I don’t want to say too much about the detail of this book because immersing yourself in this world and slowly understanding what is happening around you is one of the biggest treats this novel offers. A magic realist novel set over the course of one day in the island nation of Popisho, this is the most sensuous, lyrical novel I have read in a very long time - the kind of novel you desperately want to see filmed but to which film could never do justice.

It’s a love story, it’s a political satire, it’s a novel about addiction and it’s a stunning example of post-colonial writing combined with beautiful imagery and a playfulness with language that I absolutely loved. I couldn’t put it down and I will be recommending it to everyone once it’s published next year.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Faber for the ARC, this has just jumped to the top of my list of best novels of 2020 and I can’t wait to buy copies of it for everyone I know next year.

TL: DR Buy this book and read it. Buy it for your parents, your siblings, your niblings, your friends. An absolute stunner of a novel.

Many, many thanks to Netgalley and Faber for the ARC because it let me discover This One Sky Day.
This is a world where moths can get you drunk, a man can tell when you're lying, the maceanus knows exactly what you need to eat, a woman knows when you'll die, vulvas can fall out, a house adapts to its owner's wishes, cors (magic) is an everyday thing and so much more. It's a world of carnivalesque possibility, a richness of life and stories, a world told well with a winking eye by a masterful writer.

The book has all the elements that make me fall for a story: sensuous magical realism that can be read as symbolism but can just be read straight depending on how you're feeling; lyrical, rhythmic dialectal speech; wonderfully drawn characters whose stories, no matter how normal or mad, you want to follow all the way to the end. There's a real joy, a celebration in the language and writing; it feels like the author had fun with every word she wrote and you can feel it as a reader. This was such a feel-good book - not because it was apolitical or didn't discuss real-world issues through the lens of the magical island, but because the writing, the language itself, a flutter of butterflies in its own right, was so uplifting, so wonderful. Ross discusses grief, addiction, love with the most of deft of hands. I will never understand how Ross makes lists of vegetables and their adjectives sound so beautiful, so vivid, so near the teeth and tongue. This One Sky Day follows the legacy of brilliant magical realism novels about food - Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat etc - but takes it further.

It's been a tough year and I haven't been able to settle with a book for a long time. I'd start a book, leave it for weeks, feel loathe to rejoin it, read a bit and then leave it again. I haven't dived into a book, settled to the bottom of a story in so long and this book came along. I read it like I read books as a child, coming back from the library, sitting in a chair and just devouring, gorging on a book until it was finished and I felt replete and vaguely sick. I read this book everywhere - in quiet moments whilst teaching, eating meals, on the toilet, everywhere. I wanted to read it and I didn't want it to end. I wanted to reread it the minute I finished it. I want to tell everyone to get NetGalley so they can read it and wax lyrical too and I'm annoyed that I'll have to wait until March 2021 to buy it for myself and others. This book is going to be late Christmas gifts and early birthday presents for a long time; I've told friends, family, writing groups how brilliant this book is. I am really quite judgemental when it comes to novels, I'm very hard to please, so my unequivocal championing of a book is quite rare, but the truth is, I don't think I've been this in love with a book for years.

I could talk about this book for pages but all I want to do is urge you to read the book - which I think is the best thing I've read all year.