Shelfology Book Pairing

The Sunday Times bestseller

by Andrew O'Hagan

'Utterly awe-inspiring.' Douglas Stuart 'Extraordinary.' Marina Hyde 'An utter joy to read.' Monica Ali 'Majestic.' Independent 'A masterpiece.' John Lanchester 'Addictively enjoyable.' Guardian 'Pitch-perfect.' Observer ** Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction ** ** A Sunday Times Bestseller ** From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace. Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity pundit - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes. The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world. He has experiences and ideas that excite his teacher. He also has a plan. Over the course of an incendiary year a web of secrets and crimes will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves. But then, he always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public. Andrew O'Hagan's book Caledonian Road was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 06-04-2024

A Novel

by Sally Rooney

THE INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Shortlisted for the British Book Awards 2025 • Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year • Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker • The New York Times • The Globe and Mail • TIME • The Winnipeg Free Press • The Guardian • The Independent • NPR • Dazed • VOX • People • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly • An exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney. Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.