I can still remember the lyrics to almost all the songs released by my favourite boyband. Such is the pull of a five-piece collection of handsome crooners when you are a pre-teen girl. While most of us grow up and move on musically and emotionally, others remain devoted aficionados for life. In Emma Straub’s fabulously frothy latest novel, some even go on a cruise themed around their musical idols.
American Fantasy follows new divorcee Annie, booked on to a boat with all five singers and 3,000 adoring fans. Her sister, the more committed Boy Talk fan (for whom, read New Kids on the Block; such cruises are real and Straub has been on one) booked them for a birthday trip. We follow Annie as she navigates the world of extreme fandom, menopausal bitchiness, themed outfits and sugary cocktails, and slowly comes to terms with her stage in life. Meanwhile, Boy Talk star Keith – the dreamy, sensitive one – is on board regretting many of his choices. As an insight into the world of themed cruises, it’s fascinating, but as a grown-up story with a heavy dose of wish fulfilment, it’s the perfect holiday read. Just maybe from dry land.
American Fantasy, by Emma Straub, Michael Joseph
I have walked across the Brooklyn Bridge countless times, but never given much thought to the people who designed and built it. More fool me, because it turns out its creation is a fascinating story, one that Erica Wagner brings to life in a thoughtful way in Wash. Wash is actually Washington Roebling, the chief engineer behind the bridge, who had already enjoyed a storied military career during the civil war before turning his attention to New York’s urban development.
But as is now known – although it was concealed at the time – for most of the bridge’s construction he was seriously ill. His devoted, brilliant, underestimated wife Emily became the conduit between his mind and the world. Emily comes across as the world’s most patient woman, frustrated by her gender and her circumstance, but quietly shaping events nonetheless.
Told from the perspective of husband and wife, and flitting between different moments in Wash’s life – his difficult childhood, his army service, the early years of their marriage – Wagner creates a touching sketch of not one great life, but two.
Wash, by Erica Wagner, Salt
Cancer memoir doesn’t scream beach read, but stay with me, because Annabelle Gurwitch’s book is at times riotously funny. From recounting how she was diagnosed with lung cancer thanks to a well-timed Covid vaccination, to the incident that led to her adult son dubbing her “cancer mom”, or criss-crossing Europe with her new beau and the heavy metal band he manages (while dealing with the unpleasant effects of her medication) Gurwitch brings humour and authenticity to what could otherwise be a pretty dismal period.
Gurwitch, an actor and writer with a thriving social life and an illustrious career, is determined from the outset to be a “cancer slacker” rather than one of those marathon-running types defined by their survival (in one anecdote, she recalls watching the race on her birthday, enjoying coffee and croissants from the sidelines). But in truth she is no slacker, and instead a voice of realism. Her story offers levity, hope and pragmatism in equal measure.
The End of My Life is Killing Me, by Annabelle Gurwitch, Zibby Books
Most romance novels don’t focus on nervous types, says podcaster Brooke Averick in the foreword to Phoebe Berman is Going to Lose it. But Averick’s does, telling the story of the ultimate neurotic type A Jewish woman. Phoebe, a kindergarten teacher, hopeless romantic, and otherwise fully competent adult, is very nearly 30 and still hasn’t managed to outgrow her crippling social anxiety to lose her virginity.
Ever the list-maker, she sets herself a target to change this before her birthday. Luckily there are three hunky suitors on the horizon – but which one is right for her? And will she manage to stay sane in the process? And more, will Phoebe ever get rid of not just her virginity but her terror of intimacy?
You probably know the answer, but romance novels are about the journey, not the destination. Sweet, satisfying and funny, Phoebe is a heroine to root for from the very first page.
Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It, by Brooke Averick, Mountain Leopard Press
Almost nothing about the plot of Death of the Pearl River hangs together, not least the fact that the international man of mystery at the heart of the plot is a slightly nerdy Jewish boy from the East End in Victorian England. But why let realism get in the way of a great yarn?
After a gruesome massacre at Kenwood House, Detective Ben Canaan is apparently the man for the job to go to Hong Kong and work out who is killing a string of powerful men amid battles for control of the opium trade. Having earned his stripes managing a sticky situation in the Ottoman Empire, as told in AE Goldin’s debut Murder in Constantinople, Canaan is trusted with some of the British government official secrets and a hefty expense account.
But when he arrives at this bustling Asian trading post, he realises very little is as it seems. His overlords haven’t necessarily told him everything, and nor are they about to start doing so now. Helped by a flower girl mourning her dead husband, and a few other outcasts, he sets about finding the truth – but at what cost? Goldin is already prepping the third book in this Jewish “boys’ own” adventure series, so you know Canaan will make it, but the boatload of twists and turns will keep you hooked.
Death of the Pearl River, by A.E. Goldin, Pushkin Vertigo
I was halfway through A Fatal Love when I read that Ruth Ellis had been granted a posthumous pardon 70 years after she became the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Given her notoriety, I knew the bare bones of her case – shooting her lover David Blakely outside a pub in Hampstead – but little beyond that. Louisa Treger’s sympathetic portrayal adds a great deal of depth to a woman who was caricatured as immoral and predatory by a hostile media. It also makes you realise how warranted that pardon is.
In Treger’s book, which draws heavily on the many true-crime accounts out there (as is the case with her novel about Picasso’s muse Dora Maar), Ellis has already been left battered and bruised by a series of men when she meets Blakely. But while she falls passionately for him, we all know where this is going and it isn’t pretty. He is a cad, but he’s a privately educated, well-spoken one, and she’s a working-class club hostess.
As Treger makes clear, Ellis wasn’t the first woman to suffer for a man and nor will she be the last. A gripping look back on a woman who may have done wrong, but who also had a good deal of wrong done to her.
A Fatal Love, by Louisa Treger, Bloomsbury
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