Notes on a Nervous Planet
Matt Haig
Canongate, £12.99, pp320
In his bestselling memoir Reasons to Stay Alive, Matt Haig wrote about his own mental health. Here, he broadens his gaze to ask: “How can we live in a mad world without ourselves going mad?” The short answer lying within this likable and thought-provoking book is effectively: turn off the internet. But Haig knows how difficult, if not impossible, that is. Instead, his hard-won wisdom asks us to think about how we can live in the present – and in so doing, he creates a wonderfully perceptive chronicle of life in the always-on social media age.A real-world guide to mindfulness, as happy to namecheck Notorious BIG as Virginia Woolf.
We Begin Our Ascent
Joe Mungo Reed
The Borough Press, £12.99, pp256
ictional sporting stories always contains an element of risk - there’s enough drama in real-life arenas, after all. But cycling novels have a better track record than most, and Joe Mungo Reed adds to that canon with a quietly powerful debut focusing on the relationship between a professional rider on the Tour de France and his geneticist wife as they battle for meaning in their rarefied fields. The cycling elements to the story are impressively accurate – perhaps too much so for a wider audience – but just like a finely honed athlete, there’s a lean, focused feel to this absorbing tale.
The Bedlam Stacks
Natasha Pulley
Bloomsbury Circus, £12.99, pp352
It has all the ingredients for a rollicking steampunk adventure. There’s a Victorian quest to Peru to find a reliable source of quinine to treat malaria; a holy town built on glass called Bedlam where statues move and, intriguingly, a priest-guide who can sleep for decades at a time. Natasha Pulley’s follow-up to The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (to which The Bedlam Stacks refers) is an intricate, escapist treat – and amid all these fantastically surreal delights, there is just enough restraint for the relationship between our expeditionary, Merrick Tremayne, and the priest to ring true, too. Admittedly, colonialism gets a pretty easy ride – but then, The Bedlam Stacks never purports to be the new Heart of Darkness.
To order Notes on a Nervous Planet, We Begin Our Ascent, or The Bedlam Stacks for £11.04, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846
