This month, Gloucester Road Books are launching a brand new subscription service where customers can sign up to receive a brilliant new book straight to their door every month. Here, the team let us in on what to expect…
“These are five of our favourite books published over the two years since we opened the shop. This feels like the perfect way to celebrate the launch of our new subscription offer, which is a wonderful way to push the boundaries of your reading habits. Each month we’ll select a brilliant book – one we love, can’t stop thinking about, and believe deserves to be widely read. It will be wrapped and delivered to your door so you can have the joy of unwrapping it – like a book‑birthday every month!”
History. A Mess
by Sigrún Pálsdóttir. Translated by Lytton Smith. Published by Peirene Press
Translated from Icelandic, this cerebral and exciting novel is about an academic struggling with a vital issue regarding her thesis. She starts to mistrust her reality, doors appear in rooms, figures start to move in paintings, and she slips in and out of formative memories woven throughout Reykjavik. The writing is unique, intense, and quite brilliant.
Kick the Latch
by Kathryn Scanlan. Published by Daunt Books
This is a beautiful piece of storytelling. Closely based on the life of her subject, Sonia, Scanlan’s writing takes us deep into working class America, into the strange community formed around the horseracing circuit. The voice is perfect and the world is so convincingly told that I was completely bereft to leave it.
Somebody Loves You
by Mona Arshi. Published by And Other Stories
This is perhaps the book I’ve recommended most since the shop opened. A young girl and her older sister struggle against the world around them. Somebody Loves You is elegant and elusive, and also completely brilliant. Each of its precise little vignettes holds an act of micro-resistance against the banality and violence of the world.
The Weak Spot
by Lucie Elven. Published by Prototype Books
Set on a remote mountaintop, somewhere in Europe, The Weak Spot is a wonderfully fable-like story about power, belief and trust. Written in language that hides as much as it reveals, we watch as a delicate struggle between a charismatic pharmacist and his young trainee plays out in front of the townspeople of this beautiful unnamed village.
Ten Planets
by Yuri Herrera. Translated by Lisa Dillman. Published by And Other Stories
For those who haven’t experienced the mind, imagination and creations of Yuri Herrera, his debut short story collection is a great place to start. In Ten Planets, the Mexican writer imagines future worlds to lay bare our present in a style all his own. Witty, alarming and ultimately as thought-provoking as fiction gets, these finely-tuned, brief tales demonstrate why Herrera has become such a worldwide sensation.
To sign up, visit Gloucester Road Books’ website: gloucesterroadbooks.com. Follow them on Instagram: gloucester_rd_books and browse the collection in store: 184 Gloucester Road, Bishopston, BS7 8NU. Open Monday – Tuesday 9.30am – 5pm; Wednesday – Saturday 9.30am – 6pm
