What Bristol is reading – June 8 to 15

This week Bristol24/7 looks at the top 12 best selling books in Bristol’s Stanfords bookshop on Corn Street. 

1. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Fowler tells the story of a dysfunctional family whose daughter talked so much that she would be told to start in the middle. Now two of her siblings have disappeared and we are told the tale from the middle to the end and back to the start, twice.This is Fowler’s sixth novel and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2014. It’s been out in paperback since March 2015. 

The Guardian hosted a webchat with Fowler in 2014.

2. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Australian author Richard Flanagan, tells the story of Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor haunted by a wartime love affair with his uncle’s wife. Post war, he finds his growing celebrity as a war hero at odds with his sense of his own failings and guilt. This was the winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize and also his sixth novel. Flanagan found inspiration for the story from his father’s wartime experiences. 

3. Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermer is a satire about Adolf Hitler in 21st century Germany. Originally written in German, this first novel by previous ghostwriter Vermer has sold over a million copies. 

4. How To Be Both by Ali Smith is Bristol24/7’s book club choice of the month and won the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction in 2015. How to Be Both is a split narrative, and half of its copies were printed with the story of the teenage girl, George, whose mother has recently died, first. The other copies begin with the story of Francesco del Cossa, an artist in 15th-century Ferrara who in Smith’s story is born a girl but raised as a man.

5. The Children Act by Ian McEwan is the fifth bestselling novel and tells the story of a British judge who faces a complex case while dealing with her husband’s infidelity. Available in paperback since April 2015, the title is a reference to the Children Act 1989. 

6. Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín is set in the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. Shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Novel Awards and the 2015 Folio Prize.

7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The promise of a new Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman, published by William Heinemann in the United Kingdom on July 14, has led to a renewed enthusiasm for Lee’s only published novel. There is also a Twitter-based hashtag for those wanting to share their reading experience #TKAM.

8. The Guest Cat by Tikashi Hraide was published in 2014 and has been a bestseller in France and the US and was the winner of Japan’s Kiyama Shohei Literary Award. Nicholas Lezard describes it as follows: “This is a gentle, thoughtful and subtly profound work, utterly without pretension or pyrotechnics, by a Japanese poet in his 60s.”

9. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick was published in 1968 and was the basis of the film Blade Runner (1982). It tells the story of an earth long-damaged by nuclear weapons and war. Bounty hunter Rick Deckard is on the hunt for a group of replicants who can almost pass as humans. 

10. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson was the Costa novel award winner in 2013 and is the story of Ursula Todd who lives life after life, dying repeatedly in many ways. Atkinson’s A God in Ruins is her latest book and published in 2015. (See the author’s notes)

11. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt  tells the story of Theo Decker who was separated from his mother at 13. All he has of her is the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. It was Tartt’s first new book in 11 years and won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. 

12. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Elmear McBride was written when the author was in a rubbish temp job and started reading James Joyces’ Ulysses. I have yet to learn whether she actually finished Joyce’s work, since it, like McBride’s ‘genius’ work is more an achievement in construct than enjoyment. Nevertheless, this winner of the 2014’s Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction went on to write in a whole new style that was rejected by many publishing houses before Galley Beggar Press of Norwich took a chance on it. 

With thanks to Stanfords, 29 Corn Street, Bristol, BS1 1HT.