The Palm House by Gwendolyn Riley

I read this book because it was ling listed for the 2026 Booker Prize, and was previously unaware of this author, who has a number of previous books that are well regarded. This is not so much plot driven as it is the development of characters and a fires in Spain. Putnam has just quit his job as an editor at a magazine called Sequence. He and Laura have been friends for years, allied by what each of them wanted most to become, and are now joined together less by shared hopes than by the disappointments and frustrations that having become entails. As with so many magazines, Sequence’s board has no sense of what the magazine is, and when its editor-in-chief dies he’s replaced by a cad—he insists on being called Shove—whom everyone, but especially Putnam, hates. Putnam is forty-nine, and has been at Sequence more than half his life. His father has just died. He is unfailingly committed to the fact of his pain. Laura, long-suffering friend, tries again and again to take him out, cheer him up; she hreflection on what was happening (and how we might have avoided where we are today perhaps--that is not an overt assertion but rather me reading between the lines with the benefit of hindsight). It’s 2017. Laura and a friend, Putnam, sit and drink at a bar on the Thames. A hurricane offshore whips up ash and sand from wildelps clean out his father’s house and suggests other jobs. But Putnam is dogged, digging his heels in--he was a thinker and jobs for thinkers were waning. So that is the wave that was being rode in this story, but might there be a place for creative thinking in the remarkably inflexible world of AI? If in fact we survive it?

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

This is yet another dystopian total societal breakdown novel, this one also has the distinction of being short listed for the 2026 Booker Prize. I am not a huge fan of the Everything Is Falling Apart novel, not now, when it seems all too real at the moment, or ever, because why borrow trouble, but I unexpectedly enjoyed this. The location is unnamed but on the Kent coast, and it is familiar yet estranged. There has been a catastrophe, but it’s already old news and, in any case, the news media seem to have collapsed. iGhetti – AI or Alien, it is unclear – invaded Britain some while back, provoking an ongoing war whose progress or purpose no one really understands. The main characters are beachcomber Phillip Tennent and his elderly aunt Marnie. Phillip sells his lucrative finds on what we presume to be the hidden market, though how much of the legal economy still works is unclear. Marnie paints, and defends her terraced townhouse against predators and vandals. Police are never mentioned. Order, such as it is, is maintained through vestigial community cohesion and survival of the toughest. Their story is at the center of the book, but all the other implications are the shadow over their relationship.

The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis

This is a fabulist novel with a touch of magical realism that was long listed for the Booker Prize in 2026. It opens with a bang. Flora, a fortysomething woman, is visiting her mother and stepfather in Mexico City for the first time in many years when one evening, as she is bidding them goodnight, Diego – the household’s beloved guard dog – springs up and sinks his teeth into her hand. This unexpected incident is an assault not only on Flora’s body, but also upon those delicate fictions that have, until now, shaped her life and swathed that body in an illusory sense of safety. She is then condemned to spend the rest of her vacation confined to the winding corridors of a private hospital in Mexico City, Flora is ambivalent. On the one hand, the environment is hardly stimulating – but on the other, the hospital is life’s waiting room, and it is during a languid midnight stroll of its corridors that she meets Wilhelmina Blau, an elderly yet redoubtable German admitted with a bad case of pneumonia. Flora and Wilhelmina strike up a friendship, and during their nightly meetings in the hospital’s dully lit hallways, Wilhelmina shares the ample wisdoms gleaned from her highly unconventional life, which is not what either Flora or the reader expects. It is a darkly magical tale.

May We Feed The King by Rebecca Perry

This is a debut novel that was short listed for the 2026 Booker Prize, which is a feat in itself, but it is also my second choice for the award (which means it absolutely will not win, nor is it favored for that, and of course the favorite is my absolute least favorite of the 13 long listed books, so take all of this with the back story that I am absolutely never right about this prize). In a medieval palace of an unnamed king an unnamed curator of unspecified gender is employed by the palace to dress some of its rooms for public viewing in the wake of an undescribed personal tragedy. This is the back story of someone who does hisotrically accurate renditions with a lot of fake food and manufactured replicas so we the viewer can get a sense of what it was like back in the day. Soon after being hired for this task, the Curator meets the Archivist, keeper of the medieval palace’s historical records, and in those records finds mention of the brief reign of a king whose life the Curator will draw on to create their historical scenes. Although the King began as third in line, and temperamentally unsuited to rule, it seems that this king assumed the throne reluctantly after the death of both his brothers, then refused to govern. At this point, the narrative slips into the world of the King, his Queen, his hated Chief Adviser, a loyal young Attendant and the wider world of the court, swallowing up the Curator and holding them there, dazzled by the richness of its details and, like the King, quite unable to find our way out. It is inventive, creative, imaginative and tells a sweeping story in a relatively short narrative.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

