Sara Langham

I am particularly drawn to writing which combines elements of other genres. I love strange concepts and wild ideas, stories that play with form and structure, those that deal with time and space, that have a speculative element and/ or are interested in science, the future, and climate. Examples include In Ascension by Martin MacInnis, The Echoes by Evie Wyld, Playground by Richard Powers, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser, Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, The Biography of X by Catherine Lacey and Burntcoat by Sarah Hall. Beloved favourites of mine include The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, Surfacing by Margaret Atwood, A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

I am interested in novels that consider the past, both recent and distant, and particularly those which also draw on the elements mentioned above. Examples include, The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, Harvest by Jim Crace, The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald – indeed everything by Penelope Fitzgerald!

I’d really like to find a funny, wry or blackly comic novel that considers familial bonds in any guise. Examples include NW by Zadie Smith, All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews, Writers and Lovers by Lily King, All Fours by Miranda July, The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits and Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiney. One of my favourite books of all time is Barbara Trapido’s Brother of the More Famous Jack and I would love to find an author that has that same sense of comic timing and who writes about chaotic families and (un)happy love stories updated for the 21st century. Other superlative books about families include My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley and Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt.

I am keen to find literary crime and would like to find a detective novel or literary thriller such as Idaho by Emily Ruskovich, Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time or Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood. I’m also very interested in literary and gothic horror or those on the edges of both, for example Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk.

In non-fiction, subjects I am particularly currently interested in include art, music, aging, neurodiversity, psychotherapy, sport and science but I always want to learn new things.

As examples of my taste, non-fiction I have loved includes: A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar, Question 7 by Richard Flanagan, How to End a Story by Helen Garner, The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson, Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton, In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, Self Portrait by Celia Paul, Second-hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon, The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz and My Katherine Mansfield Project by Kirsty Gunn.