Eight books about cousins that explore secrets, rivalries & kinship

Krystelle Bamford’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, bath magg, Under the Radar, The Scores, and numerous anthologies including the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019–2021.

She is a 2019 Primers poet and was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Raised in the US, she now lives in Edinburgh with her partner and children.

Idle Grounds is Bamford’s first novel.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight books which "explore cousins as ghosts, rivals, allies, schemers, betrayers, and even lovers." One title on the list:

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Kambili is quiet, pious, and always comes first in her year at her exclusive private Catholic high school, except when she doesn’t and the countdown begins on her father’s wrath. Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s deeply moving debut, suspends Kambili between two worlds. The first is her father’s: affluent, devout, and ferociously punitive. The second, her Aunty Ifeoma’s: full of good-natured debate, laughter, and tolerance, including of the Igbo culture to which Kambili’s father has severed all ties. As the first world starts to come apart when her father takes a stand against a military coup, Kambili starts to spend more time in the second, blossoming in the sunlight of their three spirited, intellectual cousins and Father Amadi, a definite forerunner of Fleabag’s Hot Priest.

A nuanced portrait of a daughter’s devotion to her loving and monstrous father against a backdrop of political upheaval, Purple Hibiscus explores what it means to be torn—between your past and your future, your principles and your living, your obligations and your desires—and offers the faint hope that something worthwhile can grow from the split.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Purple Hibiscus is among Emily Temple's twelve top descriptions of flowers in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue