A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews (Fourth Estate, £16.99)
When acclaimed novelist Miriam Toews (Women Talking) was asked “Why do you write?”, her struggles to form an answer led to this powerful memoir, which explores the effect on her life and work of the deaths by suicide of her father and sister. Segueing between the present and the past, Toews endeavours to find a link between silence, suicide and creativity. She does not shy away from her own vulnerability, and writes with both candour and humour.
Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian (W&N, £18.99)
Married couple Simone and Ethan are fellow academics in the same creative writing department at a New York university; Simone is treated as a star, while Ethan hasn’t produced a novel for years. When Ethan sleeps with the department secretary, Simone engages in an “emotional affair” with a student, who subsequently turns their relationship dramas into a piece of barely veiled fiction. Cynicism unites Emily Adrian’s characters, who favour caustic retorts over attempts at self-awareness, somewhat limiting the potential for deep engagement with them or their dilemmas.
Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound by Kate Kennedy (Apollo, £10.99)
Merging cultural and musical history with the biographies of extraordinary individuals, Kate Kennedy tells the stories of four unique cellos and their players: from a Jewish composer whose Gagliano was lost when he was captured by the Nazis, to a Stradivari shipwrecked off the coast of Buenos Aires. Kennedy traverses Europe following their journeys, and while the book perhaps tries to encompass too much – including the history of the cello and the author’s own musical tribulations – it nonetheless makes for fascinating reading.
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