LITERATURE
March Book Club As spring finally arrives, Charlotte Griffiths focuses on fresh starts in fiction
The Eights JOANNA MILLER
University accommodation is home to a familiar skit. It goes something like this. A first-year student meets their neighbour and says: “Hi, nice to meet you – my room’s next door. Do you want to be the best man at my wedding and become friends for life?” The Eights follows four female undergraduates that have been assigned neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and who, despite their wildly different backgrounds, immediately become the best of friends. It’s 1920 and the Eights are part of the very first cohort of women to be admitted as full students at the University of Oxford. We get to know them during their first year, as they study their subjects while also learning about themselves, each other and the world that awaits them upon graduation. It’s a complicated time to be a woman: they’ve just won the right to vote, but years of warfare have taken an emotional and physical toll on the entire population. Despite armistice bringing peace, change is in the air. Each of the Eights has her own reasons for wanting a degree, yet what brings them all together is their pursuit of new opportunities and courage in taking this revolutionary step into the unknown. Joanna Miller, who is Cambridge-raised, has a beautifully descriptive prose style and has clearly done her research, depicting all of the academic romance of life at Oxford, as well as the darkness of – and extraordinary misogyny faced by women in – inter-war Britain. The Eights is a captivating, expertly constructed historical novel about the very best female friendships, which you’ll still be thinking about long after finishing its final pages. A captivating historical novel about the very best female friendships
STAY FOR THE STORY… If your love of literature is on life support, our very own University Arms has a proposition for you and your neglected TBR pile. The hotel’s new ‘Stay for the Story: A Reading Retreat’ package includes a two-night stay with breakfast, plus the unique opportunity to consult with a dedicated Book Butler, who will select the perfect book to get you back into reading. You can even hand over your phone during your stay for a total digital detox. Even better: 5% of all revenue from these literary retreats will be given to the National Literacy Trust’s year-long campaign to reinstil a love of reading in adults and young people. The perfect treat for a book-lover! universityarms.com/a-reading-retreat
28 MARCH 2026 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
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