Reading update

I am currently reading/re-reading the six books on the Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist. With the first three that I have just finished it has been a matter of re-reading books that I read a while back and I have really enjoyed doing it. I like these three even more now than I did, as I have found more in them and recognise how carefully they were constructed. 

Three very different books, all very readable:

The Vanishing Half is a book that has been around for a while and has already been chosen as the best book of 2020 in the media and various outlets. Twin girls grow up together in a small southern US black community, but they run away at the age of sixteen. They split and go on to live very different lives: one passes as white and her white husband knows nothing of her past; the other eventually returns home and lives there with her black daughter. Things get complicated when the lives of the the next generation mingle. It is a story of identity, the search for identity, with far-reaching ideas going beyond race and class.

Piranesi is unlike any other book. On reading it one has to just go with it and accept the wondrous world the author has created, just as Piranesi does, as he lives there alone and feels himself part of it. Then things start to happen and eventually he begins to question and have misgivings. The world he thought he knew becomes strange and dangerous. There is a reveal at the end and an explanation . . . or is there? I love this book (and its beautiful cover). 

Unsettled Ground is another story of twins, but these are 51 year olds Jeanie and Julius, who have lived with their mother all their lives. When she suddenly dies, their lives fall apart. They have to deal with the perils of the outside world and try to rebuild their lives. Secrets begin to unravel.

 I am not sure the next three books will delight as much as these three do, but we will see.