WhenHHhHby Laurent Binet came out in 2012, I was scared away by the impenetrable title. I still don’t like the title much because it gives no sense that this book is going to be so welcoming, playful and immersive. HHhH tells the true story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich – the high-ranking Nazi officer, “the butcher of Prague” – but it also describes Binet’s research on the subject, an obsession which verges on mania. The book makes a convincing case that Heydrich’s botched assassination was the single most significant event of the 20th century. (It also makes a convincing case that Binet is so deep into the subject matter that his opinion should not be entirely trusted.)Maurice and Maralynby Sophie Elmhirst has just won theNero book of the yearprize so it really does not need my recommendation. Nevertheless, I recommend it! It jolts you awake from the very first page, telling a true and uniquely weird love story about a British couple whose boat is sunk by whale-strike while they are sailing around the world. Elmhirst finds moments of transcendence even as Maurice and Maralyn are beginning to starve and decompose, physically and mentally, while adrift in a leaky dinghy in the middle of the Pacific.The Penguin Book of the Prose Poemedited by Jeremy Noel-Tod is my favourite poetry anthology. The poems are presented in reverse chronological order so that the book starts with recent work from Anne Carson and Patricia Lockwood then steadily dives backwards through time: Eileen Myles to Allen Ginsberg to Gertrude Stein before finally ending in 1842 with Aloysius Bertrand writing beautiful prose poems before the term even existed. Every time I come back to this book I find new gems.
Children of Radium by Joe Dunthorne is published by Penguin (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
I’ve been readingMrs Sby K Patrick, a novel about a matron in a girls’ boarding school who falls in love with the headmaster’s wife during a long, hot summer. I’ve also been readingBrotherless Nightby VV Ganeshananthan, a powerful page-turner about a medical student whose brothers join the Tamil Tigers in the Sri Lankan civil war. Both these books are about women whose circumstances make them into watchful and wary outsiders. They also both have a strong sense of place, whether it’s the Yorkshire moors or the Jaffna peninsula.
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On a long flight last week, I started reading Jacqueline Harpman’sI Who Have Never Known Men, and couldn’t put it down. It’s narrated by a teenage girl who is imprisoned with 39 women in an underground bunker. They are under constant watch by a rotating team of guards and have no access to tools, beyond what is necessary for cooking. The women don’t know why they’ve been detained and, as years have passed, memory of their lives before the bunker has begun to fade. So the girl has to rely on her own imagination to find inspiration for her survival. It’s a deceptively simple but wholly propulsive story that explores the interplay between memory, patriarchy and solidarity.
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
I have been readingIntermezzoby Sally Rooney. All the time I thought the story was about two brothers and their lovers; it is, but in reality it’s much more about the brothers than the lovers. Lines echo and roll over one another like waves on a beach in a book that frequently pierces the heart.