Matt's Books and Music

March was a decent reading month, but I struggled to find books that really captivated me. I finished a lot of great books, but also didn’t make it past page 15 of a lot too.

Nine Raves

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)

Premise: An aging woman moves into a London hotel and meets a small group of other lonely seniors.

Review: I don’t have words for how great this Booker-shortlisted classic was. I don’t think I’ve encountered a book that deals with the common subjects of loneliness and the small humiliations of aging with as much subtlety and grace but also humour as this.

Bookish Pair: When the Cranes Fly South, by Lisa Ridzen (2024)

A Language of Limbs, by Dylin Hardcastle (2024)

Premise: After being discovered in a tryst, two Australian teenage girls choose very different paths for their lives.

Review: This is a sad, special, and ultimately hopeful novel of queer loss, love, and joy. A lot of very hard things happen here, but I really appreciated the nuance with which the author handles them, particularly surrounding complex family dynamics and the possibilities and problems of coming out.

Boookish Pair: In some ways this is like a Sapphic version of Nova Scotia House, by Charlie Porter (2025)

Floodlines, by Saleem Haddad (2026)

Premise: As they watch their homeland crumble from afar, an Iraqi expat family wrangles over their past and future.

Review: This is a brilliant nesting doll of a novel about the interconnected and clashing legacies of individuals, families, nations, cultures, and civilization itself. These are timely questions, not just for the Arab world but for the West too: What is our story? Who gets to tell it? and Why? Not only is this an important, poignant, and piercing book, but it’s also a beautiful one, filled with rich prose and complex characters. It’s early days still, but at this point I’d be shocked if this doesn’t end up being my top read of the year.

Bookish Pair: Haddad’s debut novel Guapa (2016) is for me the definitive novel about the hopes and disappointments of the Arab Spring

English, by Sanaz Toossi (2023)

Premise: The students and teacher of a TOEFL class in Iran wrestle with their lives, hopes, and fears as they struggle to express themselves in English.

Review: My best friend recently saw this Pulitzer Prize-winning play and raved about it so much that I couldn’t not pick it up immediately. While I’m sure it would be better in its intended format, it still works beautifully as literature. Its simple premise and language couch profound reflections on language, expression, and identity. This is genius, and not something I’ll soon forget.

Bookish Pair: Himawari House, by Harmony Becker (2021)

That’s What Friends Are For, by Wade Rouse (2026)

Premise: Four gay seniors who share a home and the stage in Palm Springs reenacting Golden Girls episodes encounter life-altering changes.

Review: This is as sweet and huggable as the premise suggests. The characters are great and the author brings Palm Springs to life. That said, it’s really hard in a book like this to have all four storylines feel equally vital and realistic, and I don’t think it entirely succeeded in that. But nonetheless this is a lot of fun.

Bookish Pair: Steven Rowley’s The Guncle (2021) is another great Palm Springs book.

Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald (1979)

Premise: A community of diverse people living on barges in the Thames in the 1960s draws to its end.

Review: This is reputed as one of the most surprising Booker winners, and for me it was an equally surprising hit. It’s been described as a “tragi-comedy,” which is normally not a good recipe for me. But I loved it. I expected the atmosphere and strong characters, but I didn’t expect the writing to be simultaneously so affecting and so funny. This is a book that can make you laugh and break your heart in the span of two sentences.

The Afterlife Project, by Tim Weed (2025)

Premise: After discovering a prophecy has determined he must die in order to save the world as he knows it, a hapless knight switches sides and discovers that maybe the world as he knows it might not be so great anyway.

Review: This is a pure delight of a novel. A mixture of fantasy and science fiction, with a strong comedic sensibility, it was full of surprises that kept me entertained at every turn. While very fun, it also touched on some important themes in creative ways.

Bookish Pair: ND Stevenson’s graphic novel phenomenon, Nimona (2015

Premise: In the distant future, a man emerges from stasis on a mission to seek out human survivors of climate disaster; meanwhile, in the late 21st-C, his colleagues brave a rapidly deteriorating situation to search for a fertile woman to help repopulate the species.

Review: This was a pleasant surprise for me. The distant future timeline was particularly compelling with the main character’s attempts at survival in an unrecognizable world. While the near future timeline was less successful for me, I think it did its job well enough not to take away from the overall experience. The combination of harsh reality and hope was wonderfully wrought and the bold ending moved me deeply.

Bookish Pair: The Forest on the Edge of Time, by Jasmin Kirkbride (2026)

It Takes Two to Tumble (Sedgwicks 1), by Cat Sebastian (2017)

Premise: A widowed naval captain tries to establish law and order with his unruly children, but only loses ground until he allies himself with the good-natured (and handsome) local vicar who had been recruited to manage them in their father’s absence.

Review: It’s hard to make relationships that are unconventional enough today feel realistic in a historical setting, but Cat Sebastian is one of the very best. And this, I think, is one of the best examples. Not only does the story make sense, but The characters are well-crafted, the secondary relationships fantastic, and the story goes down very easily.

The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje (1992 🇨🇦)

Premise: In the closing months of WWII, four very different people—a Canadian nurse, a thief friend of her family, a Sikh combat engineer, and a mysterious patient—cross paths in an Italian villa.

Review: I’d never read this Golden-Booker-prize-winning Canadian novel and now that I have, I get the fuss. Ondaatje’s prose feels like poetry, and his characters are all the richer for their subtlety. While this won’t be an all-time favourite for me, it is unquestionably an all-time great novel.

Bookish Pair: The setting reminded me of Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints (1990 🇨🇦)

And One Pan

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, by Nina McConigley (2026)

Premise: A biracial teenager in 1980s Wyoming struggles with casual racism, a fraying family, and a predatory uncle.

Review: I really wanted to love this: It has a compelling premise and a sharp point of view, as well as a unique setting. Unfortunately, for me at least, it did too much telling and not enough showing, In that way it felt more like sociology at times than a novel. There were so many things I wanted her to dig deeper into — like an Anglophile Indian mother, or being South Asian Indian in ‘Indian Country’, to say nothing about the murder plot — but it just left a lot unexplored and relied instead on tropes that felt tired to this reader.

Bookish Pair: For a more successful book that combines mystery and discussions of race, The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, by Eddy Boudel Tan (2025 🇨🇦)

Notable Non-Fiction

The Soul of a Woman, by Isabel Allende (2021)

Premise: The eminent Chilean author and journalist looks back on the importance of feminism throughout her life.

Review: This has many moments of incisive brilliance worthy of the author’s reputation and legacy as a feminist leader. It’s best when she weaves her own story of her lifelong feminism into her broader themes. Unfortunately it also has moments of picking the lowest hanging fruit, and moments where she seems as out of touch as one might expect from someone who was close to 80 when this was published. (I really didn’t need her thoughts on online dating!) I absolutely do recommend this, but don’t expect it to be groundbreaking.