Scala Radio Book Club: Books of the year
Mark Forrest selects his top 5 books of 2021
Every Thursday on Scala Radio, Mark Forrest invites an author onto his show to discuss their latest book. As 2021 comes to a close, Mark has highlighted some of his favourite books from the last year. Whilst not a definitive ‘best of’ list, this is simply a celebration of the books which stood out to Mark across 2021.
Here are Mark's top 5 books of 2021:
Esther Freud – I Couldn’t Love You More
This is an engrossing story of three women, their lives, partners and family secrets inspired by a real-life situation that the author's mother found herself in as an unmarried pregnant young woman. The stories are individually involved as they chart the women's lives throughout nearly a century of history.
Paula Hawkins – A Slow Fire Burning
A contemporary thriller which starts with the discovery of a body on a narrowboat on the Regent's canal in London and is told from the point of view of the various characters who could have carried out the murder. They're all brilliantly drawn, the plots stuffed full of twists and turns and there's definitely going to be a movie version before too long.
Giles Foden – Freight Dogs
This is a big book stuffed full of vivid descriptions of recent history that I was unfamiliar with; the Congolese wars of the 1990s. Manu, the young man at the centre of the tale falls in with a group of mercenary pilots who carry people, goods and ammunition across Africa and beyond for whoever will pay them and what plays out is a real boys own adventure story.
Sarah Moss – The Fell
The first COVID novel that we read in the Book Club. It's November 2020 during the lockdown and a single mother can't cope with self-isolation. She breaks the rules, heads out onto the moors and unwittingly draws three others into her story. It's a timely reminder of recent events which have had a huge impact on our lives.
Rose Tremain – Lily: A Tale of Revenge
This is an engrossing Victorian melodrama as Tremain narrates the life of a girl who was abandoned at a London park gate in 1850, who grows up with foster parents in the countryside and then in London's Foundling Hospital. It's a story of abuse and revenge set against vivid depictions of a smelly, foggy and chaotic capital and those who live there.
Mark will be back to champion more authors in the Scala Radio Book Club in 2022.