Books in the Media: Ece Temelkuran's latest declared a must-read
This week, critics reviewed books exploring the meaning of home, the nature of consciousness and novels examining feminism and a friendship forged through a love of climbing.
Ece Temelkuran’s Women’s Prize longlisted Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home In the 21st Century (Canongate) was reviewed by the Spectator’s Anthony Sattin, who called the author "a writer of rare gifts with an urgent message". Constructed from a series of letters written between June 2022 and April 2025, Nation of Strangers addresses "large issues of homeland, homelessness, of what it means to belong and, inevitably, to address the question of what we are losing in this moment of migration and rising nationalism". It is the final book in Temelkuran’s non-fiction trilogy that began with How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Facism. "All of [the letters] are relevant as we seek to navigate a way through the mess that has become part of the odyssey of our lives," wrote Sattin. "The year is young and there are many books ahead, but I will count myself lucky if I read a more important or timely book than Nation of Strangers."
In an interview with the Observer’s Sean O’Hagan, Temelkuran said: "What I want to get across is that, even if you are living in your own country, and in your own house, you are already in danger of losing your home morally, politically, spiritually." The Bookseller’s Caroline Sanderson called Nation of Strangers "essential reading for this month, this year, this era".
Crux (Fig Tree), the second novel from Gabriel Tallent, follows two friends – Dan and Tamma – who meet while free climbing. "The central drama of the novel, which unfolds over the course of the friends’ senior years," writes the Telegraph’s George Cochrane, "is whether Dan will choose the safety and unhappiness of college or the danger and fulfilment of climbing." Cochrane found the novel to be "vastly superior" to Tallent’s debut My Absolute Darling, explaining: "Climbing is a niche sport, but Tallent makes it comprehensible, even exciting… Tallent’s greatest achievement, however, is to convey the appeal of something so dangerous, the ’ecstatic aliveness’ a climber feels on the rocks." The Financial Times’ Christian House noted that the "story is shaped by the situations of women". It is a "moving, amusing and tense novel full of risky toe holds and family clashes, but one that also delivers a subtle critique of the American fallacy of self-determination", concluded House.
Continues...
Read More
Sophie Ward’s latest, an "ambitious, multivoiced account of second-wave feminism shot through with Korean flavours and celebrity cameos", was hailed by Melissa Katsoulis, reporting for the Times. Our Better Natures (Little, Brown) is told from the perspective of "ageing housewife" Phyllis Patterson, her granddaughter Soozie and Andrea Dworkin and poet Muriel Rukeyser, the latter both real writers. "Illness and the unprotected body loom large for Ward’s women, who suffer pain and injury to the womb, heart, lungs, brain, skin and joints, sometimes natural and sometimes caused by careless doctors or cruel men," noted Katsoulis. "This immersive celebration of female power and the value of writing is an emboldening read," the review concluded. "Strong, bright voices draw you close with warm notes of humour and hope."
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (Allen Lane), the "fabulous and mind-expanding exploration of consciousness" from Michael Pollen, was picked as the book of the day by Edward Posnett at the Guardian. "Bridging both science and the humanities, Pollen mines neuroscientific research, philosophy, literature and his own mind, searching for different ways to think about being, and what is feels like". Pollen "likens the study of consciousness to cosmology: just as we can only examine the universe from within it, there is no way for us to position ourselves outside our own consciousness", summarised Posnett.
