Emerald Fennell: my six best books
The actress and writer chooses her favourite books, from Jane Austen to Nick Cave

Francis Spufford’s latest novel, Light Perpetual (Faber £16.99), has been longlisted for the Booker Prize. Light Perpetual is available at The Week Bookshop for £13.99.
He will speak at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 27 August (edbookfest.co.uk).
Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1871
Subscribe to 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.
Clever girl mistakes boring man for genius; learns better. But there’s a whole world inside George Eliot’s masterpiece, observed with apparently limitless empathy, along with a streak of surprisingly bitchy humour. Virginia Woolf called it “one of the few novels written for grown-ups”, and 150 years after it came out it still makes almost everything else look simple-minded. Penguin £6.99; The Week Bookshop £5.99
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, 2004
The minister of a small-town church in 1950s America writes a letter to the son he won’t live to see grow up, and finds he has another task before he can die. Wise, radiantly written, and full of something you don’t get much of in novels: holiness. Virago £8.99; The Week Bookshop £6.99
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
One of the greatest of sci-fi novels by one of the greatest of science fiction writers, set on an ice-bound planet whose inhabitants are human but, for 28 days of the month, genderless. It’s dated in some ways, but it remains one of the richest and most beautiful explorations of strangeness there is. Gollancz £8.99; The Week Bookshop £6.99
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, 2007
Delicious noir detective story, set in a timeline that never was, where the survivors of the Holocaust founded their Jewish state in Alaska, not Israel. As a piece of writing, the most purely pleasurable book I know, every sentence its own delicatessen. Harper Perennial £10.99; The Week Bookshop £8.99
NW by Zadie Smith, 2012
The city of London, or at least the northwest quadrant of it, brought brilliantly onto the page through the voices of four linked characters, all once children of the same council estate. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, always astonishingly constructed, with dialogue like a stethoscope pressed to the city. Penguin £8.99; The Week Bookshop £6.99
The Week Bookshop
Titles in print are available from theweekbookshop.co.uk on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk
-
Some of the best music and singing holidays in 2025
The Week Recommends From singing lessons in the Peak District to two-week courses at Chetham's Piano Summer School
-
6 bold homes for maximalists
Feature Featuring a restored Queen Anne Victorian in California and a sculpture studio turned townhome in New York City
-
Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits – a 'revelatory' glimpse into the Belle Époque
The Week Recommends Kenwood exhibition shines a light on the American 'dollar princesses' who married into the English aristocracy
-
Gordon Corera chooses his favourite spy novels
The Week Recommends The journalist picks works by James Wolff, Graham Greene and John le Carré
-
Ballerina: 'a total creative power cut' for the John Wick creators
Talking Point Ana de Armas can't do much with her 'lethally dull' role
-
Properties of the week: gorgeous Georgian houses
The Week Recommends Featuring homes in Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent
-
Homework: Geoff Dyer brings 'a whole world' to life in his memoir
The Week Recommends Author writes about his experiences with 'humour and tenderness'
-
Critics' choice: Restaurants that write their own rules
Feature A low-light dining experience, a James Beard Award-winning restaurant, and Hawaiian cuisine with a twist