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, I was lucky enough to be invited onto a TV show to talk about books, which was a total delight. But as a lovely make-up artist came over to powder us during each break, making sure we were looking our best, I was reminded of a truly enthralling novel I read earlier this year. So, I’ve decided to make it my Book of the Week selection this week. It’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

The book is a deliciously glamorous story set mainly in the world of Old Hollywood. However, it starts in the present day, with struggling journalist Monique Grant, who is on the verge of giving up her dead end career and in the midst of breaking up with her husband. Out of the blue, she’s given the story of a lifetime when 79-year-old former movie star Evelyn Hugo agrees to an interview with the magazine where she works—and insists that Monique is the one to profile her.

Evelyn Hugo reveals that she actually wants Monique to document her entire life story, and so the novel dips back into the past, with the movie star recounting her story to Monique—and therefore to us as readers—from her humble beginnings as teenage bride, to shedding her true, Latina heritage to become an actress, and on through her rise to iconic movie-star status through the 1950s and 60s in the classic Hollywood era. And, of course, documenting each of the seven husbands she weds along the way.

The book is wonderfully constructed, and although the story is entirely fictional, Reid pulls on the biographies of classic stars such as Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor to create Evelyn Hugo’s rollercoaster of a story, which touches beautifully on issues of feminism and sexuality alongside the glamour of the era, and with a present-day twist that keeps the reader dying to know where the novel will end up. It sparkles with razzle dazzle and heartbreak, and it’s a perfect book to snuggle up with as the nights draw in. That is why The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins 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.

We’re already edging to halfway through the penultimate month of the year, but there’s something special that occurs in November that has inspired my Book of the Week selection this week. It’s National Novel Writing Month, also known as Nanowrimo! Nanowrimo is a yearly challenge which encourages people to try and write fifty thousand words of a novel in one month—for the maths whizzes among you, that’s a rate of one thousand six hundred and sixty seven words per day. It’s by no means an easy task, but I’m utilising the month to kick off a new novel of my own (I’m not necessarily on target for 50k by the 30th, but hey!). So I thought I’d recommend a fantastic book for inspiring the imagination of any storyteller—Wonderbook: An Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff Vandermeer.

As you can tell from the title, the book is intended as both an instruction manual and also a source of inspiration for writers. There are tons of books about the art of storytelling and novel writing out there, but Vandermeer has created a resource that really does spark the imagination. It’s chock full of hundreds of drawings and illustrations rendered in glossy colour, designed to help simulate your ideas, as well as genuinely useful detailed advice about crafting stories. It discusses a range of ideas, from point of view, to dialogue, how to start and end your story, shaping your characters and so much more. But rather than a dry, stale textbook, Wonderbook has something unusual, laughter-inducing and always creative on every single page. It’s also full of fun exercises that can help spark off ideas if you’re blocked.

Nanowrimo is a chance for everyone who feels they have a novel inside them to give it a go, but even if you’re not quite there yet, this excellent book will give you space to gestate and create the stories inside you. And that is why Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff Vandermeer 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 autobiography by one of the preeminent singer-songwriters of the last two decades, Mariah Carey. While Ms Carey may be looked upon by some as an insubstantial recording artist, you’d A) be completely and utterly wrong, and B) you’d be hard pressed to find many other singers whose style has influenced almost all RnB singers of the last twenty years. So this week, my Book of the Week selection is Mariah’s utterly delicious memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey.

While the book was co-written with journalist Michaela Angela Davis, this is by no means a ghost-written puff piece. It truly feels imbued with Mariah’s essence, and I highly recommend the audiobook for Mariah’s wonderful performance of the work, including bursting periodically into song in her trademark breathy-to-powerful melismatic style. But you’re also treated to snippets such as the dry audio of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s ground-breaking cameo on her classic song Fantasy, preluded by a burst of Mariah rhapsodising about her love for Wu-Tang Clan. It’s amazing!

However, the predominant theme of the book is Mariah’s upbringing, which was tumultuous to say the least. It details the difficulties she felt in growing up a bi-racial girl in 1970s Long Island, New York, and how her childhood struggles, especially in regard to her race, affected her long into adult life. It’s a fascinating and very emotional story, and she also takes us behind the curtain—or perhaps as she might frame it, behind the bars—of her controlling marriage to famed record exec Tommy Mottola.

But most of all, we get a portrait of one of the most influential talents of our times, getting to understand the pressures of her type of fame. The insight into her writing process is truly fascinating, and her genuinely moving and beautiful lyrics are highlighted throughout the book. People sometimes joke about Mariah Carey is always reminding interviewers that she wrote all of her multi-award winning, record-smashing songs, but it bears emphasis. Mariah is a writer, first and foremost, and this book is testament to the fact. That is why The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey with Micheala Angela Davis, 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.
Living in London, we’re all used to the iconic image of the red busses snaking through the city’s roads. But as the global pandemic continues, being on public transport feels like a risk and an indulgence, and as I look out of the windows of my flat—as much as I’m glad safety is being observed—it still feels unusual to see passengers spaced out and wearing masks.

So this week, my Book of the Week selection is a unique and compelling debut novel, cleverly set entirely on a fictional East London bus route over the course of a mere 36 minutes: The 392 by Ashley Hickson-Lovence.

