Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This Bank Holiday weekend just gone should have seen the Notting Hill Carnival take place on the streets of London, alongside other carnivals around the UK that celebrate Caribbean culture. Sadly, of course, the on-going global pandemic put paid to that – but it did put me in mind of an incredible novel by a celebrated Jamaican author, one that centres around arguably the most recognisable icon from that region of all time, Bob Marley. So my Book of the Week this week is the Booker Prize Winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James.

The novel initially focuses on events leading up to and including the real-life assassination attempt on Marley (who is referred to as ‘The Singer’ throughout the novel) in Jamaica in 1976, when armed men raided his home. James fictionalises the developments around this pivotal moment, using multiple characters to paint a picture of the intricacies of gang violence that was often politically motivated, and fuelled by the intervention of agencies outside of Jamaica, like the CIA. There’s an astounding cast of characters, each of whom James inhabits, conveying their individual voices with believability and skill. He takes the narrative from the events of the assassination attempt, through the gang warfare that, with the advent of crack cocaine, spanned across waters into New York in the 1980s, then takes us back to a changed Jamaica in the 90s.

Polyphonic, audacious, violent and challenging, the book is nonetheless unputdownable, with a narrative that’s steeped in history and fact, but also riffs off that to give us a myth-making masterpiece. Rather than brief, the novel is an epic, and shot through with a deep understanding of Jamaica and its undeniable influence on the world. That is why A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

Last weekend was my wedding anniversary – six years has truly flown by! But in the spirit of all things love-related, I thought my selection this week would be one of the most heart-rendingly romantic novels I’ve read, which also happens to be one of my favourite books generally: The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson.

Ostensibly a book for younger adults, it’s definitely one that defies its intended audience age group. The story follows Lennie, a poetry-writing, clarinet-playing introvert whose world has fallen apart after the sudden death of her older sister, Bailey. Having been left by her mother when a little girl, Lennie lives with her grandmother and uncle, and we see that she scatters scraps of thoughts and poetry written on pieces of paper throughout their small town, like fragments of her broken heart. She enters into a complicated romantic entanglement with Bailey’s boyfriend that is fueled by their shared grief, but she’s also powerfully drawn to free-spirited new boy to town, Joe.

The story could be seen as following the romantic trope of the love triangle, but it’s rendered with such realism and care that you really do feel like you’re heart is being wrenched in many directions, just like Lennie’s. Nelson so wonderfully encapsulates the various emotions at play, and the balance of relationships is delicate and masterfully portrayed.  

As well as the romantic feelings that the story evokes, it’s also a powerful depiction of the enduring nature of grief. Towards the end of the novel, we see Lennie think, “It’s such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what’s lost, but to be enchanted by what was.” The novel is gorgeously-written and ultimately hopeful. It reminds us the sky is everywhere – it begins at your feet. That is why The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson is my Book of the Week, this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a special BONUS Book of the Week here on Morning Mari’s We Out Here Festival edition!

Given the festival theme, it seemed only appropriate that my selection for this show should be a book that in its very form embodies a style that is so vital to the evolution of modern music – Jazz, by my favourite author of all time, Toni Morrison.

The book is primarily set in 1920s Harlem, New York, and explores the story of Joe Trace, a middle-aged salesman in a waning marriage to Violet, his steadfast wife. Joe’s love affair with eighteen-year-old, impulsive, flighty beauty Dorcas, leads to tragedy. Joe ends up murdering his lover, and Violet’s mental state unravels. The basics of the story are masterfully revealed in the very first paragraph of the book, but Morrison’s writing style is deliberately non-linear, taking in several characters and their perspectives, leading us in sudden and unexpected narrative directions.

The way story is told deliberately mimics the qualities of a jazz improvisation. As Morrison said of the book, “I was interested in rendering a period in African American life through a specific lens – one that would reflect the content and characteristics of its music (romance, freedom of choice, doom, seduction, anger) and the manner of its expression.”

Morrison herself at times seems to reveal herself as the narrator of the story, while also seeming in thrall to the same kind of higher power that would overtake similarly superlative jazz musicians like John Coltrane or Miles Davis when they let the notes fly on their instruments. But in Toni Morrison’s case, of course, her instrument was her pen and paper. She was a maestro. That is why Jazz by Toni Morrison, is my Bonus Book of the Week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This week, I was thinking about a phrase my mum used to say a lot when we were kids, which in turn came from her Bajan grandmother. She’d say: “hard ears you won’t hear, hard ears you’re gonna feel!” Which basically means you ought to listen or… Well, I don’t want to endorse any sort of physical punishment here, but I think some of you will get the meaning!

So my Book of the Week selection this week is the fascinating You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by journalist Kate Murphy. And it was also apt that I listened to this work as an audiobook!

