The Lockdown List: books for comfort during self-isolation

08/04/2020

If you’re finding yourself feeling listless in the vast hours between your One Walk A Day and family FaceTime, then we have the perfect fiction titles to find solace in.

Alice O’Keeffe’s On The Up brilliantly describes the frustration of isolation, albeit of a different kind.  Sylvia lives in a flat on a council estate with her not-quite-husband Obe and their two young children. In a haze of sleep deprivation, she struggles to stay sane as her neighbour blasts ever louder RnB, and bills continue to land on the doormat. But when the estate is earmarked for redevelopment, the threat to her community gives Sylvia a renewed sense of purpose.  Described as ‘an uplifting book about persevering through the tough times’, what could be more relevant today?

Yelpingly funny, Create Your Own Midlife Crisis by Marie Phillips also depicts the experience of losing your sh*t.  This book will allow you do what you can’t in real life: cast your whining husband aside, drop the home-schooling textbooks and run off to Brazil to take ayahuasca with a shaman. In this compulsively readable book-as-game you can live out a thousand lives without leaving your sofa. Perfect for right now.