American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

American Dirt, the third novel from Jeanine Cummins — who made her name with a memoir about the gang rape and murder of her two cousins — has been described by the crime writer Don Winslow as “a Grapes of Wrath for our time” and  selected for Oprah’s Book Club, which almost guarantees a book bestseller status.

Since then, it has been the subject of an intense backlash, partly because Cummins is a white writer from Maryland — her Puerto Rican  grandmother notwithstanding — and critics have accused her of cultural appropriation in crassly depicting a Mexican family attempting to cross the border into the United States. 

Cummins’s decision to write the novel does not, however, appear thoughtless.

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

Group biographies are having something of a moment, and Virginia Woolf seems to feature in many of them. In her first book, Francesca Wade has taken the unusual step of not examining Woolf in the context of family, lovers or other members of the Bloomsbury Group, but positioning her alongside other radical women thinkers who lived in Bloomsbury’s Mecklenburgh Square between the wars. 

This area of London has been historically praised for its serenity, not least by Isabella in Jane Austen’s Emma, who comments: “Our part of London is very superior to most others! You must not confound us with London in general, my dear sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very different from almost all the rest. We are so very airy!”

Discussing appetite and excess with author Scarlett Thomas

I’ll be discussing Scarlett Thomas’ riotously enjoyable new novel Oligarchy with her at the wonderful Second Shelf bookshop. Her blackly comic novel set in a girls' boarding school satirises the hysteria of the diet industry, Instagram and young women's behaviour but it is not without heart. The Times has said of Oligarchy: “Wickedly funny … Thomas has great fun with the familiar components of the boarding school yarn, even as she subverts them. Her writing is spikily humorous and controlled … This jet-black novel begs to be dramatised”. We will be discussing excess and appetite and how Scarlett managed to make Oligarchy so hilarious and compelling at the same time. There will be a short reading by Scarlett from Oligarchy. There will also be time for audience questions and for Scarlett to sign copies of Oligarchy which will be on sale on the evening.

The best places for fika in London

London may be sick of Scandinavian trends but there is one, fika, which doesn’t involve an entire lifestyle overhaul or the purchase of costly sheepskin rugs. Fika is a communal coffee break taken twice a day in Sweden — usually involving a cup of strong filter coffee and a cinnamon bun. It’s so sacred in Sweden that, famously, even the Volvo car plant breaks for it. The crucial aspects are that it should be communal, savoured, and it should occur away from your desk — so chugging back a Costa latte at the keyboard really doesn’t count. Fika can’t be hurried however, so only those establishments that allow lingering with a friend count. And as the number of Scandinavian-style cafes in London offering slices of princess cake and knotted cardamom buns has expanded enormously in the past years, here is a round up of the best.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Like the house that gives EM Forster’s Howards End its name, the Dutch House in Ann Patchett’s eighth novel is not always a benign space. It is situated in the suburbs of Philadelphia and was owned by a wealthy Dutch family, the Van Hoebeeks, who abandoned it and left their forbidding portraits, furniture and Delftware behind in 1945. A year later, the house is bought by Cyril Conroy, a realestate developer. But his ascetic wife, stifled by the grandeur of the house, walks out on Cyril and their two children, Maeve and Danny, to instead “help the poor of India.”

Danny narrates the story, which begins in the middle of the 20th century and stretches over 50 years. From the start, he worships his maternal sister Maeve, “her black hair like a blanket down her back.” Maeve is a striking example of Patchett’s ability to make goodness compelling and her set pieces with Andrea, the “silky chinchilla” who marries Cyril and becomes the children’s stepmother, are wonderfully drawn. 

I Never Said I Loved You by Rhik Samadder

Rhik Samadder has written a remarkable book. What a lavishly talented writer he is, packing more hilarity and insight into a few sentences than many authors manage in an entire book. Those who are familiar with his journalism, and particularly his Guardian column reviewing kitchen gadgets, will know he has a talent for turning base metal into gold. We mistakenly assumed this was a fluke, a happy accident, that he should be so entertaining about such an unpromising subject. The reason that his piece on a device for cooking eggs went viral, however is that he is an astonishingly original writer, no matter what the topic. And we should all be grateful that he has now turned his attention to the serious matter of mental health.

It doesn’t seem quite right that a book so moving should also be so funny at the same time but this is the case with his memoir I Never Said I Loved You.