Murphy’s book explores the vital importance of truly listening, especially in our current times, when it’s never been more apparent how important it is for us to listen to one another. The book is packed full of statistics and research about the decline in our abilities – in the Western world, at least – to concentrate, due to the distractions of social media, and our increasing need to lead a conversation at all costs, rather than genuinely digest the information we receive.

She investigates the idea of actively listening, rather than anticipating other’s responses, and the benefits of making true connections with others through this practice. The book also explores how we can approach one another from a place of true curiosity rather than assumption. Overall, as Murphy writes, “to listen poorly, selectively, or not at all is to limit your understanding of the world and deprive yourself of becoming the best you can be.” We should all listen harder. That is why You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters by Kate Murphy, is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This week, my selection is a recently-published novel that dazzlingly enters the cannon of works exploring the uniqueness of Black American identity: The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett.

Bennett’s novel interweaves the lives of identical twin sisters Stella and Desiree Vignes with their daughters’ own journeys, in a story spanning from the late 60s into the 1980s and 90s. Stella and Desiree grew up in Mallard, a fictional town whose African American inhabitants took pains to ensure that only the lightest skinned could become part of their community. Despite this, both twins experience the trauma of their father being lynched, and it is perhaps this trauma that also eventually leads to a fork in the road of their existences.

The twins run away from the town as young women. Desiree eventually has a child with a violent man, and leaves him to return to Mallard with her daughter, Jude, whose skin is “black as tar”. Stella on the other hand, abandons her sister and takes up with a wealthy white man, whom she eventually marries. She takes advantage of her appearance and ‘passes’ as a white woman, explaining nothing of her history. Stella, too, has a daughter – Kennedy, who is blonde and pale, entirely ignorant of her mother’s background. That is, until she meets Jude by chance when they’re in their twenties. This leads to a gradual reconnection of the divergent paths that separated the twins decades earlier…

Bennett’s storytelling is masterful, cleanly poetic and utterly engrossing. She takes us into a world of binaries and complications; an America in which inherent prejudices are only a hair’s breadth away no matter the lengths one may go to in order try to distance from them, and where the past is impossible to ignore. It’s also a beautiful exploration of family, love and friendships in all their intricacies. And that is why The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This week, I while perusing the internet, I spotted some welcome book trade news about the incredible, Nobel Prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro being due to have a new book out next year. It put me in mind of one of the most moving books I’ve ever read – his 2005 novel, Never Let Me Go.

The story is told by Kathy, who we learn is a ‘carer’, as she goes about her work and reminisces about her adolescence at an English boarding house called Hailsham. She thinks about her friendship with two other pupils in particular, Ruth and Tommy. Their teachers were known as ‘guardians’, and we slowly learn that there’s something unusual about the school, and the destiny of these young people. A rogue teacher informs the kids that they are clones, and that when they’re adults, their organs will gradually be harvested off to donate to ill people.

Although the premise is dystopian and clearly emotionally wrought, our characters to a large extent seem to accept their fate. However, they remain intrigued by the idea of their origins – for example, when Kathy is told that some acquaintances may have discovered the woman from whom she was cloned, they go on a road trip to find her, with heart-breaking results. And when they learn there’s the potential to avoid their destiny of donation and ‘completion’ (the euphemistic term for the donor’s deaths) by proving they’re in love, Kathy and Tommy eventually try to do so by using Tommy’s artworks as evidence.

Although the story of Never Let Me Go is undoubtedly tragic, Ishiguro masterfully draws us in to the story of Kathy and her friends, and we feel so deeply invested in what happens to them. The book really makes you question what it means to be human – if art or love can prove the existence of our souls and make us ‘worthy’ – and whether we really even need outside confirmation of our worth as people. It’s a truly stunning novel. That is why Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

In typical fashion, this week my voice has decided to turn to a husk right when my latest book is coming out and I need it for promo. But my new novel, IF I DON’T HAVE YOU, publishes today, so please do seek it out if you can!

Anyway, I thought I’d keep things short and sweet, and recommend something by my absolute favourite writer of all time, and a true inspiration -- Toni Morrison. This week, my selection is her non-fiction collection of essays, speeches and meditations: Mouth Full of Blood (which was published in the US as The Source of Self Regard).

But specifically, I’d direct readers to one piece within the book – her 1988 commencement address at US university Sarah Lawrence. It is an absolutely STUNNING piece about self-actualisation, morality, and how we navigate our way through the world. It’s full of incredibly motivating thoughts and advice, which I turn to again and again. I even have some of the words it contains tattooed on my arms: Dream a little before you think.

Every time I achieve something I’ve strived for – like, say, the publication of a novel! – I return to these words. Dream big, friends! That is why Mouth Full of Blood by the greatest, Toni Morrison, is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This Sunday just gone, I had a great Zoom chat (what else?) with some of my book-loving friends about a recent favourite read of ours published earlier this year, so it seemed like a great time to recommend it – so this week, my Book of the Week selection is Kiely Reid’s wonderful debut novel, Such a Fun Age.

