the depths of France, blends with the tale of a relative shot for desertion during World War I for leaving the trenches to lead a gassed horse to safety. Both stories haunt the sisters, with the elder one insistent she can commune with the crushed soldier from the afterlife. The story resurfaces decades later when Petra believes a ghost horse has upturned her bedroom furniture and eaten her clothing. Despite Smith’s prolific back catalogue, this book disappoints. The promised anti-war theme proves remote, replaced by an unfocused merge of awkward family relations and the supernatural, that leaves more questions than answers.
5/10
Review by Harry Taylor

Non-fiction

What’s Stopping You?: 11 Cheatcodes to Unlock the Life You Want by Timothy Armoo is published in hardback by Michael Joseph, priced £20 (ebook £10.99). Available now

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Timothy Armoo (@timarmoo)

What’s Stopping You? by Timothy Armoo is up there with one of the best business books at the minute. Whether you’re deep in the business industry, are a total beginner or somewhere in between, Armoo makes the whole process of building and executing a business idea extremely easy to understand. Throughout, he gives context to his own story, explaining how his mindset and knack for strategising took him from a South London council estate to selling off a multimillion-pound company before the age of 30. His ‘cheatcodes’ offer realistic advice that isn’t sugar-coated like in many self-help books. He also explains how the stories we tell ourselves on a daily basis shape our lives and what we achieve, as well as how the concept of being original is overrated – all while being a great read.
9/10
Review by Sara Keenan

Children’s book of the week

Tree Thing by Piers Torday, illustrated by Matthew Taylor Wilson, is published in hardback by Quercus Children’s Books, priced £12.99 (ebook £8.49). Available now

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Bright Agency: Publishing (@brightagencypublishing)

You can feel the memory of the illegally felled Sycamore Gap tree, which inspired Piers Torday to write this gentle, heartfelt and piercing ode, throughout Tree Thing. Filled with life, the Tree Thing teems with activity, above and below its roots, until The Rider carves it up and sets fire to its stump. But a clever jay whisks away Tree Thing’s last magical acorn, which is cared for by Marlo and his squirrel sidekick Rinti, in a village where barely a thing will grow. Tended by this funny duo, Tree Thing brings about huge change, life and an abundance of food, but when the Rider with his axe reappears, Marlo must take a stand. Lyrical and humane, Tree Thing is scaffolded by Matthew Taylor Wilson’s atmospheric black and white illustrations, which send out tendrils on every page. A beautiful, moving fable that celebrates caring for, and working with, nature.
8/10
Review by Ella Walker

BOOK CHARTS FOR THE WEEK ENDING

HARDBACK (FICTION)
1. The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
2. Flesh by David Szalay
3. Enchantra by Kaylie Smith
4. Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
5. Brimstone by Callie Hart
6. Exit Strategy by Lee Child & Andrew Child
7. The Artist by Lucy Steeds
8. A Killer In Paradise by Tom Hindle
9. Alchemised by SenLinYu
10. The Mysterious Affair Of Judith Potts by Robert Thorogood
(Compiled by Waterstones)

HARDBACK (NON-FICTION)
1. Protein In 15 by Joe Wicks
2. Always Remember by Charlie Mackesy
3. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins & Sawyer Robbins
4. This Way Up by Map Men
5. Eat Yourself Healthy by Jamie Oliver
6. Private Eye Annual 2025 by Ian Hislop
7. Mary 90 by Mary Berry
8. I Still Believe In Miracles by Lucas Jones
9. A Mind Of My Own by Kathy Burke
10. Mattering by Jennifer Breheny Wallace
(Compiled by Waterstones)

AUDIOBOOKS (FICTION AND NONFICTION)
1. Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
2. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
3. Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
4. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
5. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins
6. We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter
7. My Friends by Fredrik Backman
8. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
9. The Names by Florence Knapp
10. The Mysterious Affair Of Judith Potts by Robert Thorogood
(Compiled by Audible)