The book is told in alternating chapters from the perspectives of a cross-section of Londoners typical of the varied and vivid characters that intersect on public transport. There’s pregnant teenager Natalie; ironically near-blind racist football supporter Ray; Levi, who started out as a so-called criminal and is now inhabiting his own ironic about-turn as a barrister. There’s Irish widow Gloria who is contemplating the downhill slide of her latter years, and there’s also a parody-like portrait of politician Barney, who is filming a puff piece on board the bus who has a familiar air about him, if a somewhat surprising inner-life.

But there’s also a skilfully seeded brewing tension and dread about one of the other passengers and the bulky bag he’s carrying, that feeds into the particular existential threat that used to be pervasive in our minds before the novel coronavirus hit this year—that of terroristic threats against our modes of traversing this city.

Hickson-Lovence delves into the minds of disparate characters admirably, and plays on the anticipation and concern that our suspicions—and those of the passengers—will be met, using the novel to explore themes of prejudice, gentrification, fate and the sense of camaraderie that can spring up between seemingly disparate people. It’s a smart and engrossing novel that evokes London so tangibly, and that is why The 392 by Ashley Hickson-Lovence 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 the last few days I read an incredible novel that I’ve had near the top of my to-be-read pile for a long time, and instantly I knew it had to be my Book of the Week selection this week—Freshwater by Nigerean author Akwaeke Emezi.

The book is a stunningly unique auto-fiction closely based on the author’s own life. It tells the story of Ada, a child whose experience of the world is narrated from the perspectives of the gods or sprits who reside within her. Ada is described as an ogbanje, a term within Igbo culture that describes a spirit that is reincarnated repeatedly in the form of a troubled child—though that doesn’t encapsulate the whole story. We follow Ada’s life from a tumultuous childhood through to a young womanhood that is marred by sexual assault, and on into an adulthood plagued by self-harm and rootlessness.

But rather than a traditional narrative, Ada’s story is told sometimes by the collective ‘we’ of all the spirits residing inside her, and sometimes taken over by the more sexual spirit of Asughara, or the nurturing spirit known as Saint Vincent. These multitudinous ‘selves’ are in dialogue within Ada’s mind and can control her body, but ultimately the story is one that explores and challenges notions of physical and spiritual existence.

As the novel comes to its conclusion, we see Ada come into a self-acceptance that rejects binaries of gender and the confines of the body, in much the same way that the author identifies as transgender, non-binary and non-human. As they write at the book’s conclusion: ‘It was difficult to accept not being human but still being contained in a human body… Ogbanje are as liminal as is possible—spirit and human, both and neither.’ The book is a stunning examination of what it means to come to terms with existing in that powerful realm in between. And that is why Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi 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 like hardly a week goes by without there being a controversy that’s dissected, argued over and dismissed on social media. It’s often the first place I learn about breaking news, but it can also be a source of misinformation, and a stunning lack of nuanced dialogue. So my pick for this week is a non-fiction title published earlier this year—Outrage: Why Everyone is Shouting and No one is Talking by Ashley ‘Dotty’ Charles, the brilliant broadcaster, who, with this witty debut, has also made a first foray as a writer.

In the book, Charles argues that the volume of outrage that sizzles from the fingers of social media users is often simply a means of virtue-signalling, or bandwagon jumping, and can divert attention from the true injustices at the heart of an issue. She even goes so far as to interview the sources of much online vitriol, for greater or lesser reasons, speaking to Rachel Dolezal, the American former NAACP activist who had been passing as Black while having exclusively white heritage, as well as renowned hate-monger Katie Hopkins. In the latter’s case, Charles makes the argument that outrage simply acts as fuel for attention, and amplification of negativity.

Despite skewering the lazy activism – or ‘clicktivism’ – that often takes place on social media, it’s heartening to see how Charles also explores the possibility for real change to come about through online activism – for example, highlighting the work of Stop Funding Hate, who successfully campaign for advertising to be pulled from the pages of publications that feature prejudiced or hateful content.

The book showcases the author’s sense of inquisitiveness, which is shot through with equally high amounts of intelligence and humour. Outrage is a book that speaks to our times, and will lead you to question how you utilise your voice on social media – and off it. That is why Outrage: Why Everyone is Shouting and No one is Talking by Ashley ‘Dotty’ Charles, 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’s great to be back after a couple of weeks off, and we’re soldiering on into autumn in the face of what’s been a challenging year to say the least. So I’ve decided on a recently published book that feels like the literary equivalent of snuggling down comfortably in premium autumnal knitwear with a sexy individual of your choice. This week, my Book of the Week is Bolu Babalola’s delicious collection of romantic stories, Love In Colour.

Published just this August, Bolu’s debut collection features adaptations tales and myths from all over the globe, retooled skillfully and imaginatively to create an anthology of love stories that shift the power emphatically in favour of their female protagonists, and reworks ancient tales into interpretations that are both timeless and timely. For example, we see the Greek Goddess Psyche transformed into an ambitious aspiring editor at Olympus Magazine, dealing with secret enduring feelings for her workmate Eros. And in one of my favourites from the collection, the West African tale of Siya and Maadi is stunningly retold with Siya as a powerful warrior woman and Maadi her loyal soldier.

There’s an emphasis on stories from the African continent, and in the final part of the book we’re treated to some brand new tales from the author, including the story of her own parents’ burgeoning love as young people in Nigeria. The collection is a perfect literary hug in these minimal-contact times, rich and romantic, and perfectly paced in self-contained stories to dip into and luxuriate in. That is why Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola 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 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.