The Simple Act of Killing a Woman by Brazilian crime novelist Patrícia Melo
There is something particularly magnetic about a book that doesn’t bother hiding its intent, that leads with ugliness and truth from the moment you lay eyes on the front cover. Some would say that the title of The Simple Act of Killing a Woman, written by Brazilian author Patrícia Melo and translated by Sophie Lewis, is provocative, an immediate attention grab. I would argue that it is ironically sincere and paints the picture of an epidemic plaguing (not just) Brazil: femicide.
The novel follows a young São Paulo lawyer who flees a relationship recently turned abusive by taking an assignment to observe and document the femicide trials taking place in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. We read as it becomes an obsession of sorts, but it isn’t a descent into madness. It’s an ascension towards her own truth. “What I am is having a father who killed my mother,’’ she confesses to us, and what follows is an incisive and vulnerable exploration of grief, trauma and womanhood with all its facets. 
The Simple Act of Killing a Woman unfolds through three interwoven chronologies: a numeric timeline, which chronicles real-life femicide cases in poetic verse; a Latin-alphabet timeline, which drives the main narrative; and a Greek-alphabet timeline, which follows the narrator’s dreamlike encounters with the Indigenous communities of Acre. The narrator is both storyteller and part of the story, and the reader too, becomes a witness to Melo’s form of reclaiming justice for victims of femicide.
There is a strange and absurd banality to how easy it is for men to kill the women in their lives, and Melo never lets you forget it. ‘Killing women is a democratic sort of crime,’ the narrator drily observes early in the book, and as the title itself says, it is a rather simple act, even more so if you are Indigenous, black or brown.
The Simple Act of Killing a Woman made me angry in the best kind of way. It’s a productive and cohesive kind of fury that settles over you at the end of the book, the kind that makes you refuse to look away and forget. I think these days we could all use a bit of that.
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Australian novelist Joan Lindsay
If you’re a fellow fan of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, you’ll love what I consider the original ‘mysterious feminine’ novel: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay. I highly recommend watching the 1975 film for full immersion. It’s dreamy, hazy, haunting — a brilliant example of daylight horror, if you will. I read the book and watched the film one summer, sitting on the floor of my room with the windows open, sipping yet another can of San Pellegrino. I felt completely transported into the picnic — and the mystery.
The plot is fairly simple: Victoria, Australia, the year 1900. A group from Appleyard College, a private boarding school for upper-class girls, heads out for a St. Valentine’s Day picnic at Hanging Rock… with some of them vanishing into thin air. As with many disappearance stories, the most important part isn’t the disappearance itself but the aftermath — and the way it fractures the local community.
Framed as a true story and sprinkled with pseudohistorical references, Picnic at Hanging Rock became a genuine part of Australian folklore, and its ambiguous ending has inspired decades of discussion and scholarly analysis. A part of me wanted to believe it was an unresolved real mystery — and I was a bit disappointed to learn that it wasn’t. Lindsay claimed she wrote the novel after a series of vivid dreams about the events, which, in my opinion, explains the story’s deeply dreamlike atmosphere.
Beyond the mystery and the lush descriptions of the Australian landscape, I love Picnic at Hanging Rock for the way it handles a theme as old as time: the ‘mysterious feminine.’ The vanished girls are mythologised and idolised; Miranda, the central figure, is literally described as a Botticelli angel. The tragedy, therefore, lies not in the disappearance of actual children — potentially harmed, assaulted, or killed — but in the loss of this ethereal beauty.
What lingers after both the book and the film is less the mystery itself and more the unsettling feeling that some things refuse to be neatly explained. Picnic at Hanging Rock isn’t interested in closure. Its focus lies in the general atmosphere, obsession, and the fragile boundary between the real and the uncanny. It’s the kind of story that leaves you staring into the heat-haze of a summer afternoon, wondering what might be hiding just out of sight.
Three Mothers by Anna Malaika Tubbs
Truth be told, I’ve only recently started reading nonfiction in a non-work or non-academic (i.e. required) context. And I can’t believe it took me all this time! There’s just something stirring about reading events that happened to someone you know truly exists/existed. And stirring, among many other feelings, is how I’d describe the experience of reading Anna Malaika Tubbs’ Three Mothers.
Published in 2021, Three Mothers tells the story of the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. Household names in their own rights, and arguably some of the most important male figures in African-American history. I picked up the book because I thought it was a cool and feminist take: to review the lives of a couple of history’s great men by telling the stories of the women who gave birth to and raised them. And because personally, I’ve started to understand how easy it is in our society to overlook the contribution of women and mothers. So, it felt necessary to me that I get to know Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin.
