Author: Kendra Winchester

Zuhur is an Omani woman attending university in the United Kingdom. As she tries to fit in with her classmates, she feels caught between two places. In her first person narration, we learn about her friends, their love interests, and the intersecting lives of the residents of her building. As Zuhur discusses her life, she’s drawn back to Oman and her family.

In these moments when she contemplates her family’s past, we learn of Bint Amir, a woman who Zuhur thought of as an adopted grandmother. Abandoned by her father at a young age, Bint Amir was forced to learn to survive on her own, eventually finding a home with Zuhur’s grandparents, where she became a wet nurse to Zuhur’s father.

The structure of this slim novel moves back and forth between Zuhur’s present and Bint Amir’s past. Eventually, we also learn more about the other women in Zuhur’s life who helped make her the person she is in the present.

Zuhur’s life in the present revolves around a friend of hers who has decided to marry a man who her parents think is not good enough for her. But as she helps her friend find moments alone with her beloved, Zuhur begins to enjoy his company too.

The strength of this novel lies in its approach to intimacy between characters. In just over two hundred pages, Alharthi gives us an intricate family saga. Somehow, I feel like I know these characters so well that I must have read a much longer novel. But that just illustrates Alharthi’s skill in characterization.

So if you love family saga and nonlinear structures, then this book will be right in your wheelhouse.

In 1980s Tokyo, Takiko arrives at the hospital all alone to have her baby. She often finds herself repeating, “No, I have no husband” as the nurses repeatedly inquire as to why she is alone. After her son is born, Takiko faces an uphill battle as a working class single mother trying to escape her family’s suffocating home. Her father is often physically abusive and refuses to get a job, leaving Takiko’s mother to financially support their family.

Takiko feels determined to leave her parents house and make it on her own. But neverending logistics around childcare, healthcare, and finances repeatedly seem to make her goal of leaving her parents’ household farther and farther away. She moves from job to job, struggling to find something that will work with her daycare’s hours and the various doctor’s visits her son needs with his ongoing health issues.

Tsushima uses imagery around light to communicate her protagonist’s desire for independence and freedom from societal expectations.Takiko constantly feels that society wants her to give up everything, even her own personal identity, for her son. But Takiko believes she will be a better person — a better mother — if she still holds onto her sense of self.

The translation is incredible, and I often paused at the beautiful prose. And ever since I finished the novel, I haven’t been able to get Takiko’s story out of my mind. I will definitely be picking up more of Tsushima’s work in the future.

We’re introduced to Hilary Mantel as a child living with her parents in rural England. Much of Mantel’s childhood is marked by her Catholic upbringing and how her family’s faith shaped her mind. In incredible prose, she shares the wild dreams she had that fueled her anxiety about the supernatural forces the nuns said were around her.

While much of this memoir focuses on Mantel’s coming-of-age story, the second half of the book focuses on her experience with endometriosis and thyroid illness. She grew up a sickly child, so the severe cramps she experienced with her periods seemed par for the course. But as the pain grew more severe, she thought, this can’t be normal. It wasn’t.

However, doctors refused to believe that she was in as much pain as she was, instead referring her to psychiatric care. Eventually, she found a doctor who was willing to try some treatments with her, but it was all very touch and go. We follow Mantel’s frustration and anguish as she tries to untangle her many symptoms from the side effects of her medications. Her body type completely changes. And when she goes to the doctor, now they blame her symptoms on her weight.

Mantel’s story reflects the ableism, sexism, and fat phobia that the medical industry has embraced for a long time. Like Mantel describes in the book, she was eventually able to get the care that she needed. But at what cost?

As someone with similar chronic illness experiences, I deeply connected with Mantel’s story. She’s able to articulate the feeling of constantly being in pain but disbelieved by medical professionals. Being Mantel, her prose is perfection, her insights incredible. This is definitely a memoir you won’t want to miss.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

[CW: ableism, eugenics, attempted suicide]

As a disabled person who loves books, I’m always looking for more stories about other disabled people and the lives they lead. But sometimes these books can be hard to find, and even when I CAN find them, they aren’t available in a format I can read. As part of my condition, I can’t read print books, but not every book is available as an audiobook. So when a friend volunteered to read this book to me, I gave a hearty, “Yes, please!”

The White Bathing Hut is about a Norwegian man who has a disease where his muscles deteriorate over time. When the doctor first diagnoses him at fifteen, he’s not sure that he wants to keep living. But he decides to hang on and discovers that life still has so many beautiful things left to offer. Over the years, he learns that his illness is genetic, but no one in his father’s family has the condition. When he asks his mother, she refuses to acknowledge the extent of his condition, let alone discuss her family’s medical history.

With The White Bathing Hut, Steen also comments on Norway’s history with eugenics. And while they denounce any practice of that now, the novel’s protagonist deals with constant ableism that’s still very much part of his modern experience as a person with a genetically inherited disability.

This is one of those books that found me at just the right time. As someone with more than one genetic disability, I’m all too aware of America’s love of eugenics and who may or may not have “the best quality of life.” But there is a lot of wisdom and encouragement in this novel. Steen shares the same genetic condition as his protagonist, and in a trailer for an upcoming documentary on his life, Steen describes his own mental health spiral after his diagnosis. But he goes on to say, “I’m glad I gave life a chance.”