The Terrible
Yrsa Daley-Ward
Penguin, £9.99, pp224
Growing up in a Lancashire town, Yrsa Daley-Ward was seven when her Jamaican single mother sent her to live with her strict Seventh Day Adventist grandparents in an effort to protect her from predatory male attention. She returned after four difficult years, but her adolescence was scarred by involvement with older men, sex work, depression and drugs. This daring coming-of-age memoir is about the fear and power of young female sexuality, plus the magical thinking of children and Yrsa’s endearing relationship with her brother, Roo. Daley-Ward first made her name as an “Instagram poet” but this book – experimental, poetic and profound – confirms her abundant talent as a writer.
I Found My Tribe
Ruth Fitzmaurice
Vintage, £8.99, pp224
Ruth Fitzmaurice’s film-maker husband, Simon, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2008, dying nine years later aged 43. While this award-winning book centres on his story – of illness and heroic resilience despite a desperately reduced life – it is Ruth’s often joyous reflections on life, death and children (she is the mother of five) in the face of suffering that make it a surprisingly uplifting read. Vivid descriptions of nature jump off the page, and Fitzmaurice’s voice is gloriously idiosyncratic, switching from kooky (“My very best friend in the world is a tree. Hello tree”) to robust (“I have decided to become a superhero”) to melancholic (“Does my husband dream of lost kisses?”). Ostensibly a swimming memoir, it is much more than a story of the restorative powers of water.
Florida
Lauren Groff
William Heinemann, £14.99, pp288
A single US state is the anchor for Groff’s latest short story collection, which often features women who are either fighting loneliness or struggling to find space inside their own lives. A character in Eyewall, haunted by ghosts of her past, thinks: “I never thought I could be so alone.” In Ghosts and Empties, a wife leaves her husband to put their sons to bed and takes “night-time walks” that remind her of a bigger world outside. The collection becomes a fictive psychogeography of US life – men and children feature too – and Groff’s storytelling stretches across time (including pre-civil rights Florida) to create a kaleidoscopic portrait of one state.
• To order The Terrible for £8.49, I Found My Tribe for £7.64, or Florida for £12.74, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
