New to the Stacks!
Published on 20th October 2020
Welcome to the fifteenth entry of our blog series 'Lost in the Stacks' - with recommendations by Dublin City Libraries staff. This one was submitted by Jessica from Cabra Library. There is nothing I love more than settling in to read a new book but my biggest problem (apart from time being finite and never quite have enough of it to dedicate to exclusively reading for pleasure) is always what to choose first.
I have been working in public libraries for many years now and I love to see all the new books coming in and seeing what’s popular by hearing about what our library users are reading and what they are reserving. I read a lot, I don’t always finish a book, sometimes I put something down to come back to it days, weeks or months later, and not everything I read is worth recommending so what I’m telling you about here are the books I have read lately that have had me hooked from the first page.
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo
Who is Kim Jiyoung? A girl, a sister, a daughter, a wife, a mother, someone who is always defined by her relationship to the men in her life, bewildered by the limits put on her life by cultural and institutional misogyny. While some of the constraints in her life are particular to South Korea, most women will recognise the frustration Kim Jiyoung faces at almost every stage of her life - when blamed for being harassed on public transport or becoming the primary caregiver for her child by default and having to leave behind her career. This a fictionalised account of one woman’s life but it has a documentary feel as the text is footnoted throughout with references to statistics and reports that support the issues within the story. An unusual but powerful book.
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
This is the third and final book in Hilary Mantel’s engrossing and brilliant Tudor series about the life of Thomas Cromwell that she began with Wolf Hall in 2009 . This book opens with the beheading of Anne Boleyn and it is a grim scene that sets the tone for the rest of the novel - for all his wealth and standing Cromwell is still vulnerable to the whim of a petulant monarch and does not have a noble family to protect him. This book is totally immersive, exhaustively researched and excels in sensory description - from the depictions of lavish meals, the sumptuous clothes worn by the lords and ladies of the court and even to the details of houses, streets and gardens that make you feel as if you could step into them. There is an enormous amount of characters and plots and subplots to keep track of and before I started reading this I briefly considered rereading the first two books but Mantel writes so skilfully and weaves all the threads together so adeptly that once I was a chapter or so in I was able to follow the narrative trajectory and just really enjoyed being transported to a different time and place.
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
The many possibilities of the lives we lead are what seem to fascinate Emily St. John Mandel. Fleeting intersections and connections that can alter the course of a life are explored here along with meditations on the nature of grief, guilt and moral responsibility for the world we live in. Vincent is a bartender in a hotel before she becomes a rich man’s companion before she works on a cargo ship before she disappears. Throughout her many lives she films precise 5 minute videos of her surroundings. Her older brother Paul is also adrift, an addict and a composer, who is responsible for the shocking graffiti acid-etched on an enormous glass window of the 5 star hotel where they both work briefly. The graffiti is intended for the eyes of an enormously wealthy businessman and investor, who is himself responsible for the financial ruin of his investors through a Ponzi scheme. The story loops back and forth over an extended time period as the main characters lives cross and intertwine before separating out again. There is a dreamy quality to this book, as the narrative is shifting constantly through time and space and some of the character’s inner lives remain opaque and unknowable but the writing is precise and clear and a joy to read.
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
If you’ve ever felt the buzz of being in a new city, where it feels like a particular place is so full of life and is packed with so much history and stories that it has a distinct essence of its own then this could be the book for you. If you also enjoy sci-fi and fantasy stories involving abstract concepts embodied in human form battling tentacled inter-dimensional monsters then this is definitely the book for you. The central premise of The City We Became is that a great city can be an entity in itself and chooses a human avatar to embody itself. This book opens when New York (and its boroughs) are about to dramatically come to life but there is some unforeseen opposition and an ancient enemy is about to make itself known. This book is an action packed whirlwind of energy and stories that I found myself unable to put down, racing towards the end, wanting more (luckily this is the first in a trilogy!). I loved both the idea behind this book and the characters in it - there is a rich and diverse cast of characters from different ethnic backgrounds, both new and native New Yorkers, and Jemisin chronicles the racism and micro aggressions that their characters have to deal with daily while also trying to save the world from Lovecraftian horrors.
I came to this book as an occasional true crime reader but in truth it’s so much more interesting than a rehashing of the Jack the Ripper story. This book focuses on the lives of the five women murdered by Jack the Ripper and is a deep dive into the social history of the time and an exploration of the lives of working class women and girls of the Victorian Era. Historian Hallie Rubenhold convincingly makes the case that these five women were rough sleepers in the wrong place at the wrong time. She draws on primary resources like census records and documents from institutional archives to build a fascinating picture of these five women, how they lived and the devastating consequences of poverty, social upheaval and misogyny that lead to their murders. There’s a lot of information in this book to take in but it’s written in an accessible way and the humanity and empathy of the writer shines through. Ideal to listen to as an audio book.
You can find more staff picks at the Cabra Library Goodreads page.