Three Books I'm Reading Now, 5/12/25 Edition

The Books I'm Reading Now

I'm reading John Boyne's novel told in two timelines, World War II and present-day London, All the Broken Places; I'm listening to Ava Robinson's first novel, in which main protagonist Emma settles into a life of sobriety while trying to cope with family drama and dating again, Definitely Better Now; and I'm listening to Jacqueline Harpman's eerie, mysterious, slim post-apocalyptic-feeling novel, I Who Have Never Known Men.

What are you reading, bookworms?

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01 All the Broken Places by John Boyne

Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby is living out her days in a posh flat in London. She's friends with her younger across-the-hall neighbor Helen, who is coping with dementia, and Gretel's three-times-married-and-divorced grown son lives in the city, but otherwise Gretel keeps to herself.

When a couple and young son move into the flat below her, Gretel begins to worry that the man of the house is harming his wife and child, and her hesitant involvement leads him to discover elements about Gretel's youth in Berlin that she never wanted to face again.

Haunted by the past and threatened in the present, Gretel shapes the novel with disturbing memories from her youth that alternate with an increasingly messy, secretive present day. Gretel had been doing just fine skating through her days pushing down her guilt and her complicated past, but it seems she'll have to face it all at long last.

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02 Definitely Better Now by Ava Robinson

Emma is friendly but reserved with her coworkers, but she's focused on extending her one year of sobriety--an experience she doesn't share with others, especially those at work.

When she's assigned to assist on the committee for the office's extravagant holiday party, she's thrown together with a cheesy executive who spotted her joke of a dating profile before she pulled it down--and Ben, the intriguing IT manager she can't stop thinking about.

But her dating game is rusty, her sobriety program mentor is claustrophobically rigid, her estranged father is facing devastating news, and Emma is afraid to be her real self with anyone new as she navigates her new, sober life. It feels like every messy part of her life is about to converge in a destructive collision.

This is Ava Robinson's first novel.

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03 I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Forty women (one a young girl, our main protagonist) live as prisoners in an underground cage. Male guards come and go, feeding the women minimal rations and never speaking.

The women have no recollection of how they came to be in this place, and no information is forthcoming about why they are trapped there. They are not allowed to touch each other but may speak, and they share stories of their past lives, bicker over the slight variations in how they may prepare their food, and simply kill time until their almost certain death.

Then a blasting alarm sounds, the nearest guard drops his keys, and the women scramble for an escape they never anticipated. But what awaits them on the other side of the bunker doors?

Harpman's slim novel is mysterious, eerie, and strange. The pacing is appropriately slow as characters wander, wonder, and come across little new information as they search for others.

My friend Amy suggested that I read this one, and so far I'm intrigued by the post-apocalyptic, puzzling situation and by the main protagonist's persistence and rich inner life.

Jacqueline Harpman was a Belgian novelist. I Who Have Never Known Men was originally published in 1995, and later it was the first of her books to be translated into English.