I loved this book. It is one of the short list for the Booker Prize, and having read the other 5 on that list, this is my choice for the winner. That said, while I have not read absolutely all of this author's books, I have read many of them and she is a really good fit for me. The books are emotionally on target, describing things that I relate to, both personally and as a mental health professional. She doesn't shy away from the hard stuff, and she does so in a very relatable way. The man whose head we get inside of is Artie--he is long married, has a son Rob, and is a beloved high school English teacher and seems to have a way with teens. So on the outside all looks good, but Artie is struggling with suicidal ideation and is at the point where he is thinking his way through to a plan. The story explores loneliness and existential trauma, love and meaningful connections with those around us. The book does not flinch away from some of the political challenges facing America right now, the threat to democracy and the loss of empathy that is on display for the world to see and how distressing that is for many people. This is one of the best--do not miss it.

Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodwin

This book was long listed for the Booker Prize, and very nicely fits into the sort of book to glean that honor. It reads pretty tongue in cheek to me, and the characters are not named. Man is pretty typical of men who think they get what their privledge is but essentially are clueless. Despite his inducements to kindness, insight, fun and joy, Man is let go from his work as a university professor: his views are no longer compatible with the university’s. Later still, Wife, his spouse and also a professor at the university, leaves him. This might be because they met when he was her teacher and have since outgrown a dynamic where she is subordinate. Or because he speaks casually of hitting her during sex and of hitting her dog. Or simply because she is no longer as beautiful as she was when she was young (not that Man believes telling women they’re beautiful--not because it objectifies them but because it might go to their head). It’s difficult for him to say – all the same, he is depleted of self and purpose, and it’s clear a return to Nature is needed. This leads him to Helen and a house in the woods. While I can totally relate to this phenomena, having worked for 40 years in the workforce in general and as a university professor specifically, and this is dead on in so many ways, I just did not love it.

Switzy by Emma Cline

This was a difficult read, and that is at least partly due to the subject at hand. The main character, David, is a former business executive who was good at what he did, successful and it seems also trsuted, who has made a monumental business error, and one that he cannot quite remember the exact details of. He has what seems to be a rapidly progressing dementia, more like Lewy Body dementia that Alzheimers, and he has a care taker whose job is to keep him more or less out of trouble. It is not a 24/7/365 kind of situation, but when left to his own devices, David gets into trouble, and he cannot see his way out of it once he is there. David has elected to go to Switzerland to have euthanasia, which I know from reading Amy Bloom's memoir In Love that you have to be cognizant enough to be able to consent to the procedure. It is expensive but allows for death before all dignity is lost. David is on a farewell tour before his final act, where he first meets with his estranged daughter--she is unaware of his illness, and is encouraging to continue in work. They lack a connection, and it seems that the feelings are mutually distant. Then he meets briefly with a childhood friend who he wronged, or at least who he did not stand up for, and he wants to apologize to him, which he does. The friend has long ago forgiven him and is quite puzzled by his visit--as was I. Perhaps in the throes of forgetting the present we are haunted by past wrongs, but in any case this meet up ends with a wimper rather than a roar. The book is all told through David, so there is a fair amount of forgetting and confusion, a failure to read the social cues, and also a feeling that while he grasps what he is about to do, he is not altogether with it. The people around him back away from his confusion rather than correcting him. and it is also quite clear that this is a rich man's exit, one that is not available to most of us. It was long listed for the Booker prize, and is very much in keeping with what you might routinely find in books with that recognition. It is well written, off beat, and unusual.

