Month: August 2025

Women’s Prize shortlist review – “Fundamentally” by Nussaibah Younis

This is my final review of all the titles on the Women’s Prize shortlist, the winner of which was announced weeks ago! It has taken me ages to get through them all, I can’t believe it. Have I suddenly become very slow at reading? I have been working a lot of evenings which means prepping in the afternoon and then getting home late, crossing over with my usual reading times, so guess what has been put to one side? I’ve also been reading multiple books at once and am still slogging my way through Proust! Doesn’t matter, I suppose. There are no prizes for most books read, although the nagging notifications on my Goodreads account, telling me I’m behind on this year’s reading goals, make me feel like a bit of a reading failure, which is ridiculous!

Fundamentally is another debut novel, and I learn from Wikipedia that the author Nussaibah Younis went to a grammar school in the town where I live – small world! She went on to university in Oxford and is now based in London, but had a career in international relations, specialising in Iraq. She was brought up Muslim but describes herself as no longer religious. I am recounting this because there are significant autobiographical elements in Fundamentally, something which seems fairly obvious even if you did not know the author’s background. Similar, in that respect to Aria Aber’s Good Girl. That does not make the novel less good, or less worthy of being shortlisted, of course, but you wonder if the author has a limited range or if they are simply honing their craft by writing about what they know. Apparently, Younis is working on her second novel, so we will find out.

The central character and first person narrator in Fundamentally is Nadia Amin, a young British Asian woman who was brought up a Muslim but has rejected her faith, following, among other things, a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother. As a young adult she pursued a hedonistic lifestyle in London alongside her university studies. She gained a PhD which led to a prized lectureship. She also had an open relationship with another woman Rosie, but when this breaks down, she decides to escape by applying for a United Nations special posting running a rehabilitation programme for former ISIS brides in Iraq. Nadia is running away and she knows it, all the while hoping that Rosie will change her mind. 

Arriving in Iraq, Nadia realises quickly how naive she has been – the scale of the task is huge. The women she is working with in the camp are not the group of malleable, self-effacing, grateful subjects she envisaged. Rather they are complex, varied, traumatised and with ideas of their own. One young woman has a particular impact on Nadia: Sara, a Londoner who was lured to ISIS at the age of 15. In her, Nadia sees shadows of herself. Despite warnings from her colleagues, Nadia involves herself closely with Sara’s case, perhaps too closely, until events spiral out of her control. This is the central plot of the novel – how the relationship between Nadia and Sara resolves and the journeys that both women go on as a result of what they learn from each other. 

The other aspect of the novel is exploring the role of the UN and other agencies in former war zones and developing countries. With her background, the author is highly qualified to write about this. There is a mixture of fondness and criticism – the people working in the field are largely very dedicated but operating in highly complex environments, trying to square the needs and aspirations of governments (good and bad), officials, and those they are meant to be helping. There is both comedy (the bureaucratic somersaults that have to be performed to get anything done), sadness (at the inevitable waste, duplication and corruption) and nuance – not every person in need is objectively “good” all of the time. Rather like democracy, the UN comes across in this novel as far from ideal but perhaps better than the alternatives. 

I really enjoyed Fundamentally – there are a few cliches and some characters are inadequate and two dimensional (Geordie ex-soldier Tom was one I found particularly grating) but it is a great story. The ‘ISIS brides problem’ is difficult and complicated at every level but it deserves to be seen in all its complexity rather than in the lazy homogenised way it is often portrayed. I listened to it on audio and the actor, Sarah Slemani, handles the wide range of voices (and accents) remarkably well. 

Recommended

Women’s Prize shortlist book review – “All Fours” by Miranda July

This book has caused quite a stir in literary circles and is possibly the most remarkable and unusual books that made it to the Women’s Prize shortlist. There was quite a lot of sex on the shortlist this year – an intense lesbian relationship in The Safekeep, the book that won the prize, as well as sex as exploration and rebellion in Good Girl and as relief from the pressures of a confined life in Fundamentally. But All Fours is pretty much all about sex and one woman’s search for her fundamental sexual core as she enters a new phase of her life.

The book is first person narrated and our central character (unnamed) is a moderately successful filmmaker and writer who enjoys a modicum of fame but has never fully lived up to the promise that her one really popular work suggested. She is in her 40s and now lives in LA with her partner Harris and their young child Sam. Her life has become somewhat routine and her relationship has settled into a loving but comfortable and predictable dynamic. She has a close bond with her child; as a baby they almost died following a very rare pregnancy complication where a foetus would normally die, and the event resonates throughout her life. 

As a gift to herself, the narrator, supported by her partner, decides to go on a road trip to New York, where she will spend time in a fancy hotel and enjoy a writing retreat to make some headway on her current project. Soon after she sets off from home, however, she decides to make a detour and finds herself at a motel, a mere half an hour from her home. At a car rental showroom she finds herself deeply attracted to one of the employees, Davey, a young married man whose wife, Claire, is an aspiring interior designer. 

What happens next is inexplicable to both the reader and the narrator who finds herself drawn along a strange path where she sets about to transform her dingey motel room, with Claire’s help, into something resembling a boutique Parisian hotel room. She also seduces Davey and the two embark on an unusual, intense, sexual relationship. All the while, the narrator, lies to Harris and Sam, telling them first about the road trip and second about New York. 

During her sojourn at the motel, the narrator undergoes a deep exploration of her life and her soul. With Davey she explores all parts of her sexual self. To say this is a ‘menopause novel’ is too simplistic, but the narrator’s age (forty-five) and her anticipation of the change that she fears is about to swallow her, undoubtedly drives the crisis she is experiencing. There is an Alice in Wonderland quality to the novel – she disappears into a kind of time warp, where collisions with her real life (calls with Harris and Sam) jar and seem unreal. She is at once desperate to be with them again, to have the reassurance of their stability, but also desperate to escape, tortured by the thought that life has nothing more to give her sexually. 

The novel is explicit as well as at times being very dark and at times very funny. The narrator is very self-aware but also very unknowing about herself, which is why she needs to go on this journey – both literal and metaphorical. Once she leaves the motel, one thing is for sure – her life will never be the same again. 

I really enjoyed the book. The sex is very graphic but pretty well done – I only recall cringing once or twice which is not much given that there is a lot of it! It’s also a really challenging book – as it sets out to question the ordinary lives most of us lead and it’s difficult not to ask yourself, is this enough? So it may be an uncomfortable read for some. It gives the middle finger to Trump-era America with its gender fluidity and libertarian approach to sex and sexuality; it may be far too “woke” for some, but I consider that a plus. 

A brave book and an interesting choice for the Women’s Prize shortlist – that said, it could not really have been left off it.