Emma recommends... ASH - Louise Wallace

Emma says... Clear the decks, grab a brew, and settle in for a sharp, claustrophobic, beautiful, and excruciating single-sitting read. Deftly exploring female rage, anxiety, motherhood, womanhood with the meticulous precision yet experimental form of the poet she is, Wallace delivers a compact but bang on target punch of a novella. Set in rural New Zealand, below a volcanic mountain set to blow, the narrative seamlessly interweaves the micro and macro crises of climate change, misogyny, labour economics, marriage, and community. One of the most beautifully honest and stylistically intriguing books you'll read this year.

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Thea lives under a mountain – one that's ready to blow. A vet at a mid-sized rural practice, she has been called back during maternity leave and is coping – just – with the juggle of meetings, mealtimes, farm visits, her boss's search for legal loopholes and the constant care of her much-loved children, Eli and Lucy. But something is shifting in Thea – something is burning. Or is it that she is becoming aware, for the first time, of the bright, hot core at her centre?

An urgent rallying cry to women everywhere, ASH is a story about reckoning with one's rage and finding marvels in the midst of chaos.