July 2023 Staff Picks

Updated 2023/07/27

David’s Pick : The Guest by Emma Cline

This book is a non-stop wild ride through five days in the life of a woman coming to the end of her tether, torn between her need for self-preservation and her inclination towards self-destruction. Darkly funny, tense, with prose that just rushes headlong from one near-disaster to the next. A more than worthy followup to (and pairs well with) Cline’s first novel The Girls.

David’s Pick: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

A ghost story wrapped up in a doomed romance and a meditation about loss of class privilege in post-WWII England, Waters tragic tale skilfully conveys a growing sense of doom and futility through the story of the haunted Ayres family, gentry in decline as the world changes around them.