For a book that covers the lives of three Black women who lived through a period in American history when it was especially hard to be Black, there’s so much heart in the storytelling that it was hard for me to stop reading. It’s not always easy (obviously), but you find yourself just absorbed by the tales of the three women as they live through the Great Depression to the Jim Crow era; as they see their sons play pivotal roles in the civil rights movement, and eventually, mourn their deaths.
I also appreciated that the author included herself in the story, instead of playing the part of an invisible narrator. At the time of writing, the author was expecting her first child. The perspective of a woman who was herself becoming a Black mother gave the writing so much more weight and power.
Three Mothers is an incredible read. It’s both touching and insightful, and it provides very relevant analyses of the experiences of oppressed populations. It’s a good reminder of why we need to tell stories, and in this case, the stories of women.
Engagement by Gun-Britt Sundström
A Swedish cult classic that has only recently been translated into English, Engagement is an unconventional coming-of-age love story. Martina, the protagonist, is not your average clingy, love-obsessed girlfriend figure: she craves independence at all costs. At the same time, she falls in love with Gustav: the “good guy” who just wants stability, a partnership, and ultimately for Martina to become his wife. The novel follows them through their twenties and the difficulties of reconciling their different visions of life and approaches to traditions, patriarchal pressures, and love.
What shocked me when reading this book was that it was written in the 70s, yet it remains more relevant than ever. If anything, Martina feels more liberated than any woman I have ever met (including myself). She radiates a kind of self-confidence that is truly rare to find in anyone these days.
It’s a novel that changed my life in many respects this past year. It has allowed me to feel free. To stop apologising. To ponder difficult themes with high complexity, and to stop moralising. A hilarious, deep, complicated read, perfect if you are in the mood to question everything – a must for every lazy woman out there.
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, by Bess Kalb
This title has been on my TBR list since it was published in 2020, the year my grandmother, with whom I was very close, quite suddenly passed away.
When I finally picked it up this past summer, to read Kalb take on her own grandmother’s voice to tell her the truth tales that no one else would, I could barely put it down. The narrative was compelling, the characters so clearly defined, and the personal connection both familiar and fresh.
Starting with how her own grandmother moved from Belarus to New York’s Brooklyn in the 1880s, the voice of Kalb’s grandmother Bobby, who lives vividly and fondly in the author’s mind, takes us on a journey of rags to riches, via family dramas, political upheavals – and confusion at why her granddaughter now considers camping as a hobby when her ancestors fought long and hard to ensure a comfortable place to sleep.
The book is funny and heartwarming, offers glimpses into old school New York glamour, but doesn’t shy away from regrets, heartache, and what-could-have-been. Weaving together stories, voicemails, emails, and her own research, Kalb, an Emmy-nominated comedy writer, achieves a beautifully reflective and encouraging piece of work which allowed me to enjoy parallels with my own grandmother and our relationship.
It’s a book I’d have loved to have written, and certainly one I’ll be reading again.
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
All About Love: New Visions (2000), by author, educator, theorist, and social critic bell hooks, is the first volume in her “Love Trilogy.” About a year ago, quotes from the book were flooding my For You page, and I began spotting it everywhere I travelled. It first caught my eye in the window of a Boston bookshop, then again on a display table in Liverpool. I saw it perched on a shelf at the entrance of a well-known Parisian bookstore, and later found a copy prominently featured among the recommended reads in the bookshop of my small Welsh hometown.
It was clearly experiencing a renaissance, and having finally bought a copy, I could see why.
In the book, hooks argues that love is not simply a feeling but an act of will. She draws on psychologist M. Scott Peck’s definition of love as “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
Hooks disentangles the concept of love into forms we can actually grasp, revealing how patriarchy and Western cultural narratives have warped our expectations, breeding confusion, miscommunication, disappointment, and the quiet sense that we are failing at something we were never properly taught.
We live in uncertain times, when love feels increasingly elusive. The pace of modern life, the influence of social media, and the rise of individualism blur the line between genuine connection and performance more than ever. Emotional vulnerability can feel risky, and many of us are learning to prioritise independence over intimacy. Understanding love has never been simple, but today it is entangled in even more noise, making hooks’ reflections feel especially urgent.
Contributions by Teodora Strugaru, Julie Antropova, Aleli Mesina, Zsófi Borsi, Lauren Powell & Even Hebron.
All photos belong to their rightful owners and are used for reviews.