The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams

I am working my way through the Booker Prize 2026 longlist--which is going surprisingly well, but I have yet to read the truly long book and there are quite a few that are between 200-300 pages, so not exactly back patting stuff. The main thing is that I have been able to get them, which is not always the case. That said, this is really not my cup of tea. It is dark in a way that I find unattractive and uninstructive. It is set in an ancient and unnamed university town which is rapidly being overwhelmed by vegetation: avenues lined with lush flower bushes, arches have vines galore, and it smells of flowers but in a sickeningly sweet way rather than opulent English garden style. A fraternity of mysterious gardeners seek to keep the chaotic foliage in check, but they are hamstrung by a bitter dispute with university officials. Power games and proxy battles ensue. It is a hot summer and decay is rampant: revolution is in the air. The narrator, Agathe, an alarmingly cynical young woman. She views everyone she meets as a tragic case, and knows that nothing lies between her and the same sad designation but her ability to see through the stories they’re telling themselves. She rejects self-expression and desire, refusing anything that might compromise her sense of separation and superiority. Her judgments are swift, conclusive and brutal. It goes from bad to worse when her mother has a failed suicide attempt, is left wheelchair bound, and her father basically blames her for any and all failings in the family. There is quite a few more unpleasant things that happen to equally unpleasant people, the end.

The Renovation by Kenan Orhan

This has been longlisted for the Booker Prize, which is how I came to read it. It is part magical realism, part a commentary on the persistence of trauma no matter how long ago it was and how far away you get from the source, and part a refelction on the toll of caregiving for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease. This is not a renovation gone wrong--which is that instead of getting a new bathroom, when Dilarah goes into her new bathroom it is instead a cell, and she is transported far away to a well-known prison in Turkey, the homeland she had left behind. Slowly, a past she was hiding from comes to light in flashbacks and shimmering sentences. The cell is part of a vast complex within Istanbul’s Silivri Prison, where women of all ages and classes are housed for their alleged conspiracies against an oppressive regime. Dilara had fled Turkey around a decade ago with her husband and mentally declining, dissident father to apparent freedom in the mountains of Italy. But try as she might, she cannot now conjure away the prospect of imprisonment; it has literally followed her. Then there is the trials and tribulations of caring for a loved one with dementia. Dilara’s husband takes the appearance of the cell as a sign the Turkish authorities are on their tail and abandons their home, leaving Dilara to care for her father on her own as he suffers from Alzheimer’s. Her father was once an outspoken professor and novelist; he now slips and falls easily, has lost his sense of humor, cannot recall basic words, and fails to recognize his own daughter, and Dilara herself is filled with anguish, anger, and sorrow watching him fade.

All Them Dogs by Djamel White

I read this debut novel because it was recently longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. The author is young, Irish, and interestingly, owns a tattoo business of some renown. This is a very gritty novel, which mixes toxic masculinity and a life of crime together and I wondered if tattoo artists hear a lot of stories that maybe other professions have less exposure to. In any case, this is violent and troubled, too much of both for my taste, but it is well paced and well written. On the run for five years after killing a man in a gang fight, Tony Ward has returned to west Dublin under the protection of a local crime boss. Teamed up with tall and sullen enforcer Flute Walsh, Tony is back on his home turf grafting a grim routine of collecting debts and drug dealer’s dues. Propelled through a world of old scores and hard knocks, our protagonist is a shark who has to keep moving simply to survive. But when he and Flute are called upon to kill a failing dealer, their brutal conspiracy becomes a visceral dance of desire and betrayal. Maybe part of my discomfort is connected with the overlap between these two poles of brutality and sexuality, but in the end, while I learned something, I liked but did not love this.

We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

There is so much going on in this short novel that was long-listed for the International Booker Prize in 2026. The Argentinian author has written a tale that is based on a true story and contains a healthy amount of magical realism that is a good if somewhat disorienting at times read. The book reconstructs the wild, surreal life of Antonio de Erauso, a 17th-century Basque nun who escaped the convent, lived as a man, and became a soldier, conquistador, and outlaw. It opens as Antonio, hiding deep in the rainforest of the New World, writes letters to his aunt, the prioress of the Basque convent he once escaped. Having rescued two young Guaraní girls from enslavement and facing pursuit from the colonial army he deserted, Antonio reflects on his monumental metamorphosis. The setting sharply contrasts the stagnant, rigid conventions of the Spanish Empire with the vibrant, magical "seething" life of the South American jungle. All told, it is a queer positive satire and a powerful subversion of Latin American history as told by Spain. It serves as an understated critique of colonialism, religious tyranny, and the brutal subjugation of Indigenous people. As an example, Antonio goes to Potosí, where historical estimates suggest that up to 8 million indigenous people and enslaved Africans died working in the mines there in Bolivia during the colonial era but that horror is understated at best in this recounting.

