MUST READS | Daily Mail Online

QUICKSAND TALES

by Keggie Carew (Canongate, £9.99, 272 pp)

As we look back on our lives, most of us can recall moments of embarrassment that still make us cringe. Keggie Carew has a rich store of such misadventures, and has turned them into a sparkling collection of stories.

She begins with an anecdote about a camping trip in California in the 1970s, when 19-year-old Keggie and her boyfriend had a terrifying encounter with a menacing Vietnam veteran who called himself Animal.

There is an excruciating account of meeting the film star, Sam Neill, and a devastatingly funny vignette of a pretentious arts workshop.

The distinctive blend of eccentricity, pathos and sharp comedy that made Carew’s award-winning memoir, Dadland, a best-seller lights up every page.

LOVE FOR IMPERFECT THINGS

by Haemin Sunim (Penguin, £8.99, 288 pp)

Haemin Sunim is that contradictory thing, a celebrity monk. Sunim studied film before deciding, aged 25, to become a Buddhist monk. His first book, Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, was an international bestseller, with its guidance on how to find stillness in our lives.

This book suggests that ‘when we examine our lives, we see many imperfect things, like motes of dust on an old mirror’. Our dissatisfaction with our own flaws, he argues, can cause problems in our relationships.

Delightfully illustrated, punctuated with personal anecdotes and nuggets of wisdom, Sunim’s book offers compassionate and practical advice on how to embrace our imperfections and those of others.

LATE IN THE DAY 

by Tessa Hadley (Vintage, £8.99, 288pp)

The shifting ground of long marriage and old friendship is the subject of Tessa Hadley’s latest novel.

Alex, Christine, Zachary and Lydia have known one another since their schooldays. When they were young, Lydia was obsessed with Alex; while Christine and Zachary were lovers.

But it was Lydia who was Zachary’s real passion and when they got together, Alex and Christine were left to make a more emotionally reticent partnership.

In middle age, the quartet’s friendship is shattered by Zachary’s sudden death, which forces the surviving trio to question the comfortable certainties of their affluent, cultured lives.

Reflective, poignant and beautifully written, it reminds us that the only constant in life is change.