Books I Read in June 2025

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan won last year’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is a seamless combination of memoir, history, science and ethics. It connects Flanagan’s father’s experience of being a prisoner of war in Japan (which also inspired his Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North) with 1930s nuclear physicists, an affair between H. G. Wells and Rebecca West, the colonial history of Tasmania, and Flanagan’s near-death experience in a kayaking accident in his early 20s, while the title of the book is taken from Anton Chekhov’s exam question parody. This combination of topics probably doesn’t sound very coherent, and some parts are very cerebral and meandering, but Flanagan blends them into a truly unique and poignant piece of non-fiction about the absurdity of life and its consequences.

Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell is an excellent debut novel about a woman in an emotionally abusive marriage. Ciara has tried to leave Ryan several times in the past, but lack of money and Ryan’s controlling and intimidating behaviour meant she is always drawn back. However, when Ciara is finally able to leave, the extent of the housing crisis in Dublin is laid bare. She ends up living in emergency accommodation in a hotel with her two young children and another on the way, with bureaucratic traps laid everywhere to prevent her from moving forward with her life, along with all the guilt and doubts that come with being a survivor of domestic abuse. In a close third person narrative, O’Donnell keeps the tension ratcheted up and I felt completely invested in Ciara’s fate as the story hurtled towards its climatic ending. Nesting was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction earlier this year and I hope it is also considered for the Booker Prize longlist too.

The Siege by Ben Macintyre is a gripping account of the six-day siege at the Iranian Embassy in South Kensington, London in April  and May 1980. One of the first rolling news stories on live television, interrupting the final moments of the World Snooker Championship when 14 million people were watching, Macintyre captures the tension of the situation with shifting loyalties between the six terrorists opposed to the Ayatollah’s regime and 26 hostages including a police officer, embassy staff and several visitors. The daring 11-minute rescue mission by the SAS known as Operation Nimrod was nothing short of miraculous. There are many bizarre elements to the story too, such as 20-year-old Prince Andrew threatening to turn up at the scene. Macintyre acknowledges the different perspectives and memories of those involved and his book offers a fresh take on well-known material, combining meticulous research with narrative flair in a vivid and detailed reconstruction of events.