Book Shelf: Honeymoon Edition

The books I read during five weeks in Europe, where I read them, what I thought, and the funny, coincidental overlaps I discovered along the way.

I’ve just returned from my honeymoon: four adventurous, stretchy, warm weeks travelling across Europe.

Choosing the books to read on holidays, and the order in which to read them, is one of my very favourite things. It involves predicting a mood - Will I be weary or wired? Reading on a beach or a train? Wanting to sink into something long and languid, or eat up something quick and zingy? - and choosing texts to imbue with another layer of meaning, just like curating a playlist to soundtrack an era or picking a fragrance to set up a scent memory.

Downloading sample chapters, to-ing and fro-ing on which to begin first, resisting the temptation to start reading my most anticipated ahead of time. Delicious. Anticipatory. High stakes.

So here they are: The books I read on one of the most memorable trips of my life, where I read them, and the funny, coincidental similarities I discovered along the way.

1. Yellowface, R.F. Kuang

Where: Plane, Sydney to Abu Dhabi

Rating: 5/5

I saved the most hyped book of the year as a treat for the flight over, resisting a very intense urge to gobble it up beforehand. I was so glad I didn’t. I read and read and read, non-stop, until I’d reached the final page. As soon as I did, I wished I could read it again for the first time.

It’s as sharp, biting, and good as everyone says it is. Highly recommend.

2. A Perfect Vintage, Chelsea Fagan

Where: London

Rating: 3/5

From the founder of The Financial Diet comes this summery, pace-y, easy read about Lea Mortimer’s summer in the south of France, transforming a chateau into a boutique hotel, and navigating messy, complicated relationships with her best friend, best friend’s daughter, and the chateau-owning family.

It was a great book to dip in and out of before and after London work days, at solo dinners, and on the Tube.

3. The Rachel Incident, Caroline O’Donoghue

Where: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Rating: 5/5

Another five star read, and my favourite of O’Donoghue’s (I’ve also read Promising Young Women and Scenes of a Graphic Nature) yet. Set across Ireland and London, the book tracks Rachel’s relationships with James, her gay best friend, another James, her boyfriend, and Fred, the professor she’s in love with.

The characters felt 3D, and the writing sparkled with truth and humour. Bloody loved it. And so will you, if you liked Conversations With Friends, Romantic Comedy, or any recent, buzzy Irish fiction.

4. The Happy Couple, Naoise Dolan

Where: Split, Croatia

Rating: 5/5

Irish novelist Dolan burst onto the scene with 2020’s Exciting Times, drawing comparisons to Sally Rooney. In The Happy Couple, she’s even better. Like The Rachel Incident, it’s set in London and Ireland, so reading them back-to-back was a blurry experience of remembering that a character from O’Donoghue’s book wouldn’t pop up again in Dolan’s.

Celine and Luke are engaged to be married, but will they follow through? The book charts the lead up to the wedding, told from Celine, Luke, Celine’s sister Phoebe, best man Archie, and friend Vivian’s perspectives. It is clever, intimate, and funny. I’ve thought about it ever since. Read it.

5. Games and Rituals, Katherine Heiny

Where: Zagreb, Croatia

Rating: 4/5

This short story collection was the perfect palette cleanser and reintroduction to short stories after a long break. ‘561’ was my favourite, in which Charlene moves her husband’s ex-wife out of the family home on a freezing day.

I often struggle to remember short stories, but the mental image of Charlene lugging box after box down a set of steep, slippery, dangerous stairs as the cold numbs her fingers, her husband and his ex-wife warm inside, remains vivid.

6. Talking at Night, Claire Daverley

Where: Zagreb, Budapest

Rating: 3/5

Reading the blurb, Talking at Night reminded me of David Nicholls’ One Day: “This is the story of Will and Rosie. The two are opposites in every way and yet they fall for each other as teenagers … they’re on the precipice of starting something wonderful. Until one day, tragedy strikes, and any possibility of being together seems to shatter.

”But time and again, Rosie and Will find their way back to each other. Though the years pass, they cannot quite let go of what might have been.”

It didn’t live up to its One Day-level expectations, and it was a bit slow to get going, but I gulped down, and through, the heartbreakingly tender second half.

7. Love Marriage, Monica Ali

Where: Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Torino. Finished on the train from Torino to Genoa

Rating: 5/5

I saw and heard about this book everywhere when it launched last year, but its heft didn’t gel with a return-to-office life - it’s a big book. But I don’t feel the same sense of intimidation tackling chunky reads on Kindle (I read A Little Life on Kindle too), and a long trip was the perfect opportunity to dive in.

