Our books editor Zoe West’s favourite picks for the month

The contemporary fiction writer talks to Zoe West

S ian had been home for an hour and growing more irate by the minute when her phone rang. “Have you met your neighbour yet?” asked her friend, Abby, cheerily. “No, I have not!” “No? Didn’t the estate

Our lives, your lives... that’s life!

IN AN AGE OF COMPARISON CULTURE AND GLOSSY SOCIAL-MEDIA LIVES, IT’S HARD NOT TO QUESTION YOUR OWN PROGRESS. BUT THERE’S NO RIGHT PATH TO LIFE AS THESE WOMEN, WHO ARE TURNING CONVENTION ON ITS HEAD AND SHARING WISDOM AS THEY GO, DEMONSTRATE…

by Harriet Lane (£20, HB, Orion) What lies beneath the image we construct of ourselves? Ruth, newly divorced and drifting as her daughter leaves home, feels invisible – until Sookie, her dazzling form