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
-
Film reviews: ‘Hamnet,’ ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ and ‘Eternity’Feature Grief inspires Shakespeare’s greatest play, a flamboyant sleuth heads to church and a long-married couple faces a postmortem quandary
-
Poems can force AI to reveal how to make nuclear weaponsUnder The Radar ‘Adversarial poems’ are convincing AI models to go beyond safety limits
-
The military: When is an order illegal?Feature Trump is making the military’s ‘most senior leaders complicit in his unlawful acts’
-
Film reviews: ‘Hamnet,’ ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ and ‘Eternity’
Feature Grief inspires Shakespeare’s greatest play, a flamboyant sleuth heads to church and a long-married couple faces a postmortem quandary
-
We Did OK, Kid: Anthony Hopkins’ candid memoir is a ‘page-turner’The Week Recommends The 87-year-old recounts his journey from ‘hopeless’ student to Oscar-winning actor
-
The Mushroom Tapes: a compelling deep dive into the trial that gripped AustraliaThe Week Recommends Acclaimed authors team up for a ‘sensitive and insightful’ examination of what led a seemingly ordinary woman to poison four people
-
‘Chess’feature Imperial Theatre, New York City
-
‘Notes on Being a Man’ by Scott Galloway and ‘Bread of Angels: A Memoir’ by Patti Smithfeature A self-help guide for lonely young men and a new memoir from the godmother of punk
-
6 homes built in the 1700sFeature Featuring a restored Federal-style estate in Virginia and quaint farm in Connecticut
-
Film reviews: 'Wicked: For Good' and 'Rental Family'Feature Glinda the Good is forced to choose sides and an actor takes work filling holes in strangers' lives
-
Nick Clegg picks his favourite booksThe Week Recommends The former deputy prime minister shares works by J.M. Coetzee, Marcel Theroux and Conrad Russell
