BOOK CLUB
MALIBU RISING BY TAYLOR JENKINS REID
Set on the sun-kissed Californian coastline, Malibu Rising is a warm, calm ocean of a book that was surely designed with an golden-filtered HBO series in mind. The main action takes place over a single evening, with the Riva siblings preparing for their legendary celebrity-packed annual party, which is shaping up to be even bigger than the last. With dreamy flashbacks to life in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s that will be welcomed by fans of Daisy Jones And The Six , Jenkins Reid’s smash hit novel from 2019, we slowly discover more about the fire-forged bonds that hold this talented family together – and the silent stories hanging over their heads which could come crashing down at any moment. Will the surfer siblings be reconciled with their absent rock star father? If the truths come out, will they remain as close? Will they ever understand that families are not static structures, but shifting constructs that can only survive when people are given permission to grow and change without the pressure to remain as they were? One for a warm afternoon in the sun.
IMAGES In Malibu Rising, feuds and secrets linger under the surface of one family. Flashbacks reveal their origins, but are old traumas about to reappear?
Cecily’s author, Annie Garthwaite, had an inspirational history teacher at school who opened her eyes to the possibilities presented by the subject as “the raw material of story.” Her interest in Richard III lingered long after finishing education, slowly supplanted by a growing curiosity about the strong women who surrounded the king – particularly his mother, Cecily Neville. The wife of Richard of York, Cecily was dismissed by Shakespeare as “old, pious, embittered and dull,” and marginalised by historians in favour of other, more dynamic characters. Annie, meanwhile, spent her career at managerial level, surrounded by men and finding every day to be an exercise in discovering how women can hold power in male-dominated environments, before leaving to start her own business. Twenty years after that, she stopped work, started a creative writing MA and crossed paths with Joanna Laynesmith, a specialist in medieval women. After two further years, the result, published this summer, is Cecily . It’s a brilliant retelling of the beginning of the Wars of The Roses from Cecily’s perspective as a wife, mother, partner and politician – a fascinating and humanising look at what it might have been like to live the peril-filled life of a high- powered noblewoman. The relationship between Cecily and Richard is beautifully drawn. Her ongoing, quiet grief for her lost loved ones and deep courage to protect her family feels modern, but is profoundly human and relatable, shouting clearly through the centuries and leaving you wondering which other histories might contain untold tales... BY ANNIE GARTHWAITE CECILY
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