OCTOBER BOOK OF THE MONTH | Frankie recommends... Female Life on Planet Earth - Laleh Khadivi

Frankie says... An absolutely sparkling, clever and surprising story of grief and the surreality of every living. This book asks in the most elegant yet stark way, how do we live secret lives away from our children and parents, and how do these identities stack up and clash across our lives? Khadivi's prose is precise and mesmerising, and I was greatly surprised at how much this novel captured my emotions. Very powerful, extremely original and exceptionally unforgettable.

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After a lifetime together, Heti thought she knew her mother inside out.

She's about to discover how wrong she was. Heti moves in a daze of grief after her mother dies, until her life is upended by the arrival of an unmarked package containing photographs of her mother as a young woman in Iran, enveloped head to toe in a black veil, pointing a machine gun at a group of sobbing young women. Unable to confront the one person she most wants answers from, she turns to the women around her, listening to their surprising, funny and often contradictory stories.

Through them, she realises that every woman contains hidden lives and private truths. So when it falls to her to organise a memorial marking the first anniversary of her mother’s death, Heti gathers the women who knew her best and asks them: Who was my mother? And who are we? Original, sparkling with wit and layered with tenderness, Female Life on Planet Earth is a celebration of womanhood, perfect for fans of Good Girl by Aria Aber and The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji.