Sal
Mick Kitson
Canongate, 12.99, pp240
Survival is all for two half-sisters, 13-year-old Sal and 10-year-old Peppa, who escape from a violent home in a small town near Glasgow and move to the wilderness of Scotland. The atmospheric story opens just before dawn and, in Sal’s distinctive voice, details their day-to-day efforts to find food, shelter and warmth using information gleaned from YouTube videos, the SAS handbook and an Ordnance Survey map. There are traumatic memories, too – of beatings and bruises, threats of the sisters being separated by social services, and how Sal killed her abusive stepfather before the two girls fled. A vivid, moving tale about the strength of sisterhood and the struggle to survive.
The Little Book of Feminist Saints
Julia Pierpont (illustrated by Manjit Thapp)
Virago, £12.99, pp208
This finely illustrated book, featuring the potted biographies of 100 inspiring women spanning the ages, is brimful of startling anecdotes about females who flouted traditional gender roles. There is activist Harriet Tubman, who smuggled slaves to freedom using safe houses, author and conservationist Rachel Carson, whose “eyes were set on a life beyond the limits of her own”, and Junko Tabei, the first woman to reach the top of Everest and to climb the “seven summits”. Like all of the women in this book, she blazed trails where none existed before.
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
Reni Eddo-Lodge
Bloomsbury, £8.99, pp288 (paperback)
This powerful polemic, the fruit of a blog that went viral, has sparked a much-needed discussion about race relations in Britain. Since publication last year, the book has been acclaimed by, among others, Booker prize-winner Marlon James and Emma Watson, who acknowledged that it made her question “the ways I have benefited from being white”. Grappling both with what is said, and the stubborn silences around the subject of race, this is an important, thought-provoking book.
• To order Sal for £11.04 or Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race for £6.36 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
