I love a big beast of a book. But also, I am childishly pleased by finishing a book quickly. I’m as guilty as anyone of feeling pressured into mildly competitive reading by the huge teetering stacks of books some readers seem to get through in a month (and I like to watch really quite a lot of television.) So I thought I’d gather some of my favourite shorter books for the shortest month. All these titles pack a punch. Some are really very short, others just very quick (French Exit, Not Working), all brilliant.

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

I loved this. A vivid dive into the life and love affair of a 1920s maid that then unexpectedly delivered a lively meditation on fiction and memory. Thought-provoking on the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell about ourselves and the essential unknowability of other's’ stories. It was filmed last year, though I haven’t seen it yet.

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This is a brilliant and searing collection of short stories in which exceptional, taut writing characterises darkly imaginative fantasy scenarios that tell us bitter truths about our realities. Justly likened to Black Mirror, Nana’s stories hold a glass up to racism, consumer culture and modern life in utterly original ways. Once read, they are never forgotten.

Not Working by Lisa Owens

Sharp millennial funnies in bite sized chunks that my scattered attention span could cope with and enjoy even in the most extreme days of the pandemic - quite the compliment. It’s written in a fragmentary style that mirrors the narrator Claire’s unstructured time, which makes it easy to pick up and dip into, and the humour kept me reading. It’s far from insubstantial though, with lots of acute observations about work, relationships and expectations packed among the lighter moments.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Having researched so many women writers who worked despite everything stacked against them to compile She is Fierce and She Will Soar, this resonated. Leisure, learning and liberty are the key ingredients for any artists, and they’ve always been in shorter supply for women than men (and scarcer still for women who weren’t from a privileged background.)

Woolf says that when ‘one reads of a witch being ducked, of a women possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor… Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.’

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

I inhaled this. Red at the Bone is absolutely beautifully written. She has such a talent for bringing her characters to life, managing to tell a multi-generational story in brief vignettes. I loved the structure of interlocking points of view from so many different characters, which is similar to that in Histories by Sam Guglani, which I also love. The characters are nuanced and completely realised despite dancing after each other in only a few pages each.

Zorrie by Laird Hunt

Orphaned Zorrie is cast into the perilous economy and sublime landscapes of Depression-era rural Indiana. Drifting west, she survives on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding work at a radium processing plant. At the end of each day, the factory girls glow.

But Indiana calls Zorrie back, and there she makes a life and a home rooted in its earth. Zorrie’s is a life convulsed by the turbulent 20th Century and this tender novel offers an intimate portrait of a tenacious and unbowed woman. It snuck up on me and gently stole my heart.

Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy

Exquisite Cadavers is a fascinating literary response to reductive readings of Meena’s book When I Hit You that assumed that novel to be entirely autobiographical. This is something that happens to women writers far more than men, and to women writers of colour in particular: everything they write is assumed to be drawing on personal experience, denying their status as artists. “No one treats us as writers, only as diarists who survived,” Meena writes. Here, alongside the story of Karim and Maya’s fictional marriage, all the sources, inspirations, subtexts and allusions are glossed in the margins.

It’s such an interesting reading experience, playing with form to give a riveting insight into Meena’s creative process. Confrontational, frequently poetic, not always easy to read and extremely thought-provoking.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The charismatic and cultured Miss Brodie is in her prime, as she constantly reminds her girls, but her passions will change the lives of the honoured and loyal Brodie set in ways none of them could have predicted. There’s a film with Dame Maggie Smith I remember loving and it’s always Maggie I see while reading this.

French Exit by Patrick deWitt

This piercing little gem of a book stars spoilt, hilariously acid Frances, her childish, inept son Malcolm and Small Frank, a cat who Frances believes is the reincarnation of her despised husband. It’s a fizzing, absurdist tragicomedy set mostly in Paris with brilliantly sketched characters who convince despite the extremes they are stretched to. I loved Frances and Joan cackling in their pyjamas together, the cloying neediness of Mme Reynard and everything about Small Frank. Completely enjoyable.

To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters by Suzanne Fagence Cooper

Just over two centuries ago John Ruskin - foremost cultural critic of the Victorian age - was born. This slim little volume summarises his many published volumes and shows how much of his writing can still speak to us today, on issues as diverse as mental health, climate change, mindful travel, responsible consumerism, access to the arts for all and respectful conservation. I’m working on Suzanne’s upcoming book about Jane and William Morris, How We Might Live, which also shows how deeply Victorian thinkers have influenced our world.