This first batch of July paperbacks leans more towards the commercial than usual starting with David Nicholls whose writing always hits the spot for me. His new one, You Are Here, sees Marnie feeling stuck and Michael left by his wife. A determined mutual friend succeeds in getting them to take a walk together which, apparently, turns into something of an epic. ‘A new love story by beloved bestseller David Nicholls, You Are Here is a novel of first encounters, second chances and finding the way home’ says the blurb which may sound nothing to get particularly excited about but I’m sure Nicholls’s legions of fans will be delighted at the prospect. I certainly am.
Spanning three days, Benjamin Myers’s Rare Singles is about an American singer in his seventies who’s accepted an 
invitation to headline a Northern Soul weekender in Scarborough having never set foot outside the US. Bucky’s promising career was scuppered by a beating after a James Brown concert and an eighteen-month prison stint. He’d recorded just four songs as a solo artist, one of which is a Northern Soul favourite, unbeknownst to him. Over the next three days, Bucky finds himself bemused by Yorkshire, desperate to ease his excruciating hip pain and saved by three capable women who offer the prospect of a very different future. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started it, but I grew to love this feelgood novel, so different from The Offing. The blurb compares it to Jonathan Coe and David Nicholls, both of which seem appropriate to me.
I loved Claire Lombardo’s wonderfully entertaining The Most Fun We Ever Had so am looking forward to Same As it Ever Was about a long, happy marriage suddenly destabilized. Julia’s teenage daughter is off to college emptying the nest, her son Ben has been behaving erratically, then she bumps into an old, once dear friend she’s not seen for two decades who makes a shocking announcement, all of which sends her into a tailspin. ‘Following Julia over the course of a few tumultuous months, bookended by a birthday party and a wedding, and examining the fifty-plus years before, Same as It Ever Was examines the complete and complicated trajectory of one woman’s life and asks what it takes to make – and to not break – a family’ says the blurb, promisngly.
More soberly, Lauren Aliza Green’s debut, The World After Alice, sees the wedding of Alice’s best friend to her younger brother twelve years after she took her own life. As the couple prepares for the ceremony, their extended families make their way to the venue where they will be spending three days in close proximity to each other, bringing a great deal of emotional baggage with them. All the characters find themselves re-examining how they might have played a part in Alice’s decision but it’s her brother who’s borne the heaviest burden. There’s a thread of almost farcical humour to lighten the narrative but inevitably this is a novel with a great deal of sadness at its heart. Green’s style is a tad overdone for me but her characterisation stood up well, and she wisely leaves messy loose ends untied.
In Aysegül Savaş’s The Anthropologists Asya and Manu are looking for somewhere to live in a foreign city, wondering how life will be amongst strangers outside the circle of their family and friends. Documentary filmmaker Asya spends her days recording the locals going about their lives in their nearby park. Meanwhile, life goes on back home as the couple develops their own customs and rituals in their new home city. ‘Unfolding over a series of apartment viewings, late-night conversations, last rounds of drinks and lazy breakfasts, The Anthropologists is a soulful examination of home-building and modern love, written with Aysegül Savaş’ distinctive elegance, warmth and humour’ says the blurb. Very much like the sound of that.
That’s it for July’s first batch of paperbacks. A click on a title will take you either to my review or to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with new fiction it’s here and here. Part two next week when I’m back from visiting my Yorkshire pal.
