Journeys with Topping & Co.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

Floating through space in a ship of glorified road builders is an experience that we may all initially struggle to relate to, but after reading this book, I feel as if I have lived through this journey countless times. Worldbuilding for science-fiction books is plagued by middle-aged men projecting terrestrial idealisms and nerdy niches onto an interstellar medium. Here, Chambers turns this norm on its head. Instead, she focuses on creating a diverse and truly alien breadth of characters and cultures and, as we journey through this world, she smoothly intertwines important commentary on a wide range of societal issues. Her slow-burn style allows for incredibly wholesome and beautiful relationships, character arcs, and personal journeys. It embodies the age-old saying that it’s not the destination that matters, but the friends you make along the way. This is a cosy, feel-good book and a perfect autumnal read.  Review written by Murray

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield

In her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield intricately weaves a journey

that is both physical and emotional. We voyage with Miri and her wife Leah, whose relationship is altered after Leah returns from a deep-sea mission gone wrong. Leah’s physical journey into the ocean’s depths mirrors a profound psychological descent as she becomes increasingly detached and elusive upon her return. Beneath the surface, the water not only separates the couple physically, but becomes a catalyst for isolation, alienation and transformation. Miri then must embark on her own emotional journey - recovering the person Leah once was from the depths. In just a few hundred pages, Armfield explores grief, love, and the ultimate unknowability and changeability of another. Armfield’s metaphors, writing and characters transform a fantastical deep-sea adventure into an exploration of human fragility and the territory of relationships and loss. 

Review written by Paula

The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro

Deep in post-Arthurian England, Axl and Beatrice leave their home to find their lost son. The elderly couple must travel through a landscape filled with ogres, dragons, and knights, and shrouded in a mist making memories slip through unrealizing minds like water. Tied by a deep loyalty to each other, the couple collect fellow travellers in their journey until they are eventually forced to reconcile with what has been lost in the mist. 

Heartbreaking but beautiful, The Buried Giant is a fantasy book, meant for everyone, about “the duty to remember and the urge to forget”. Ishiguro asks questions of the collective forgetting of traumatic history and what it means to love and forgive someone. A haunting deep-dive from a nobel-prize winning author, The Buried Giant is a love letter to the complexity of human connections that will linger long after you’re done reading. 

Review written by Riley