10 Books That Feel Like a Deep Breath After a Bad Year
1. Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
A woman's decades-long struggle with undiagnosed mental illness affects her marriage, family relationships, and sense of self. Meg Mason writes with dark humour about Martha's journey through breakdowns, hospitalisations, and failed treatments while never naming her condition. The novel balances devastating honesty about mental illness with warmth and wit, showing how love persists despite suffering and how naming pain can begin healing. The ending offers hope without false promises, acknowledging that recovery is ongoing work rather than a destination, making this both heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming.
2. Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny
A young teacher in a small Michigan town falls in love with a handsome carpenter, beginning a relationship complicated by his ex-girlfriend, his intellectually disabled friend, and the messy reality of chosen family. Katherine Heiny writes with gentle humour and empathy about imperfect people building lives together despite romantic disappointments and unexpected responsibilities. The novel spans decades, showing how Jane creates community from unlikely connections, how love takes many forms beyond romance, and how ordinary life contains both sorrow and contentment. Its understated warmth and celebration of flawed humanity make it comforting without being saccharine.
3. Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined by Danielle Younge-Ullman
A sixteen-year-old girl whose opera-singing mother has mapped her entire future sends her on a wilderness survival program after she starts making her own choices. Ingrid resents the forced outdoor experience but gradually finds strength through physical challenges, friendships with other troubled teens, and distance from her mother's expectations. Danielle Younge-Ullman writes about claiming your own life, healing from parental pressure, and discovering resilience you did not know you possessed. The novel balances humour with genuine emotion, showing how sometimes breaking down is necessary before building yourself back up on your own terms.
4. A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
An Irish poet becomes obsessed with an eighteenth-century poem written by a woman whose husband was murdered, finding parallels between the historical poet's grief and her own experiences. Doireann Ní Ghríofa interweaves translation of the Irish poem with a memoir about motherhood, loss, and obsessive research into the historical woman's life. The hybrid text blurs past and present, showing how women's voices echo across centuries and how studying another woman's work can illuminate your own life. Its lyrical prose and meditation on female continuity, grief, and literary inheritance create an intimate, haunting work about finding connection through time.
5. The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
A man who owns a vinyl record shop on a failing street in 1980s England believes the right music can heal any problem, until a mysterious woman challenges everything he thinks he knows. Frank recommends records based on intuition, matching music to people's unspoken needs, living simply among his eccentric neighbours as the world around them changes. Rachel Joyce creates a nostalgic, gentle story about love, loss, and the power of music to connect people across differences. The novel celebrates analogue experiences, community resilience, and emotional honesty, offering refuge in its belief that beauty and connection matter more than success.
6. The Lightmakers' Manifesto: How to Work for Change Without Losing Your Joy by Karen Walrond
A photographer and activist offers guidance for sustaining hope and energy while working toward justice in overwhelming times when the world's problems feel insurmountable. Karen Walrond argues that joy is not a frivolous distraction but a necessary fuel for long-term activism, that burnout serves no one, and that celebrating small victories matters. She provides practical strategies for maintaining boundaries, finding community, and remembering why the work matters when progress feels impossible. The book validates exhaustion while insisting that rest and pleasure are political acts, that preserving your humanity while fighting for others' is essential, offering permission to care for yourself while caring for the world.
7. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
A journalist in 1950s suburban London investigates a woman's claim of virgin birth while her own life remains small and constrained by duty to her demanding mother. Jean has sacrificed her own desires for respectability and obligation, but investigating this story brings her into contact with a family whose warmth and unconventionality challenge her assumptions. Clare Chambers depicts a woman realising life is passing her by, that she made herself small to fit others' expectations, and that reclaiming desire might come too late. The novel explores women's constricted choices in this era with aching precision, celebrating small pleasures while acknowledging their insufficiency as a substitute for a larger life.
8. The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton
A teenage boy flees his abusive father into the harsh Australian outback, finding temporary refuge and unexpected mentorship from an elderly man living in isolation. Jaxie speaks in raw, profane vernacular as he navigates survival, violence, and his confused understanding of masculinity, love, and his own capacity for goodness. Tim Winton writes about trauma, redemption, and the possibility of change with spare, powerful prose that honours both the landscape and human struggle. The novel explores whether damaged people can heal, whether violence begets only violence, and whether connection can save those determined to remain alone, offering tentative hope.
9. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
A Minneapolis bookstore becomes a refuge during the pandemic and the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, while an Ojibwe woman working there confronts both a ghost haunting the shop and her own past. Tookie served prison time for a crime connected to her addiction, rebuilt her life through books, and now must reckon with historical and personal trauma alongside collective grief. Louise Erdrich weaves together Indigenous spirituality, literary humour, racial justice reckoning, and pandemic isolation, showing how books and community sustain people through unbearable times. The novel is both a timely response to specific crises and a timeless meditation on resilience, chosen family, and stories' power to heal.
10. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
After his father's death, a teenage boy named Benny begins hearing objects speak to him, voices that intensify his grief and confusion while his hoarder mother struggles with her own loss. Benny finds refuge in the library where a homeless philosopher poet mentors him and where he eventually takes shelter when home becomes unbearable. Ruth Ozeki writes with compassion about mental illness, grief, homelessness, and the difficulty of communication between people who love each other but cannot reach across pain. The novel explores how we make meaning after devastating loss, how objects carry memory, and how finding your voice requires listening to others, offering gentle wisdom about survival and connection.
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