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

This book, longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025, is a quiet book looking at inner life. It is a compact story that depicts two days in the life of Thomas Flett, a young man who earns his living as a shanker –which I did not know what that was, but it is a man who rides a horse and cart up and down the beach netting for shrimp. It is a hard life, and it has taken its toll. At just twenty years of age, he looks and acts like a man who is considerably older. His bones ache, his mind aches, and he shambles. And while he more or less accepts his lot, there is more than a small part of him that yearns for something more, something better. He has dreams, small managable dreams that seem attainable to the reader and yet we lose hope that he will take the plunge. This is an insight into this sort of poverty and the toll it can take on your spirit. It doesn't make Thomas mean, but you could see where that would happen, and it is certainly happening in the 21st century, where there is no chance of a better life and the blame is sorely misplaced. This is a look inside a psyche and it is a quiet one at that.

The South by Tash Aw

This was long listed for the 2025 Booker Prize, and as so often happens, I liked it better than some of the books that made it to the short list. It is also highly evocative of nominees for this particular prize, which is that the excellence of the prose outweighs the execution of the plot. In this case, maybe there is a reason this doesn't wind up quite as neatly, because it is the first of a quartet of novels about Malaysia. This is an ambitious portrayal of a family navigating profound transformation and the complexities of identity and belonging within Malaysia’s rich and challenging political context of the late 1990s. Following his grandfather’s passing, sixteen-year-old Jay ventures southward with his family to inspect their inherited failing farm. Blighted trees and drought-stricken fields greet them upon arrival. There are stories that are interwoven throughout the book of Jay and his family, as well as Chuan, who he meets in the south, and Chuan's family--one review likened the narrative of Jay's internal life with that of Jay Gatsby, and there is something to that as I think back. There is an awareness of historical and social fault lines that shine a light on what’s broken, what needs healing and how that affects each of them. Cultural displacement, the ambiguity of belonging, and unspoken wounds passed down through generations are central themes that echo throughout the novel.

The Land In Winter by Andrew Miller

This was short listed for the Booker Prize in 2025, and while I did not love this book, there is a air of tragedy about it that is hard to create. It hangs over the book like a cloak of gloom--think Claire Keegan. To magnify that atmosphere, the events take place in the winter of 1962, which was a particularly harsh and brutal winter in real life, the coldest known in England in the 20th century. The book opens with a suicide, not related to what happens thereafter, but it is in keeping with the dark tone and mood that follows. The book centers on 4 people and follows two couples in their uneasy marriages as they endure physical and emotional isolation that none of them is quite used to. Eric and Irene are better off: Eric as a doctor and Irene a devoted homemaker. Bill and Rita run a small farm and come from more colorful upbringings: Bill, the child of an immigrant, and Rita, a former showgirl. Both wives are pregnant, and both feel the impending change that will inevitably bring about. Bill is more of a dreamer, distanced from his family and while he has big hopes for the future, he is not naturally talented as a farmer. There is a profound lack of communication that pervades the book, and the coldness of the weather is a reflection of some lack of warmth interpersonally. The events roll out slowly, almost methodically. Not a lot of action, and a lot is left to the reader to unravel.

Flashlight by Susan Choi

The Booker Prize short list for 2025 had some real gems in it, this among them. Flesh was the winner, and while it wasn't my favorite, it was very good. The Audition was weirdly innovation, The Rest of Our Lives was excellent up to the ending, and The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia was an excellent, long, messy saga that embraces both love and immigration. This one is also very good and quirky in it's story telling, which in the end I liked, although it took some time for me to get used to. Here goes. The the Kang family is damaged. Serk grows up an impoverished Korean in Japan. He immigrates to the US as a grad student after his family sets off for North Korea, lured by promises of socialist paradise. Anne has a child, Tobias, that she gave birth to at nineteen and signed away to her older lover and his wife. Her college plans are derailed, but she is able to find work as a transcriptionist for an eccentric academic, which is how she meets Serk. There is a mutual identification in their remoteness yet neither can figure out how to overcome it. Louisa—Serk and Anne’s only child—is not consciously aware of all that precedes her, but it is the water she swims in--nobody communicates. Anne welcomes Tobias back into her life without consulting Serk, and Serk takes an opportunity to relocate to Japan for a year without telling Anne of his primary goal: surreptitiously seeking out a path of return for his family. Louisa witnesses to shreds of each of her parents’ secrets and over time learns to nurture her own. So, yes, another messy family saga--I had the added luck to read it while I was vacationing in Japan, which added an extra layer to an already multi-level story.

