{"id":144211,"date":"2025-09-17T22:37:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T22:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/144211\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T22:37:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T22:37:13","slug":"what-to-read-this-autumn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/144211\/","title":{"rendered":"What to Read This Autumn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sea, Poison<\/a> | Caren Beilin<\/p>\n

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\nCaren Beilin, Sea, Poison, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: New Directions<\/p>\n

Cumin Baleen, the protagonist of Caren Beilin\u2019s\u00a0Sea, Poison, has a solid excuse for her writer\u2019s block. The fish and wine shop employee, whose name tellingly resembles the author\u2019s own, is a victim of \u2018Medical OuLiPo\u2019: a scam eye surgery that perforated her brain, impeding her ability to link together clauses and thus complete her book. From plot and structure down to the level of syntax,\u00a0Sea, Poison\u00a0is a deeply weird read \u2013 unsettling and funny in turn. The daily frustrations of creative life, the generative power of constraints, the failure of the US healthcare and housing systems, a donkey that somehow resembles Daniel Day-Lewis: it\u2019s all in there.<\/p>\n

\u2013 CASSIE PACKARD, assistant editor<\/p>\n

Thrilled to Death<\/a> | Lynne Tillman\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nLynne Tillman, Thrilled to Death, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: Peninsula Press, London<\/p>\n

I heard Lynne Tillman read an excerpt from her novel\u00a0American\u00a0Genius, A\u00a0Comedy\u00a0(2006) late last year, and the experience completely changed how I approach her writing. Notorious for her evasive yet expertly crafted prose \u2013 where words move in errancy and sentences are composed with rhythmic precision \u2013 Tillman\u2019s work asks to be read out loud. In her upcoming publication,\u00a0Thrilled\u00a0to\u00a0Death,\u00a0which gathers short stories written over the course of her extensive career, enigmatic characters traverse the terrains of life, death,\u00a0art\u00a0and politics, constantly contemplating the real within reality. In a society relentlessly seeking instant gratification, Tillman\u2019s writing offers a remedy for the restless mind: a voice that, in spirit and substance, will reverberate long after reading.<\/p>\n

\u2013 BROOKE WILSON, image researcher<\/p>\n

Hauntings<\/a> | Vernon Lee <\/p>\n

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\nVernon Lee, Hauntings, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: Unnamed Press, Los Angeles<\/p>\n

This autumn brings the reissue of Vernon Lee\u2019s Hauntings (1890), a collection of ghost stories whose unease still cuts through sharply in the present. The collection gathers together four supernatural narratives: a historian becomes fatally enthralled by a medieval noblewoman\u2019s ghost; an artist, hired to paint a country lady\u2019s portrait, is ensnared in her obsession with a dead poet; a composer is undone by the spectral song of a castrato; and a shipwreck survivor grows into a pagan-like figure whose beauty and presence wreak havoc on a seaside town. Published by Smith & Taylor Classics \u2013 an imprint of Unnamed Press, launched last year by Allison Miriam Smith and Brandon Taylor to \u2018uplift the unlikely and unexpected from around the world\u2019 \u2013 the novel is an excellent read for the dark, cold evenings to come.<\/p>\n

\u2013 IVANA CHOLAKOVA, assistant editor<\/p>\n

Art and Revolution<\/a>, A Seventh Man<\/a> and From A to X<\/a> | John Berger<\/p>\n

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\nJohn Berger, Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny and the Role of the Artist, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: Verso Books, New York<\/p>\n

As part of their ongoing project of reissuing John Berger\u2019s books, Verso will publish Art and Revolution (1969), A Seventh Man (1975) and From A to X (2008) at the end of this month. These short works demonstrate the range of the author of Ways of Seeing (1972), from the idiosyncratic Marxist humanism behind his analysis of Ernst Neizvestny\u2019s socially focused sculpture, to his searing insights into the lives of Europe\u2019s migrant workers, to his elliptical storytelling via an epistolary form. I look forward to reading these texts in the lead-up to Berger\u2019s centennial in 2026 \u2013 and to spending time with Jean Mohr\u2019s powerful and affecting photographs, which illustrate A Seventh Man and attest to the collaborative nature of Berger\u2019s practice.<\/p>\n

\u2013 MARKO GLUHAICH, senior editor<\/p>\n

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye<\/a> |\u00a0Claire-Louise Bennett<\/p>\n

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\nClaire-Louise Bennett,\u00a0Big Kiss, Bye Bye, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: Fitzcarraldo Editions, London<\/p>\n

Claire-Louise Bennett\u2019s latest novel is a quietly brilliant exploration of desire, memory and the peculiar \u2013 and often frustrating \u2013 rhythms of relationships. Following her narrator through past loves and fleeting encounters, including a failed relationship with an older ex-partner, Xavier, Bennett deftly captures and skewers the idiosyncrasies of our attempts at connection and the inevitability of unresolved endings. Each chapter shifts perspective, reflecting the\u00a0inherently\u00a0unpredictable nature of life \u2013 and ourselves \u2013 through its changing geographical locations, its intimacies and its heartbreaks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2013 VANESSA PETERSON, senior editor<\/p>\n

Lyrical Diary: Lieder from Franz Schubert to Wolfgang Rihm<\/a> | Christian Gerhaher <\/p>\n

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\nChristian Gerhaher, Lyrical Diary: Lieder from Franz Schubert to Wolfgang Rihm, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: Faber & Faber Ltd<\/p>\n

As the days begin to shorten, little seems more appealing than sitting in a dimly lit room, listening to one of Christian Gerhaher\u2019s many lieder recordings and reading his stylish, intelligent and deeply humane study of a life spent interpreting these works \u2013\u00a0poems set to music by many of the great composers, from Beethoven to Schumann. The book is at times a little more technical than I find interesting, but just as often Gerhaher steps out to consider the broader sweep \u2013\u00a0romantic, societal or purely personal \u2013\u00a0of some of the great lieder, offering the insights of someone who has spent a career living with and interpreting these songs.<\/p>\n

\u2013 LOU SELFRIDGE, assistant editor\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lonely Crowds<\/a> | Stephanie Wambugu<\/p>\n

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\nStephanie Wambugu,\u00a0Lonely Crowds, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: Little, Brown and Company<\/p>\n

At the end of summer, I heard Stephanie Wambugu read as part of London\u2019s Soho Reading Series. We were celebrating her debut novel, about the New York art world in the early 1990s, which published this month in the US and will be released this autumn in the UK. Instead of reading from\u00a0Lonely Crowds, however, Wambugu shared a brilliant short story about a man addicted to baptism. In just a few pages, she spun an extraordinary and humorous portrait of obsession and the lengths we will go in order to feel part of a community. It left me even more excited for her novel. <\/p>\n

\u2013 ANDREW DURBIN, editor-in-chief<\/p>\n

The Slicks: On Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift<\/a>, Maggie Nelson<\/p>\n

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\nMaggie Nelson, The Slicks, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: Penguin Random House\/Fern Press<\/p>\n

What do the world\u2019s most famous living pop star and a cult feminist poet have in common? Their ambition, according to Maggie Nelson, who argues in this book \u2013 republished by Penguin this November \u2013 that these women are \u2018twin hosts of the female urge toward wanting hard, working hard and pouring forth\u2019. As a Swiftie who strongly identified with Plath\u2019s The Bell Jar (1963) when I read it as a teen, I am anticipating this release with almost as much excitement as I did the Eras Tour.<\/p>\n

\u2013 CHLOE STEAD, associate editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Sea, Poison | Caren Beilin Caren Beilin, Sea, Poison, 2025, book cover. Courtesy: New Directions Cumin Baleen,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-144211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}