If you’ve been lurking around here for a while, you’ll know I only ever did a wrap-up once, back when I was still figuring out this blog’s style and approach. Now that autumn’s here again, I’m feeling more bookish than ever. After a summer of sparsely reading, I’m finally back on my usual 4-5 books a month.

So, here is what I read in September:

How It Was by Janet Ellis

I finally got a library card and I’ve been browsing hundreds of novels, some of which I’ve never heard of before. How It Was is one of them.

It tells the story of a bored housewife living in rural Kent in the 1970s. She’s spiteful, unabashed and, at times, manipulative. The narrative oscillates between present-day, as she sits by her husband’s deathbed, and her flashbacks of their youth when, fuelled by ennui and rage at her teenage daughter, she pursues an affair with whom I can only describe as the village soft boy.

You can read the full review here, but all I will say now is that this is a delicious slow-burner. However unspectacular her protagonist’s life, Janet Ellis somehow manages to completely immerse her readers into this tale of an everyday woman’s everyday life.

Dead Girls by Selva Almada

I picked this book (again, from the library) purely because of its cover. It’s a somewhat diaristic novel that explores the phenomenon of femicide in Argentina, a country that reports unusually high numbers of it every year. Selva Almada weaves her own experiences with the ones of three girls that were murdered by men in their lives.

Dead Girls had enormous potential. Instead, it was a quasi-artistic ramble about something that should have, in my opinion, been treated with more dignity. This is hardly a serious account of the murders. Rather, it’s a game of speculation – an exercise in creative writing – and the author’s self-indulgent soliloquy about how she was personally affected by these deaths, even though she had no connection to the women other than being a woman herself. I’m not negating the unease she must feel living in a place where such heinous crimes are swept under the rug. All I’m saying is that her book felt exploitative and too self-centered for the sensitive subject it brought forward.

I’m probably not going to write a full review for this, since this is pretty much all I have to comment about it. It’s very rare that a book leaves me with very little to say about its actual content. I was disappointed.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

You can check out my review of this one here – I go into quite a bit of detail about its symbolism and some shortcomings. So, I’ll keep it curt: this tragicomic tale of a dysfunctional Ukrainian family living in the UK is breezy and heartwarming, despite its heavy subject. It unveils some poignant aspects of European history that are rarely discussed from an Eastern perspective in contemporary Western literature.

However, in my humble opinion as an Eastern European immigrant in the UK, the book lacked nuance on one of its main characters, leaving her underdeveloped at the funny-broken-English, she’s-with-you-for-the-visa level. This is somewhat disappointing, considering the author herself is Ukrainian. Because she manages to capture the immigrant’s experience so well, I had higher expectations of her portrayal of the conniving young Eastern European “gold-digger.” If not a subversion of the trope, it at least could’ve delved deeper into her motives.

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

2023 has personally been a bad year for fantasy, with some ok books and some downright atrocious. That was, until I read A Taste of Gold and Iron. From its setting inspired by the early modern Ottoman Empire, to the complete subversion of all the gender norms epic fantasy notoriously upholds through its predominantly eurocentric medieval-ish worldview – this book ticked all the right boxes for me. I won’t go too into detail, since a full review is in the works. But for now, I’ll say this: if you’re looking for a fantasy with masterful world-building full of intricate details, cultural nuances, and a rich history, as well as a fresh perspective on gender dynamics, you need to check out A Taste of Gold and Iron.

Penance by Eliza Clark

Eliza Clark gave me irreparable damage with her debut novel Boy Parts. So, as any normal person would, as soon as I found out she published a new one, I rushed to add it to my Audible library. I started it three days ago – and I’ve been obsessively listening ever since, with one hour left as we speak.

(And honestly, I can’t wait to finish writing this so I can go back to listening.)

Penance has one of the freshest narratives I’ve encountered in a long time. It’s told from the perspective of true crime journalist Alec Z. Carelli, who investigates the gruesome murder of a teenage girl at the hands of three other school mates, in the kitschy yet eerie fictional town of Crow-on-Sea in the North of England. It’s written as an investigative piece published by Carelli himself, interspersed with extracts from true crime podcasts, Tumblr posts and other tid-bits of quintessential 2015s media.

All I can say so far is that this book is disturbing – from the crime itself, to the media coverage and reaction to it. It exposes the cultural zeitgeist of exploiting others’ tragedy and trauma for the sake of sensationalism in the true crime industrial complex. Again, a review is definitely on its way.

Other September updates

This month, I rediscovered the joy of getting lost into a good novel. Some of my other life updates include:

• Running my third marathon 
• Becoming a Reedsy reviewer (can’t wait to get my hands on all those ARCs)
• Picking up my Bookstagram again and connecting with some really cool people (I was on a bit of a hiatus, but I came back with a vengeance)
• Attending the Technology in Marketing Conference with work and getting a bit too sucked into all the talks on AI, personalisation, the post-cookie apocalypse and all the other buzz topics in the world of marketing

What about you?

What have you been getting up to in September? Any books I should check out?

Leave a comment below, let me know!