Celebrating independents

As we prepare to celebrate Independent Bookshop Week from 17 –24 June, GloucesterRoadBooks pickfivebrilliantreads

Anote from the team: “Our primary aim is that the shop be a fascinating place to explore. Some of the subject sections are a little broader than they might be elsewhere –for instance our ‘Time and Place’ section encompasses books on History, Travel Literature, Geography and Reportage. We also have a significant focus on titles published by small independent presses. There are lots of really brilliant small publishers putting out incredibly exciting books, and we want to help get these out into the world. The stock is carefully chosen and constantly changing, so even if you pop in every week there will always be

To sign up, visit Gloucester Road Books’ website: gloucesterroadbooks.com. Follow them on Instagram: gloucester_rd_books and browse the collection in store: 184 Gloucester Road, Bishopston, BS7 8NU. Open Monday –Tuesday 9.30am –5pm; Wednesday –Saturday 9.30am –6pm

Mild Vertigo by

Pond

by Claire-Louise Bennett

Pond is about a woman living alone in an Irish country cottage, but it is the enthralling and masterful handling of language by Bennett that gives this collection a wholly unique tone. The prose charges ahead in descriptions of people, objects, and memories, infusing the everyday with an urgency of embodied experience. Bennett’s writing is artfully selfconscious whilst still resonating with so much empathy and emotion.

This Is Not Miami

by Fernanda Melchor.

Translated by Sophie Hughes

Mieko Kanai.

Translated by Polly

Barton

Mieko Kanai’s longestablished writing career has fixed her a cult-status in Japan with this newly-translated novel gaining comparisons with Clarice Lispector, Elena Ferrante and Lucy Ellmann. In gossipy and familiar prose, it follows the interior monologue of a housewife in Tokyo at risk of losing herself in the repetitions and frustrations of her domestic duties.

Counternarratives

by John Keene

This is a fabulously inventive collection of stories, each presenting a perspective askew from the mainstream. The writing is gloriously rich, allowing new detail to soak up toward the surface from the depths of history. This is a book to be savoured and reread. In fact, it’s probably time I revisited these extraordinary worlds.

“To live in a city is to live among stories,” reads the first line of the author’s note at the start of this brilliant collection of stories, or crónicas. It’s perfectly apt, as the stories here build up to form a mosaic image of life in Veracruz, Mexico. They contain drama, chaos, violence, as well as occasional moments of quiet in between.

Dark Neighbourhood

by Vanessa Onwuemezi

Set in an often surreal hinterland on the border of what seems familiar not only in their subject matter but also in the inventive way they are written, these are fresh and uncompromising short stories. Onwuemezi presents a world that readers will both recognise and feel like they are stepping into for the first time. Stark, troubling and absorbing, it’s clear to see why this brilliant collection was nominated for two prestigious prizes –Republic of Consciousness and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize –last year.