My Year in Books – Two From a Small Indy Press

It’s not a coincidence that époque press produced two of the books that made an impact on me in 2023. Since they began a few years ago (it was pre-covid so it was probably more than few) they have consistently published the kind of books that you don’t tend to see elsewhere; interesting; different; small stories making a big point; big stories that rock your world a little.

I haven’t read everything they have produced and I don’t like everything I have read, although I recognise the quality of both the writing and the production in everything they touch, but this autumn two books clicked with me.

I won’t use the term unputdownable about The Shape of Guilt but only because it might give you the wrong idea. However, I did read it in a busy 14 hour time period when I should have been doing other things simply just because I didn’t want to let it go.

The adult son of a family torn apart by the chaos and tragedy of the mother’s mental illness lies in a hospital bed – the atmosphere is claustrophobic and the emotions raw – and it’s all told from the perspective of Robert Bunny, a toy rabbit who is the voice of reason. If I’ve made it sound cutesy or self-consciously experimental I’m sorry, because it is none of these things.

The author Lisa Fransson is an award-winning children’s author in her native Sweden so I guess she is familiar with philosopher toys and knows how to give them a voice. The Shape of Guilt is her first novel and I think the first she written in her adopted tongue of English.

Read it. You will be glad you did. Better still, share it in your book group. It deserves to be talked about and remembered. Buy it direct from the publisher HERE. You can also get it in all the usual places but a direct sale is better for them.

If the River is Hidden is very different. For a start it is non-fiction: part memoir, part history, part pilgrimage, part a slim volume of poetry. Two writers walk the Bann, Northern Ireland’s longest river and this is a record of what they thought about and talked about as they walked. They come from each side of the sectarian divide and it’s a journey of discovery for both of them

This is a book for readers who think they don’t like poetry or wouldn’t buy a travel book about Ireland or a memoir by two writers they’ve never heard of…

I had the great privilege of seeing the authors perform the book in Brighton and I thought the written word could never hope to match the the vivacity and wit and music of their live performance. But it does. It does.

What I want to get across more than anything else is the sheer fun of the poetry and prose. It is a masterclass in how to inject life and humour into language while also exploring identity and where you fit in the world. All in all, it is a complete joy.

Again, buy it from the publishers if you can.