Jessie Thompson

Dec 2, 2024 | everand.com | Geordie Greig |Jessie Thompson |Katie Rosseinsky |Victoria Richards |Robert McCrum

Books are the best kind of Christmas present, and we don’t want to argue about it. When you give someone you love an unputdownable novel, a juicy biography, a captivating history book or a set of letters or poems, what you are also giving is hours and hours of pleasure. That’s why five of us writers are sharing our top five suggestions for great books to give as gifts this Christmas.

Nov 28, 2024 | everand.com | Jessie Thompson

At a certain point in my pregnancy, Instagram began to bombard me with pictures of a pregnant Margot Robbie. It felt like my feed was trolling me in a particularly mean way: hey, rapidly expanding lady, wanna see how the most beautiful woman in the world is handling all of this? And I did. After a while, I assume my feed became self-fulfilling: I kept looking at pictures of Robbie, my glowing pregnancy nemesis, so the algorithm offered me more and more.

Oct 15, 2024 | everand.com | Jessie Thompson

Rumaan Alam’s debut novel an eerie thriller full of contemporary social and political anxieties, was one of the breakout literary hits of lockdown. A perfect “read in one sitting” book, it told the story of a family who leave the city for a nice quiet break in a rented house outside of the city… until a couple, who say they are the homeowners, turn up on the doorstep in need of shelter.

Sep 25, 2024 | everand.com | Jessie Thompson

For the Jacqueline Wilson generation, there’s a new, tongue-in-cheek way to indulge in some nostalgia. With a splash of wry humour and a huge dollop of affection, readers on TikTok have begun to rank her books in order of how “traumatic” they were. “Oh, do they?” the author says, glowing (I think with curiosity rather than delight), before asking, “Which would be the ones they think are the most traumatic?” Before I can respond, the author is gamely taking up the challenge herself.

Sep 16, 2024 | everand.com | Jessie Thompson

What makes Wendy Cope one of the nation’s most loved poets? Many things: her unpretentious, accessible style; her sense of humour; her hard-won wisdom; and the fact that, running beneath these poems that are such a pleasure to read, is often an iceberg-like swell of deep emotion. Recently told “if you want people to enjoy then it’s kind of nice to write poems they can understand.” And a whole