lou's library

I am a sucker for writing so beautiful it takes your breath away. Nothing worse than a poorly written book, if you ask me. And recently, I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve discovered lots of new books with immaculate writing and I thought it’d be a crime to keep them from you! So without further ado, here’s what to read when you’re after something stunning.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

To be fair, I could’ve chosen any of the Maggie O’Farrell novels I’ve read. They’re all written heartbreakingly beautifully, despite all having distinctly unique premises. I decided to go with The Marriage Portrait though, because its writing struck me the most as an outstanding quality of the book. It’s set in Renaissance Italy and revolves around a wife’s desperate attempt to survive her husbands plans to murder her. So, you know, it’s not exactly a cheery read. But the protagonist Lucrezia, a young girl from the Medici dynasty, forced into marriage with a husband who, turns out, doesn’t trust her and would much rather see her dead, is written with such endearing love that you can’t help but root for her. It’s a breathtaking book, and that’s due in huge part to Maggie O’Farrells ability to pull the reader into the story, to describe the Italian landscape so vividly you truly feel like you’re there with them all. I loved this book so much, it made me a Maggie O’Farrell stan for life. I keep coming back to her writing because it never lets me go once I’ve read the last page.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

I swear to God, this book almost broke me. Rarely have I ever read something so exquisite and yet so devastatingly sad. We follow Mungo, a boy growing up on a council estate with his troubled mother and older brother. His Mum wants to do him some good and sends him on a fishing trip with two men. The story unfolds from there and there are so many emotions to unpack, from all the characters. The topics that are covered in this book are quite heavy, but Douglas Stuart conveys them all so tenderly and somehow always seems to find the right words. I hear a lot of people rave about his other novel, Shuggie Bain, and I do love that one, too. But Young Mungo hit me like a train and left me catching my breath, hoping against all odds that it would all be alright in the end. My investment in this story is entirely thanks to Stuart’s immaculate writing, because it made me care about what happened to Mungo. I cannot imagine anyone not loving this book, so please, do yourself a favour and read it.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Pat Barker has a way of packing hefty emotions into clear, short sentences that leaves me speechless. The Silence of The Girls is the first book in a trilogy of Greek mythology retellings, focusing on the women of those stories. I guess you can imagine how they were treated and the trauma they had to suffer as a consequence of that. Pat Barker manages to showcase the hurt and violations these girls had to endure, while never humiliating them. She tells their stories calmly and yet with such force, you can’t help but admire her craftsmanship (craftswomanship?!). This is the kind of book where I just want to underline every sentence and mumble ‘damn’ to myself at least twice a chapter. I know there are a lot of Greek mythology retellings out there by now (and a lot of truly great ones, too!), but there’s something about Pat Barker’s approach in combination with her effortless prose that make her hard to beat (if we exclude the masterpiece that is Song of Achilles, of course).

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

When I first picked up this book in the summer of 2021, I did not know what I was in for. It was meant to be a quick and fun holiday read. Suffice to say, I could not put this book down and was hooked from the first chapter. Delia Owens can write in a way that is so evocative, I had the book play out like a movie in my mind the entire time I was reading. Its a coming of age story, but also a murder mystery, but that description doesn’t do justice of the role nature plays in this novel. Set in the marshes of North Carolina, Where the Crawdads Sing is a love letter to the healing abilities of nature. And Delia Owens describes it so beautifully, you can’t help but fall in love with it. It feels like the setting is its own character and as someone who cares a lot about the settings of books, I ate that stuff up in no time! It’s also just extremely well written in the sense that its vivid in its descriptions and such a page turner, you simply must know how it all ends! I’m still looking for a book that does justice to the beauty and dangers of the natural world the way Where The Crawdads Sing does.

Held by Anne Michaels

Boy, oh boy, I wasn’t ready for this one to hit me like it did. I knew nothing about Held going in, other than it being set during the First World War. That is true for part of the book, but we follow multiple characters in different moments of time and it is so much more than your average war story. I think it’s best to go into it knowing as little as possible about the plot. Just be ready for some seriously beautiful writing with sentences that will make you GASP. Anne Michaels somehow manages to pack some of the most profound insights into the smallest sentences and it’s such a joy to read them. Example: “What we give cannot be taken from us”. DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN? So simple and yet so damn true and not obvious at all! (At least, I had never thought of it that way, but maybe that’s just me?) I underlined the hell out of this book and already know I want to reread it. It’s so clear how much time and effort she has put into creating her characters and the way they interlink, and in her writing, a paragraph contains whole universes. I’m struggling to describe this very well at all, so please just trust me on this and dive right in!

I have lots more books that fit this category, but for now, those are my current top picks! I’m excited to hear if you agree, so do let me know what you think!