Record Play Pause

Stephen Morris
Little, Brown, £20, pp352

There’s some great foreshadowing in the first volume of drummer Stephen Morris’s enjoyable memoir. “Drummers, Stephen,” says his dad in the early 1970s. “They all end up taking morphine and drinking absinthe. You don’t want to end up like that, do you?” Morris says no, but this book is, to start with, less about Joy Division (and not about New Order until the final chapter) and more about his vivid childhood in Macclesfield as a “compulsive liar and compulsive crier”. Written in a wryly conversational tone, the dialogue from 40 years ago is often too good to be true, but makes for a unique and thoughtful musical memoir about a boy inching his way to success, then having to deal with tragedy.

Normal People

Sally Rooney
Faber, £8.99, pp288 (paperback)

Sally Rooney was utterly deserving of all the praise she received last year for Normal People, her second novel exploring the love between, and lives of, a young Irish couple at the start of this decade, which was longlisted for the Booker prize. Connell and Marianne are perfectly, spellbindingly drawn, their relationship tender yet explicit, seemingly dysfunctional yet often touchingly close. The way the main question of the book – can these two star-crossed lovers be happy? – is framed against a subtle backdrop of class and the insecurities of our age brings to mind everything from DH Lawrence to Jane Austen, and the comparisons stand up. This will be a 21st-century classic.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo

Christy Lefteri
Zaffre, £12.99, pp384

Three years ago, Christy Lefteri worked in a refugee centre in Athens. While she was hugely affected by the stories she heard of traumatised people from Syria and Afghanistan, she also realised no one else would tell them. So the tale of Afra, a woman blinded by the explosion that killed her son, and Nuri, her beekeeper husband, formed in her mind. The Beekeeper of Aleppo is the result, a story of loss, love, resilience and hope as the couple escape Syria for, eventually, the UK. In the same school as The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Kite Runner, it’s impossible not to be moved by Lefteri’s plea for humanity, and perhaps inspired, too.

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