What to read when you lack the time or attention span

Sometimes you need a change of reading pace. Something short and sharp, like a blast of air conditioning for the brain. Having enjoyed some hefty doorstoppers of late, I decided to read Rebecca Perry’s slender May We Feed the King ahead of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. (This turned out to be a sound decision, as it proceeded to win and I interviewed Rebecca the very next day.)

After which success, I set off on a brisk jaunt through some excellent short novels (around the 250 page mark), which also became something of an exercise in reading fiction-in-translation. This was one of my 2026 reading resolutions, and I know it is July, knocking on August, but better late than not at all. I cannot lie: I feel chic when reading fiction in translation. I imagine myself one of those women with a very large, improbably expensive straw hat, who sips a very cold glass of white wine whilst reading the latest novel from Akoya or Foundry Editions, or Fitzcarraldo. (It is also possible I am thinking of Dua Lipa on honeymoon, here?) Anyway, my point remains: it is chic.

May We Feed the King - Rebecca Perry (Granta)
Pages: 272
What an exquisite curiosity box of a novel. (You might have had one as a child, with secret compartments in which things could be hidden or disappeared?) Everything we read is half-glimpsed or overheard through cracks in the door, or a window left ajar. An unnamed Curator, with an unspecified unhappy past, is tasked with reconstructing historical scenes in a medieval palace. As she peruses the archives, she chances upon, and becomes increasingly fascinated by, a forgotten medieval king. He is a painfully reluctant ruler, on whom the weight of power hangs unhappily. The courtiers scheme and circle like scavenging birds. It is a novel about the fallibility of memory, half-glimpsed truths, the unknowability of history and characters.

Black September - Sandro Veronesi translated by Michael F. Moore (Sceptre) - (Published in August but too good not to mention now)
Pages: 256
This is gorgeous - an Italian film in book form; a coming-of-age story to add to the pantheon of greats: put it up there alongside I Capture the Castle, Call Me By Your Name, and The Go Between. Tuscany, summer 1972, a languid beach holiday, and twelve-year-old Gigio Bellandi who hovers in that liminal stage between child and adolescent. He falls for Astel - a girl with hair “black as onyx” - and begins to see his parents (“they were good people”) without “the veil of childhood”. And then the sunshine idyll is shattered by outside events. Narrated by the adult Gigio, it unfolds with the tension of a thriller as it meditates on memory and loss, shot through with the hazy, wistful nostalgia of lost summer innocence.

Just a Little Dinner - Cécile Tlili (Foundry Editions)
Pages: 155
So French it should be read whilst eating croissants. Or cheese and red wine, depending upon the time of day.

Access the rest of the list and you, too, can pose like Dua Lipa/a very stylish reader/my dearly beloved paid subscribers who make it possible for me to write this newsletter. I squeeze it into corners of the week owing to the day job - this instalment comes to you courtesy of early mornings, Friday evening with glass of wine, and Saturday afternoon with an ice lolly - and it’s all thanks to YOU. Also, please come and hang out in the comments and tell me about your favourite short novels and the fiction in translation you’re tempted to read in a performative manner. And why not, my friends? After all, we know reading makes us smarter and more devastatingly attractive.