In brief: Because I Don’t Know What You Mean…; One Midsummer’s Day; Imagine a City – reviews
Because I Don’t Know What You Mean and What You Don’t
Josie Long
Canongate, £16.99, pp208
There’s a neat synergy between standup and short story-writing in the way their carefully constructed snippets of life build to a punchline. Josie Long’s first collection reveals a natural gift with a frank and poignant tale; teenage experience, community WhatsApp groups and broken family units are picked apart with a wry cynicism at the weirdness and cruelty of life. And while these stories are all tonally and stylistically similar – conversational rather than artfully constructed – that makes for an approachable debut full of heart and hope.
One Midsummer’s Day
Mark Cocker
Jonathan Cape, £20, pp352
The nature writer Mark Cocker calls swifts “living mysteries” in this lovely paean to the birds with supersized wings currently whirling and fizzing around the British Isles. It’s a good way of framing a narrative subtitled “Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth”. Cocker argues that by understanding – or at least investigating – the beautiful mystery of a bird almost always in flight, we can better comprehend our own place in the world. A thoughtful combination of the personal and the ornithological.
Imagine a City
Mark Vanhoenacker
Vintage, £10.99, pp416 (paperback)
Vanhoenacker – an airline pilot turned international bestseller-writer – rightly won praise for his debut, Skyfaring, exploring the majesty of flight. He follows it up with a deeper dive into the human psyche and his own history. While Vanhoenacker takes us on fascinating journeys to Brasília and Cape Town, Liverpool and Jeddah, this is not just a travelogue of the cities in which he lands. Instead, Imagine a City becomes a philosophical interrogation of what home means and how we might shape it in our minds to be a place of succour and safety.
To order Because I Don’t Know What You Mean and What You Don’t, One Midsummer’s Day or Imagine a City go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
