8 New Books To Read This Weekend

Yes, July might traditionally have been a slow time for new releases, but this year – thank Covid! – some truly brilliant books have hit the shelves. So we asked some of our favourite PRIMER contributors to tell us the new, and new-ish, books they’d recommend we read this lockdown.

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

Recommended by Laura Brading, co-founder of book subscription service WellRead

We’ve done this enough times to know that not everyone approaches lockdown as an opportunity to read Infinite Jest. With that in mind, I recommend this beautifully evocative debut that, despite being only 200-odd pages in length, reads like a multigenerational saga.

Of Women and Salt follows a collection of mothers and daughters across five generations through Cuba, Mexico, Texas and Miami, and explores ideas around immigration, addiction, memory, the mother-daughter bond and the tenacity it takes to tell a story that others wish to silence. Garcia’s women are the beating heart of this novel, and I’m still thinking about them months later.

My Father, The Murderer by Nina Young and Denise Young

Recommended by writer and editor Alley Pascoe

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad,” is a much-quoted line from the English poet Phillip Larkin – and it’s also the underlying theme of Nina Young’s memoir about family secrets and lies.

Nina’s mum Denise spent her life trying to shelter her daughter from her father’s brutal past, but in her mid-twenties, Nina discovered the truth: her dad had strangled a woman to death before she was born. Yet this isn’t the tale of a father’s crime as much as the story of a daughter’s journey, a mother’s fight for survival and their unbreakable bond. As far as stories go, this one is a ripper. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.”

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny

Picked by PRIMER co-founder Anna Saunders

Early Morning Riser is a big-hearted book about a small town. It follows 26-year-old Jane, a teacher in Boyne City, Michigan, who falls in love with the town’s most handsome man, Duncan – only to realise that he’s already slept with half the town.

But this isn’t your standard romance. There are no declarations of love or dramatic plot twists; in fact, there’s very little in the way of drama or action at all. Instead it’s Heiny’s perceptive observations, which expose the quiet beauty of daily life that make Early Morning Riser so compelling.

It took me a long time to open this book – I couldn’t quite understand, from the book’s back cover, what it was actually about. But in the end my timing was perfect; in the face of confronting Covid-related news, the gentle pace of this book was like a balm.

Power Play by Julia Banks

Recommended by PRIMER’s other co-founder, Felicity Robinson

When former MP Julia Banks’ memoir came out last month, it received a lot of attention – and rightly so. Her account of the way she was treated by the Liberal party, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in particular, was shocking.

But Power Play is more than a takedown of some noxious men; it’s a thoughtful, honest, at times forensic examination of who wields power in the workplace, and what needs to happen for women to achieve the leadership positions they deserve. The final chapter, on finding your own leadership style, is beautifully written.