Books like The Weather In The Streets — picked by fans

This book takes you on a rollercoaster through contemporary lives and dilemmas, moving and inspiring you on the way.

From a young woman teacher with a big alcohol problem and a mess of a relationship through a lonely middle-aged male whose use of sex workers damages his ability to relate to regular women, this is a no-holds-barred exploration of how we live now.

Moshfegh shows us the pain, the humour, the sorrow, and the potential joy, in beautifully written prose with a real edge to it.

These short stories lure you in to a world of fantastical distortions and mythical resonances, which make you look differently at women’s lives.

A young girl with an eating disorder turns into an eel; a group of female friends go hunting for male conquests whom they kill and eat to satisfy their appetites. In a world of anarchic desires and obtuse relationships, strange and inexplicable metamorphoses take place. Violence bridges the gap between human and animal, between desire and carnal action.

In candid language not for the faint-hearted, this book probes the potentially dark recesses of the female psyche against a timeless backdrop of rural folklore and magical possibility. 

This pared-back and intense analysis of female isolation in a modern city breaks all the rules of ‘good writing.’ Telling not showing; unrelievedly inward; arguably solipsistic; it charts the descent of a conscientious copywriter into drunken depression. Could an off-beat relationship with a man who seems to care about her, for what she is, possibly haul her back into a functioning life?

In its totally absorbing dramatization of our hopes, desires, disappointments, and perennial insecurities, this book shows our flawed and fragile human selves in remorseless clarity. At the same time, it gives hope in the value of human affection and the kindness of friends.  

A houseful of women, moving from their long-term home in New Zealand to a new location by the sea. What you get in this short tale is an accumulation of moments that add up to an intense mosaic of the life of women in a male-dominated family.

From the little girl Kezia to the pregnant wife Linda, from the sometimes benevolent grandmother to the handyman who chops off the head of a live duck to see it still running, this book enthralls in its detail, its poetic and emotional resonance, and the insights it gives into female consciousness in a world of constrictions.

Don’t look for ‘what happens next’; look instead for the diamond facets the story reveals in every sentence. When you get to the end, you may feel that this book is a jewel beyond price. 

I had no special interest in Alexander the Great, but happened on Fire From Heaven in the library. It was set in Ancient Greece. I liked historical novels, so I read it. Became a fan!

This first book takes that world-bestriding conqueror and imagines him as a lonely child in a fraught palace—and as a teenager, his father assassinated, his world breaking up around him. It follows him as time changes him into a brilliant, daring general. In the series’ succeeding books, he becomes a lover and then half-mad with bereavement, and we see his "empire" quickly dissolve after his early death.

Time changes everything; nothing stays the same. But in the pages of these books, Alexander’s world is brilliantly recreated.

Elizabeth Taylor—not to be confused with the actress of the same name—has been called ‘the unsung heroine of British twentieth-century fiction.’ I wholeheartedly agree, and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is Taylor at her sublime best. It’s the tale of an elderly woman, wealthy but recently widowed, who’s faced with a choice: "Do I spend my last days in a care home—or check into a grand hotel?" She opts for the latter and finds herself among a group of fascinating characters, each as eccentric as she herself. 

Insightful about the sadness and loneliness of ageing, this book did not make me feel despondent about growing older. On the contrary, it showed me that love, happiness, and a sense of adventure can be ours at any age, if we’re willing to take chances and open our hearts to others.

I fell in love with designer Vicky Tiel’s 2011 memoir because of what I’ll call its “sex-positive” rompiness, which reads like a Swinging Sixties female version of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. (I stumbled upon it during research because it includes some of my characters, primarily Mia Fonssagrives, daughter of supermodel Lisa Fonssagrives and stepdaughter of Irving Penn.) 

In the book, Tiel, who made her name designing catsuits, hotpants, and miniskirts, explains how she and Mia went from being design students in New York to “It” fashion designers in Paris pretty much overnight. They have many adventures, bed many men, and pick up practical life advice from models and movie stars like Elizabeth Taylor while growing up. It’s a total period piece but also, it hasn’t aged. With pictures and recipes!  

At last, a book about Elizabeth Taylor that takes her acting skills seriously, analyses her prodigious output, and is neither sensational nor trivial. I was entranced. Like Sybil Thorndike, Taylor’s career lasted 65 years. Kennedy puts it in context, refreshingly focusing on her professional rather than personal life.

Commenting on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, he remarks: ‘At some point we have to reject the idea we’re watching the Burtons air their dirty laundry and embrace the possibility we’re watching them act. Brilliantly’. This readable, thoughtful book examines Taylor’s 56 movies and includes television, theatre, and special appearances such as a play reading in 2007, part of her remarkable fund-raising for AIDS.

Anton, a former columnist for The Japan Times, grew up in New York City, one of three children raised solely by an African American father. (Her mother was institutionalized due to mental illness.) She studied dance with Martha Graham, modeled for the pages of LOOK magazine at a time when African American models were few and far between, and copy-edited for Joseph Heller. Later, she traveled to Europe where she met Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton when she interviewed to be their house-sitter in Gstaad, fell in love and gave birth in Denmark, then later journeyed overland from Europe to Asia with her childhood friend and future husband, Billy. Any one chapter of her life could have been the basis for an entire book. Anton is an engaging storyteller with an exceptional story -- an unbeatable combination. I highly recommend this memoir to anyone interested in Japan, multicultural families,… show more.

I adore this collection of women’s short stories, all written in the forties and fifties. It gives a great scatter-gun indication of the mood and moral atmosphere of the times.

The mixture contains stories by familiar writers – Daphne du Maurier’s "The Birds" is here – as well as writers who’ve been largely forgotten, like Frances Bellerby, whose delicate story "A Cut Finger" made me cry.

Reading short stories makes a welcome change from the journey of a novel, especially when I’m busy. One a night makes a perfect bedtime treat.