On the 2022 Horizon Part II

We're all for spreading out the good stuff, so here's a second instalment of our preview for this year, with the books our Lighthouse team are most looking forward to.

If you missed part 1, HERE it is!

Rachel

There are already so many new books of 2022 in my to-be-read pile, but I’m eagerly awaiting three more that are on their way. Jenni Fagan has such a superb ability to write about a location and make a place feel like an additional character within her stories, and to bring all of her characters vividly to life, I’m sure that her upcoming book Hex will be no different. Again set in Scotland, Hex is a novel about the witch trials in North Berwick. I don’t often reach for poetry, but I’m impatiently waiting for Ocean Vuong’s new collection Time is a Mother. As with his book On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, this poetry will be about self, family, loss, memory, and tenderness. Finally, I love retellings of myths and have just finished Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne. I’m so pleased that I only have to wait two more months for Elektra to be published. Here, Saint writes about Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and Elektra, the family curse that ties their fates together, and the beginning of the Trojan War.

Peach

I was lucky enough to have a wee sneak peek into Blood Salt Spring by Hannah Lavery at Push the Boat Out festival late last year. Lavery's poetry is, as always, lyrical and moving. This collection is meditative and poignant - much of it was written during lockdown, and holds within it the collective grief we all experienced, and the trauma of past wounds. In three parts, this collection takes you on a journey that questions nationhood, identity, and race in Scotland. I eagerly await this collection from the recently appointed, and well-deserved, wondrous Edinburgh Makar.

Jessica

This year brings with it new creations by authors whose work left strong reverberations in my thinking when I first read them. In The Second Body, Daisy Hildyard was able to verbalise the unease of becoming truly aware that we don't end with our physical bodies, that our actions have real, material consequences in real time and beyond our physical reach. Hildyard's new novel, Emergency, is out in April and it's a truly beautiful work. It's been a while since I last read anything by Alejandro Zambra. I loved both the quiet, wise Ways of Going Home and the one-of-a-kind Multiple Choice, which is both playfully interactive and a comment on education in Pinochet's Chile. Zambra is now back with the novel Chilean Poet and I'm so looking forward to enjoying his astute, tender every day observations once more.