Lucy Kellaway’s book, Re-educated – How I Changed My Job, My Home, My Husband and My Hair (Ebury £16.99), is out now.
Lurie burst out of obscurity as an academic at nearly 60 to win the Pulitzer Prize with this novel about the romantic liaisons of two Americans abroad in London. I’d loved Jane Austen as a teenager, but Lurie is something else altogether in her merciless savagery. I’m re-reading all of her books this summer. Vintage £9.99; The Week Bookshop £7.99
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (1978)
Fitzgerald based her second novel on her experience of working in a bookshop in Suffolk – one of the many jobs she did to make ends meet before she became a literary sensation in her 60s. I read it again the other day and found it sadder and funnier than before – there is no better account of the pettiness of disputes in a small town. Fourth Estate £7.99; The Week Bookshop £6.99
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (1996)
McCourt did the opposite thing to me and was a secondary school teacher first and then a writer, with this account of his impoverished childhood in Limerick. It is the original misery memoir, but the quality of the misery is so intense and the writing so lyrical that the book is oddly uplifting. Harper Perennial £9.99; The Week Bookshop £7.99
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller (2021)
This debut – written by a television executive in her late 50s – is about the messed-up East Coast intelligentsia, and its Long Island setting makes it the perfect beach read. My favourite character is the waspish mother who has the immortal line, “two things in life you never regret – a baby and a swim”. Viking £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)
Spark was the daughter of a teacher and briefly one herself which may have informed this joyously naughty book. I set my heart on becoming a Brodie #2, but alas, I found that her teaching style doesn’t work in a Hackney comp. Penguin £8.99; The Week Bookshop £6.99
-
Art that made the news in 2025The Explainer From a short-lived Banksy mural to an Egyptian statue dating back three millennia
-
Nine best TV shows of the yearThe Week Recommends From Adolescence to Amandaland
-
Winter holidays in the snow and sunThe Week Recommends Escape the dark, cold days with the perfect getaway
-
The best homes of the yearFeature Featuring a former helicopter engine repair workshop in Washington, D.C. and high-rise living in San Francisco
-
Critics’ choice: The year’s top 10 moviesFeature ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘It Was Just an Accident’ stand out
-
A luxury walking tour in Western AustraliaThe Week Recommends Walk through an ‘ancient forest’ and listen to the ‘gentle hushing’ of the upper canopy
-
Joanna Trollope: novelist who had a No. 1 bestseller with The Rector’s WifeIn the Spotlight Trollope found fame with intelligent novels about the dramas and dilemmas of modern women
-
Appetites now: 2025 in food trendsFeature From dining alone to matcha mania to milk’s comeback