The book follows two women whose lives are intertwined. Emira is a young African-American woman who feels somewhat aimless, and a touch embarrassed that she’s working as a nanny at the age of twenty-six. She looks after the toddler daughter of Alix, privileged, white, self-made – and self-reinvented – entrepreneur, who’s just getting back into work after having another baby recently.

The story begins with an incident in an upscale supermarket one evening, in which Emira is accused of kidnapping Briar, the little girl she nannies for, when in fact Alix had just called her to come and look after her daughter last-minute.

But while the racially-charged encounter could seem to be setting up an all-too familiar story of injustice, Reid’s novel moves on and follows the lives of Emira and Alix in the aftermath, instead subtly and compellingly tackling issues of not just race, but class, female friendship, motherhood, womanhood, and how the importance of personal and external perceptions of us can shape our lives and decisions. There are also hugely entertaining set pieces, especially as Emira begins to date painfully woke white man Kelley, and at the excruciating, funny and very telling Thanksgiving dinner at wealthy Alix’s home, to which she awkwardly invites Emira and her date.

Such a Fun Age explores many modern day issues through beautifully honed characters, in a story crafted with enviable skill -- including the wonderfully-drawn toddler, Briar. And it’s also just such a fun read! That’s why Such a Fun Age by Kiely Reid is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

It feels pretty mind-boggling that we’re already half-way through this year, and well into a summer that has been marred by lockdown. While most of us would have been jetting off to sun-drenched holidays – shout out to Worldwide Festival, see you next year! – we’ve been mostly stuck at home. But even if we’re not on the beach, I know that some of my favourite books to read on vacation are high-quality page-turners. So this week, my selection is by one of the absolute best in the business for just that kind of fiction – the award-winning, incredibly prolific Dorothy Koomson, and her fifteenth novel, Tell Me Your Secret.

While the book could be classed as a thriller, or a police procedural, there’s a huge amount going on below the surface. Tell Me Your Secret follows Pieta, a journalist who we learn earlier in her life was kidnapped by a sinister individual known as The Blindfolder, and told to keep her eyes closed for 48 hours or he would kill her. We also meet Jody, a detective who is investigating a spate of recent crimes very similar to that experienced by Pieta, whose victims had a much worse fate. She may have a closer connection to the cases then it would seem…

Koomson’s mastery of a compelling plot keeps us completely gripped – trust me, you’ll be absolutely dying to find out what happens next. But there are also very important underlying themes in terms of humanising, and focusing on, the victims of horrific crimes. And as with all of her novels, we get to see a range of Black women characters that are nuanced and made the centre of their story. That is still disappointingly rare, especially in genres like this, where we aren’t always seen and heard. And that is why Tell Me Your Secret by Dorothy Koomson is my Book of the Week this week.

Greetings, readers! My name is Sareeta Domingo, and I’m an author and fiction editor. It’s my great pleasure to be bringing you a Book of the Week, each week here on Morning Mari.

This week, the easing of lockdown measures now being sanctioned across the UK has brought an uneasy feeling for those of us still concerned about the Covid-19 pandemic. The issue put me in mind of an incredible book I read recently that turned out to be surprisingly prescient – Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel.

Mandel’s 2014 novel won the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction, but could perhaps be more accurately described as speculative fiction, given its all-too-real premise of a rapidly spreading flu pandemic. In Station Eleven, things go a bit further than our current plight. In the novel, the so-called ‘Georgia Flu’ wipes out huge swathes of humanity very rapidly, leaving only a few survivors, and modern civilisation is frozen in its wake.

The author brilliantly and seamlessly interweaves the stories of several characters who feature in ‘Year Zero’ of the pandemic, and in the decades afterwards. Among many others, we meet Arthur, a renowned film actor who has a last hurrah playing King Lear on the stage just as the flu is spreading, and dies sensationally on stage from an unrelated heart attack. There’s Kristen, the young woman who, 20 years after the devastation is now part of a travelling orchestra and Shakespearean company, who has a strange connection with Arthur from her childhood, and we also meet the former paparazzo turned paramedic Jeevan, whose story is also entwined with theirs.

Mandel’s story tackles the idea of what would constitute ‘civilisation’ if the world as we knew it was suddenly and dramatically altered. She explores issues of religious zealotry, the construction of fame and notoriety, the expression of art through media as diverse as comic books, theatre and even museum curation. Her narrative explores a post-apocalyptic world while never giving up on humanity, and ends with a wonderful note of hope that we can rebuild again. It’s a stunning novel, and feels ripe for our current times. That is why Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel is my Book of the Week, this week.