Endling by Maria Reva

This book was long listed for the 2025 Booker Prize, and it is exactly the sort of book that you should read no matter that it didn't make the short list cut. Set in Ukraine in 2022,, it is is an incredibly unique, thought-provoking ode to love, loss, and identity. In addition, it navigates so many incredibly important themes that are at the forefront of Ukraine’s past and present. An endling: the last creature of a species; the stage before extinction. Yeva, a scientist, has dedicated her life’s work to snails. She is determined that her beloved shelled friends will not reach their end, she travels over land and lake throughout Ukraine. While she is trying to both conduct research and raise the funds to do so, Yeva grapples with expectations from society and from her family to leave the snails to their shells and forge a home of her own. They are unaware she has been roped into another line of work: ‘romance tours’, which are designed to attract foreign men desiring Ukrainian brides. As two sisters join Yeva, determined to break centuries of the misogyny of these tours, an unexpected collision between science and love occurs. The women launch an improbable mission, entering a battle in favor of feminism yet also entering the warzone of rural Ukraine, leading everyone around them to question whether they will become their society’s endling. We look on as the women, and the snails, enter an immense journey for freedom - for women, for science, and for their country--one that for Ukraine continues.

Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga

I read this because it was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, and while it did not make it to the short list, a lot of the books that fall into that category are among my favorite nominees--this book was good, but will not make my top 5 of the nominees this year. I read a review that I think nicely summarizes the course of events in this book, which is that it subtly blurs the distinction between help and harm. Yes, that is the best of the messages to take home from this, that your intentions are not always the end result. The protagonist is an Albanian woman married to a New Yorker who works as an interpreter--which is almost always a complex job as well as an emotional one. She has trouble creating and maintaining boundaries, both with her clients as well as in the world in general, and she is slowly but surely careening from one mishap to another, leaving the reader to worry about what will happen to her next--I listened to part of it and had to stop when she got herself into a dangerous situation, I just couldn't be driving and giving the story the attention it deserved. She is generous and good hearted but she also has blinders on when it comes to danger and she has trouble seeing beyond herself when she acts. There are lots of subtexts here, about immigration, the lasting effects of trauma, and the limitations of what what dreams for and what is realistic.

Love Forms by Claudia Adam

This was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize but it did not make the short list. I read it before I know what the short list would consist of, but in reality that wouldn't have changed my mind--I often prefer some things on the long list that don't make that cut to those that do. This is a novel steeped in regret. Dawn is the youngest child of a well-known Trinidadian fruit juice dynasty. They are rich and mixed race, but Dawn can pass for white. At 16, after a brief encounter with a tourist at carnival in Trinidad, she finds herself pregnant. Petrified of the stigma, her otherwise caring parents make an agreement (of sorts--Dawn really doesn't have much of a say in it even though she is almost an adult) never to speak of it again, dispatching her, under cover of darkness, on a terrifying and chillingly evoked boat trip to Venezuela. There she spends four months with nuns who deliver her baby – a girl she never sees again – then is returned to Trinidad to resume her schooling as if nothing has happened. Something did happen, though, and The bulk of the novel is Dawn being preoccupied with finding the girl she gave up forty plus years before and all the heart ache of false hopes and dreams that never quite come to fruition. It is a good reflection on the ripple effect of these traumas, and why we really shouldn't encourage teenagers to have their babies and give them up for a mythical better life.

The Rest Of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

This book is longlisted for the 2025 booker Prize, which is the one longlist that I work to read in its entirety--that goal is occasionally hard to accomplish because some of the books are not available in the US (this has improved some since the possible nominees now include all works of fiction published in English rather than limited to author's from countries that were part of the British colonial empire). It is worth finding them all because pretty routinely there are books on the longlist that don't make it to the short list that I like better than some of those that move on. The story here is narrated by 55-year-old law professor Tom Layward, who is taking his youngest child to university. It’s a moment of change and re-evaluation for any couple. But within Tom and Amy’s marriage an unexploded bomb is ticking. Tom tells us that, 12 years earlier, Amy had an affair. He managed his heartbreak by making a deal with himself that he would leave when his youngest went to college. After dropping his daughter Miri in Pittsburgh, Tom doesn’t head back to New York and he doesn't quite know why. He cannot decide what it is that he wants to do. He drives west, stopping to see old friends and family members, weighing his next move and reflecting on his past. He tells us about his background and upbringing, his marriage and career, and he comes gradually into focus: an intriguing blend of frankness and reserve, bemusement, disappointment, fatherliness and compassion. He has loss in his past, and he is not what you would call a great communicator. We all see a way forward before he does, and like any good therapist, we have to wait until he sees it too.