Born in New Zealand, author Meg Mason is best known for her hit novel Sorrow and Bliss, which won the fiction book of the year prize at the 2022 British Book Awards and has been translated into over 30 languages. She began her writing career as a journalist for publications including Vogue, Elle, the New Yorker and the Financial Times, and made her literary debut in 2012 with her memoir about motherhood, Say It Again in a Nice Voice. Her much-anticipated fourth book, Sophie, Standing There, centres on a lonely, heartbroken young woman who becomes fixated on a star author. Mason lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband and two daughters.

If I had to define my favourite genre in non-fiction, it would be Woman Having Existential Crisis Finds Salvation in Literature Before Everything Gets Better. Therefore I expected to love Cathy Rentzenbrink’s new memoir, and I did (as also a fan of her previous books). What I did not see coming was my enjoyment of the story she tells in parallel of Agatha Christie’s life, having read exactly none of Christie’s novels and, truthfully, thinking of her as something of a caricature. But that is Rentzenbrink’s mission: to introduce us to Agatha, the real person, who suffered and overcame so much, and Rentzenbrink does so perfectly – telling her own story too with such humour and heart that any woman having an existential crisis would come away feeling she’s made two friends.

Six months have passed since my one and only visit to Cloth, a little tucked-away restaurant near the Barbican, and I would say not a week has gone by that I haven’t thought about the ravioli. At the time, it compelled me to find a member of staff, to please go and tell the chef it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. Living 12,000 miles away is the only thing that prevents me from eating there weekly, to work my way through every dish of elevated comfort food on the menu – next time I’m in London, I will go directly from Heathrow. And the best news: there’s another branch opening soon at Cornhill.

There are Australians who say Tasmania looks a bit like New Zealand, so it must be they’ve never been to New Zealand, my home nation, which is all mountains, glaciers and clear, snow-fed rivers. Tasmania is more like all the best things about Australia (beaches, bush, insane animals) fitted into one small island. Wineglass Bay is two and a half hours from Hobart and accessible by a mile-long walk, which is scenic enough in itself. But then, the beach … a great sweep of white sand, a colour of water that even the best travel writers would have no other word for than azure, all looked down on by soaring pink granite peaks. And the other best thing about Australia: you’re likely to find yourself the only one there.

If you happen to be in Sydney and see a woman in the street wearing a chic linen co-ord, it is almost certainly from Deiji Studios. Based in Byron Bay, the brand began with pyjamas – the kind you can wear to bed – but also make what I think, in Japan, they call “one-mile wear”. That is, clothes you can wear to the corner shop, feeling both comfortable and smart. Deiji has since expanded to a full line of daywear, but the best pieces retain the pyjama-ish soul. Pricewise, it isn’t quite “accessible”, but for the quality, and the environmental credentials, it feels entirely reasonable. And they do beautiful linen bedding now, too.

My fear of this 900-page novel has persisted for 20 years, through multiple attempts at reading beyond page 50. For whatever reason, I never managed it, which left me feeling so intellectually inferior that I spent a lot of time slagging it off to everyone as boring. But it’s such a novelists’ novel. Julian Barnes said it’s probably the greatest ever written. Apparently Zadie Smith reads it once a year. Virginia Woolf called it “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people”, which is why I’d not really got it until now. I hadn’t been witness to enough middle-age experience (chiefly, all your friends getting divorced). While I’ll remain forever impressed by anyone who nailed it in their 20s, having finally managed it (by toggling between paper and audio) I truly think it should be classified as PG-45. 

Sophie, Standing There is published by Bloomsbury (RRP £20; buy it at a discount at the Nerve Bookshop)