The Crying Book
Heather Christle
Corsair, £14.99, 207pp
While struggling with depression, mourning the death of a dear friend, and preparing for motherhood, award-winning poet Heather Christle found herself wondering what a map of every place in which she’d ever cried would look like. That “map” became this luminous curiosity, less a cartographic aid than a chapterless, hybrid text pulling together snippets of personal essay, some scientific, sociological and historical research, and healthy doses of humour. Crying may be universal but as Christle reveals, it can take many forms, parallel crying, “cry-hustling”, and “white tears” being but a few. A literary lachrymatory, both consoling and surprisingly uplifting.
Right After the Weather
Carol Anshaw
Fig Tree, £14.99, 288pp
Cate, a theatre set designer, has arrived in her early 40s with a career that’s still merely promising and a heart worn out from a long affair with a woman who is never going to leave her live-in-lover. She’s now intent on closing the chasm between who she is and who she wants to be, but when her lucky break comes, it coincides with violent calamity. Set in Chicago in 2016, Carol Anshaw’s fifth novel is an exquisitely observed story of passion and friendship, dogs and decor. Expect droll conversation, poetic frissons (from the darkness of backstage on an opening night we hear “the satin shiver of coats being shed” out front), and one of the most uncomfortable fine-dining dates you could wish to read about.
The Lost Properties of Love
Sophie Ratcliffe
William Collins, £9.99, 304pp
The first two pages of Sophie Ratcliffe’s intricate, fiercely intelligent memoir punch with the might of an entire book, distilling its central loss – the death of her father when she was 13 years old – into a series of indelible impressions saturated in 80s pop culture. The narrative then lurches forward almost three decades, and Ratcliffe – now an Oxford academic and married mother of two – is on a train, obsessing about a much older ex-lover who is dying. This train journey frames the pages that follow, freeing Ratcliffe’s mind to flit back and forth in time to understand her own messy, very human heart.
• To order The Crying Book, Right After the Weather or The Lost Properties of Love go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15
