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My Week in Books – 3rd May 2026

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On the blog last week

Monday – I published my review of Dark is the Morning by Rupert Thomson.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday was a freebie and I chose the topic Fictional Housekeepers.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Friday – I published my review of A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia.

Saturday – The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for the #6Degrees of Separation meme. My book chain took me from Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy to Flashlight by Susan Choi. Plus I joined other gardeners for #SixonSaturday, sharing six things happening in my garden this week.

New on my shelves

The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain (Vintage via NetGalley)

‘Daphne du Maurier stole my life.’

Mrs Danowski – known as Danni – is the housekeeper of a grand house on the wild coast of Cornwall. When a glamorous young writer, Daphne du Maurier, visits Manderville Hall to research her new novel, she and Danni are drawn into a clandestine and intoxicating affair.

For Danni, it is an all-consuming love; for Daphne a submission to long-suppressed desires. But their fragile secret is vulnerable to prying eyes and destined for heartbreak. When Daphne’s novel launches to triumphant success, Danni is distraught to find herself transformed into a malign and jealous character on the page. She seeks respite from the hurt by telling her own story: The Housekeeper.

Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo (audiobook, Vintage)

In 1843, in a small village on the stormy Kent coast, Ishmaelle is born. She grows up swimming with dolphins and eventually – desperate for a life at sea – she disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.

As the American Civil War breaks out, Ishmaelle boards a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors amidst the bloody male violence of whaling and discovers a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale Moby Dick…

Where are the Kings by Donal Ryan (Doubleday via NetGalley)

Jack is just twelve years old when he rushes down the hill after his mother’s car on his bike, desperate to reach her before she reaches the lake.

What happens next cannot be undone. Jack’s life changes just at the moment he is entering those dizzying years when he will transition from boy to man; when nothing makes sense at the best of times.

Yet Jack is not alone. Enveloped as he is by his extended family – his ferociously loving Nana; Grandad, given to sudden bursts of rage; his earthy uncles Haulie and Theo who want to show him what it means to be a man, and the irascible JJ who resents him deeply. Then there is beautiful aunt Rose, whose mere presence ignites every atom in his changing body.

But how can a boy with so many questions, in a family with so many secrets, understand the person he is becoming? Without his mother to ground him on the earth, will he spin off into the stars?

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Relative Failures: The Lives of Willie Wilde, Mabel Beardsley and Howard Sturgis which I won in a giveaway, and Goodbye Chinatown (published on 2nd June by World Editions) from my NetGalley Shelf

Look out for…

  • Book Review: Paper Sisters by Rachel Canwell
  • Book Review: Flashlight by Susan Choi

Book Review – A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia @picadorbooks

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About the Book

Rome, 1953. David is young, handsome, charismatic and sworn to celibacy. He is freshly ordained, and about to return to England to begin life as a priest. Devotion to God is all he’s ever known.

In London, Margaret is entangled in an impossible love affair. Committed to living on her own terms without sacrificing her faith, she becomes drawn to a women’s movement challenging the archaic rules of the Church.

When their lives are thrown together at a Catholic college in a quiet village, an undeniable connection forms between them. And so begins a story of forbidden love, sacrifice and secrets, with consequences that will reverberate across the generations.

Decades later, she is being cared for by her grandson, who has just discovered the strange truth of his family history.

Format: Hardcover (288 pages) Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 19th February 2026 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find A Private Man on Goodreads

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My Review

At the funeral of his great-uncle in 2018, Adrian learns something unexpected about his grandparents, namely that his grandfather David was once a Catholic priest. As he begins caring for his elderly grandmother who is suffering from dementia, he tries to draw out the story of his grandparents’ relationship and marriage, revealed in a series of flashbacks. We experience David’s childhood, his time at a seminary in Rome and the ritual of his ordination. It’s a life that seems likely to follow a prescribed path of absolute devotion to the Catholic faith and celibacy.

‘He liked being told what to do. He liked waking up knowing what he had to wear in the morning. He liked the awareness of himself as being in a hierarchy, with people above and below him. He liked all the secret codes and small rituals… He liked his presence being demanded in a particular place at a particular time, and the fact there would be consequences if you didn’t appear.’

It could not be more different from Margaret’s freer, more adventurous life including multiple sexual encounters.

David and Margaret first meet in the 1960s at a theology college where Margaret is a teacher and David the priest. They are both devoted to their Catholic faith but Margaret is not afraid to challenge the Church’s doctrine, specifically relating to the place of women in the Church. What starts as discussion, debate and a sharing of ideas – first in college rooms, then in David’s house – transforms into something much deeper. Before long though the romantic and physical attraction between them cannot be denied, leaving David with an agonising decision. To be with Margaret in the way he desires means leaving the Church. He is left in doubt about the brutality of the process of laicization.

I adored the way the author described the little details of their life together, the gentle give and take that occurs in a long, loving relationship.

‘She thought of the thousand ways they had shown their love to one another, and been unnoticed, else misapprehended. Cups of tea in their multitudes. Crooked inventions of his to ease her in her pastimes. The plank full of nails bent at an angle, for her spools of thread…. Sunday roasts. Drinks mixed and brought to her desk. Records played, and dancing. So much dancing. Long drives, late at night, to fetch one another from this or that place. Jumpers knitted. Quilts stitched, spread over both of their knees on winter evenings. Reading to one another.’

I found Margaret’s decline from the vibrant, articulate woman she once was to someone requiring help with the most intimate of tasks quite heartbreaking. And although I was saddened by how the once passionate relationship between David and Margaret changed over the years, I could also appreciate its realism.

To a certain extent David always remained for me the ‘private man’ of the book’s title. I didn’t feel I got to know him as completely as I did Margaret. However, I could completely understand how David would be attracted to the intelligent, uncompromising, forthright Margaret.

Based on the story of the author’s own grandparents, A Private Man is a tender, moving love story about two people who, despite the obstacles in their way, could not imagine a life without each other.

I received a advance review copy courtesy of Macmillan via NetGalley.

In three words: Tender, intimate, moving
Try something similar: Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

About the Author

Stephanie Sy-Quia was born in 1995 and is based in London. Her writing and criticism have been published in The Guardian, The White Review, The Boston Review, Granta, The TLS, and others. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and has twice been shortlisted for the FT Bodley Head Essay Prize.

Her debut Amnion, published by Granta Poetry in 2021, received a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation; was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio and RSL Ondaatje Prizes; and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award.

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