It felt risky - committing to an epic threatened to disrupt my reading momentum; it couldn’t sag in the middle if I were to favour reading on a train, during a rare bath, or before bed over YouTube or editing photos - but I needn’t have worried. Love Marriage weaves together familial, parental, and romantic relationships, politics, work, religion, betrayal, and culture together without ever feeling crammed or kitchen sink-y.

It feels like an impossible book to sum up, but the NYT gets closest: “Yasmin and Joe are getting married. Their families meet. Suddenly every problem, secret, injustice and difference of opinion on both sides is blown wide open, with disastrous consequences.”

Joe’s mother Harriet, publicly-known for her feminist writing, reminded me of Sex Education’s Jean, played by Gillian Anderson, who I pictured as Harriet the whole way through. And I loved how Ali explored parents beyond their parenthood, the family stories handed down and built up over decades, and secrecy. Joe has secrets. Yasmin retaliates with her own betrayals. And her parents are harbouring secrets of their own.

This competes with Yellowface (closely followed by The Rachel Incident and The Happy Couple) for my favourite read of the trip. It’s perfect.

8. The Guest, Emma Cline

Where: Genoa

Rating: 3.5/5

I loved The Girls and Cline’s follow-up short story collection Daddy, so I looked forward to this - a story about Alex, who drifts aimlessly for a week after the wealthy, older man she’s been staying with sends her back to the city. Her phone doesn’t work. She tricks people into offering her shelter, food, and a place in their social circles. She creates a trail of destruction. She is captivatingly awful.

It was entirely different to anything else I read on holiday - mysterious, suspenseful in its slow plod towards a conclusion, stressful and gripping in its strangeness, floaty and hazy the whole way through. The writing is A+.

If you enjoyed Ellery Lloyd’s The Club, Bella Mackie’s How To Kill Your Family, or anything Anna Delvey-adjacent, you’ll like this.

9. August Blue, Deborah Levy

Where: Plane, Abu Dhabi to Sydney

Rating: 3.5/5

This was my first time reading Levy’s work, and I get it - the writing is exquisite. The story was strange and dream-like, but it worked for a plane read, especially as it traversed London, Paris, Athens, and Sardinia, and was the third read of the trip spotlighting a woman pianist as the protagonist. A short read, a good read.

The Overlaps

The Rachel Incident and The Happy Couple are both Irish novels, set across London and Ireland (London pops up again in Love Marriage and August Blue). The Happy Couple stars Celine, a pianist protagonist, just like Talking At Night’s Rosie and August Blue’s Elsa. The Happy Couple and Love Marriage both bore witness to couples in the complicated lead ups to their weddings. The Rachel Incident and The Guest both feature relationships between young people infatuated with older, more powerful men.

One of the stories in Games and Rituals mentioned a Clive, and the next book, Talking At Night, did too. Talking At Night also introduced me to Howard Hodgkin, a British abstract artist. I’d never heard of him before. But then I read Love Marriage immediately after, and not far in, there he was again - it felt like magic spotting his name in the very next book, so soon after reading it for the first time, although I know the ‘frequency illusion’ explains this exact phenomena.

I can’t tell if my holiday reading rhythm made me more likely to spot these little coincidences. Or if the experience of travelling, of the membrane between you and the world dissolving, made me more sensitive to them. Regardless, it was an entirely new feeling to spot Easter Eggs that felt hidden just for me. If I didn’t choose Dolan’s The Happy Couple right after finishing O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident, would the worlds of these young Irish women splitting their lives across Ireland and London feel as blended, or as rich? Will I always think of Celine, Rosie, and Elsa whenever I encounter a protagonist who’s an accomplished pianist? Will I now see Howard Hodgkin’s name and/or work everywhere?

Each book I chose continued a conversation the one before it, and the one before that, had started. I’ll remember the experience of reading each of them, and where I read them, but also the way they spoke to each other, and in doing so, spoke to me.

Next up: Big Swiss by Jen Beagin, a novel about a sex therapist’s transcriptionist. I started reading it on the plane home, after finishing August Blue, and the writing is so far snappy. I have high hopes.

I hope you enjoyed this first edition of Top Shelf, and that you’ll consider subscribing for more top picks across my book and beauty shelves.

Until next time,

Britt