Upcoming events at Backstory
(all at 71 Balham High Road)
Wednesday 3rd May, 7.30pm
In his book The Digital Republic, Jamie Susskind asks how freedom and democracy can survive in an online world of data leaks, racist algorithms and hate-filled social media. A manifesto for navigating, and managing, the increasingly digital world.
Wednesday 10th May, 7.30pm
Georgina Sturge uses skills from her day job as a researcher in the House of Commons library to debunk nefarious numbers and explain the uses and abuses of statistics in her new book, Bad Data. Numbers tell stories, if only you know how to read them. Thankfully, Georgina is the perfect guide.
Wednesday 17th May, 7.30pm
Breathing life into legendary women of Greek myth who have been forgotten, misrepresented, or misunderstood, Jennifer Saint is the bestselling author behind the magical Ariadne and Elektra. Her third novel tells the story of Atalanta, a heroine whose role in the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts is often overlooked, but is bursting with legend.
Wiz Wharton and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Tuesday 23rd May, 7.30pm
Wiz Wharton is the author of a debut novel exploring British-Chinese identity, opening in Brixton in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong. In conversation with Costa Prize-shortlisted author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, whose new novel The Sleep Watcher is about how our understanding of who our families are can shift suddenly and irrevocably.
Our bestsellers this week
Boy Friends: A Memoir of Joy, Grief and Male Friendship by Michael Pedersen - May’s Backstory non-fiction book club choice
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
Isaac and the Egg by Bobby Palmer
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
To Battersea Park by Philip Hensher
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
WHEN I LEFT MY JOB, my boss teased me in a leaving speech that somehow all of my articles over the years seemed to have, at one point or another, involved a jolly decent meal. Terrorist attack in Paris? How are the bistrots faring? Soak up the ambience, and the beaujolais nouveau. Divisive general election? Get some farmers together in a pub and sort it all out over a pint or…more than two.
So, even if expense claims rather lose their thrill when you’re the one paying them, it hasn’t taken me long to reprise old habits. One part alliteration to two parts inebriation has given birth, then, to Proofs and Pints, a monthly outing to a Balham pub that is part team social, part editorial conference. (Of course, as in all the best book clubs, in the sessions so far things have had a habit of straying somewhat off-topic.)
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the joys of bookselling is being bombarded by publishers with “proof” copies of forthcoming works. Some are more welcome than others and sadly many find their final resting place on a rather dusty shelf by the loo. But there is nothing quite like the thrill of “discovering” a new book before anyone else (well, aside from the agent, several dozen editors who were pitched it, a raft of marketing and publicity bods, various harassed journalists begged for reviews, writers having their arms twisted for plugs and a couple of thousand fellow booksellers, who have already been sent quite possibly two or even three copies of the same proof).
All of the team have open access to any of these proofs, and I encourage them to request free copies of anything we haven’t already got that takes their fancy, however esoteric. Proofs and Pints, then, allows us to regale each other with tales from the frontline of our TBR (to be read) piles: the gems - and the horrors - in what is about to be released.
Often these gems make their way into this newsletter in the form of the weekly team recommendations snippet. In the shop, they might end up as handwritten endorsement cards or mini chalkboards on “talking shelves” (“Megan bangs on about this”).
Given that the six of us have quite diverse tastes, we are often raving about very different books: a collection of literary short stories might have been just the thing for Darby, but Amy simply has to tell us about the fantasy novel she couldn’t put down.
It is a particular joy, then, when more than one of us falls under the spell of a new book. And when it unites most of the team, it must be a pretty special book indeed.
So we thought we ought to recognise that with a new label: the Backstory Book of the Month. We’ll continue to champion the esoteric, the edgy and the downright zany if it tickles even one of us, but if there’s a new book that lots of us think you simply must read right now, well, we’re going to tell you.
Our first choice was easy. Lots of us loved Open Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut. For our money, his second novel, Small Worlds - released a week on Thursday - is even better.
Set over a couple of intense, youthful summers in London, it feels like the novel we need right now, just as the sun is finally poking through the clouds here this weekend. “Everyone’s younger in the summertime,” this novel insists.
Its south London setting will resonate with Backstory regulars, but this beautiful story about the “small worlds” we all inherit and those that we forge for ourselves has an appeal far beyond Peckham.
For a relatively slender volume, it has a lot to say about love and about family, about music and about the healing power of a good dance (Azumah Nelson’s style is itself lyrical). The central character’s exploration of his Ghanaian heritage and the repercussions of his parents’ historic decision to upend their lives for an often grey, often unwelcoming Britain is particularly moving.
Here’s a little taste of it:
“This becomes our summer. We return to the beach, again and again, until we’re going several times a week. Auntie Yaa can see I’m only coming into work to count down the time in which I can be with Del again, so halfway through August, with a knowing smile, she gives me the rest of the month off. We pull others into our arrangement, and eventually there’s a little crew, driving down to the coast on any spare day…
My parents head up north, to Manchester, to visit some relatives. On a call, I tell Mum we’re going to the beach and she tells me, again, this is what she used to do at my age, with Pops and her friends, her brothers and sisters too. On summer days, they would hop in a tro-tro and make the short drive to Labadi beach, where they’d let a boombox send sound across the sand, would stand by the edge of the ocean and be astounded. In this way we’re drawing a line towards our parents, coming together, letting a loop form and close, letting it start again.
We smoke joints in the broadness of daylight, we drink spirits and blend them with mixers and song, letting four-minute cuts stretch time until it is unrecognizable, each second its own forever. We don’t want this thing to end, this freedom, and it doesn’t feel like it will, these moments looping, round and round, until —”
Please do click the link or pop into the shop to pre-order your signed copy (out on May 11th). We’ve sobered up from Proofs and Pints and we still don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Tom