With The Great British Bake Off kicking off this month, it’s surprising that Nigella Lawson has much time to read. The secret bookworm, who describes reading as ‘one of my greatest joys’, has just revealed what novel has been keeping her gripped when she’s not filming.
That book is The Strangers, by Naomi Alderman, which Nigella describes as an ‘utterly compelling and brilliant new novel’. Speaking about the author, Nigella said, ‘I love her writing, I love her mind’. Naomi Alderman is the author of seven other novels including Disobedience and The Power, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2017.
The Strangers is a stunning speculative novel about grief that crosses genres and blurs the lines between fiction and reality. The book begins in the months after Naomi Alderman’s mother dies, when she sets up a wildlife camera in her garden. On it, she captures images of a strange new animal. Soon, these ‘mimmoths’ have spread across the globe, becoming as common as foxes. But the protagonist continues to feel a strong connection to them and begins to wonder if it’s all a conspiracy theory.
