#WWWWednesday – 1st April 2026

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Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

What I’m Currently Reading

The River Days of Rosie Crow by Rebecca Stonehill (Stairwell Books)

Two women’s lives interweave in the wilds of rural Norfolk, separated by almost two hundred years but bound by their inability to conform to society’s expectations and love of storytelling.

Rosie Crow is spirited, illiterate and deeply connected to the land. She believes the river communicates with her, but rural poverty and superstition set her up as scapegoat for her village’s discontent. What Rosie cannot know is the impact her life will have on a grief-stricken woman many years later…

Sanctuary by Tom Gaisford (Bath Publishing)

What possesses someone to claim asylum in his own country?

Alex Donovan is a young refugee lawyer in crisis. Helping desperate clients reach safety is what gives his job meaning. But he now finds himself demoted, signed off sick for stress, and facing redeployment to the firm’s subterranean billing department.

Then there is Amy, the woman he adores. The irresistible junior barrister seems to be drifting away from him.

With little to lose and all to prove, Alex dreams up a madcap plan to restore his honour and secure Amy’s affection.

What I’ve Just Read

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope (Audible)

The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci, trans, by Anne Milano Appel (World Editions)

What I’ll Be Reading Next

Front cover of A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman

A Far-flung Life by M. L. Stedman (Doubleday)

Outback Western Australia, 1958. For generations, the MacBrides have lived on a remote sheep station, Meredith Downs. A million arid acres, it’s an ocean of land, where the weather is a capricious god, and time still roams untamed.

One ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered.

Instead of leaving wounds to heal, Fate comes for them yet again, in a twist of consequences that will cause one of them to lose their life, and another to sacrifice theirs for the sake of an innocent child.

Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide, as he is forced to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.

Book Review – The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci, translated by Anne Milano Appel @WorldEdBooks

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About the Book

In the round house on Via Saterna, its Palladian square exterior nothing but a trompe-l’oeil, the sun pierces through the central skylight. Its rays pass three floors unobstructed, before reaching the circle below at the heart of the house: four fingers of water filling a little silver basin. It is here that young Lidia dies, setting an end to her clandestine love affair with the ambitious architect.

It is this house that real-estate agent Irene is asked to sell, decades later, as the climate catastrophe escalates, cloaking the divided city in a permanent orange haze. Returning to her native Milan for the sale, Irene feels the brunt of her father’s judgement. He is a proud Italian and prouder architect—how could his own daughter make a living selling cultural patrimony to the highest foreign bidder?

As she faces this new Milan and the old family tensions she had avoided while living in Rome, Irene throws herself into the impossible sale, getting to know Via Saterna intimately—this space that is as unsettling as it is hostile, with the slowly emerging traces of Lidia’s interrupted life. In every room of the house, the burden of a mysterious, unresolved past can be felt, remnants of a selfish and manipulative love.

Format: Paperback (242 pages) Publisher: World Editions
Publication date: 7th April 2026 Genre: Fiction

Find The Perfect Circle on Goodreads

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My Review

The book alternates between two timelines – one set in the near future and the other in the 1980s – which progress in opposite directions chronologically.

In the storyline set in the near future, Milan is a city shrouded in dense fog, the result of climate change. There is social unrest prompting calls from some for construction of a wall to separate the crime-ridden parts of the city from the rest. All this gives an unsettling feel to the book, a suitable backdrop as it turns out to events in the house on Via Saterna. Irene has been commissioned to sell the house at auction by a lawyer named Ferrari. A specialist in selling heritage properties to wealthy investors, Irene is confident she can get a good price even given its unusual design. Ferrari is not so sure about its arcihtectural merits, adding ‘I would venture a certain amount of bad luck looms over this property.’

Irene sets about researching the history of the house and making an inventory of its contents. What she comes across both surprises and alarms her. And there are things that just don’t make sense. As she spends more time in the house, it starts to exert a strange pull on her.

The second storyline unfolds in reverse chronological order, gradually revealing the events that led up to the death in 1986 of Lidia, the young woman who once owned the house and commissioned its ambitious redesign. As the reader discovers, it’s a tragedy born out of a betrayal whose consequences will be played out in a most unexpected way decades later.

There are very many clever touches such as the fact the design of the house on Via Saterna is centred around a skylight through which the sun illuminates a silver basin filled with water at certain points of the day, whereas Milan is now shrouded in fog so dense that sunlight rarely penetrates it.

The Perfect Circle is a very cleverly plotted story with an ending that reflects the book’s title in a most satisfying way.

I received a review copy courtesy of World Editions via NetGalley.

In three words: Intriguing, atmospheric, assured

About the Author

Claudia Petrucci studied Modern Letters in Milan before moving to Perth, Australia. Her reportages and short stories—which range from realistic to weird to science fiction—have been published on Cadillac, minima&moralia, and elsewhere. 

The Performance is her debut novel. It was shortlisted for the John Fante Award and won the prestigious Premio Flaiano Giovani, for writers under 30. It was also book of the day on Fahrenheit, an Italian radio program, and it has been translated into German and French. The Perfect Circle is her second novel to be translated into English. (Photo/bio: Publisher author page)

Connect with Claudia
Website | Instagram | Facebook | X

About the Translator

Anne Milano Appel is a translator and a former library administrator, and she has a doctorate in Romance languages. She has translated works by a number of leading Italian authors, including the award-winning Antonio Scurati and Paolo Maurensig. Her awards include the Italian Prose in Translation Award, the John Florio Prize for Italian Translation, and the Northern California Book Award for Translation.