Reading Matters (week 24) June 9 2026

Mark Solms, the world’s (and I mean the world’s) greatest living authority on Sigmund Freud, in his latest book boldly titled The Only Cure (Weidenfeld & Nicolson / Jonathan Ball) spells out why real healing begins with insight into our earliest emotions.

This not an academic treatise. Solms is an international leading neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst – he works at UCT; at St Bartholomew’s and Royal London Hospital and is an honorary fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists. Thankfully, he writes clearly, straightforwardly, sometimes amusingly, about real people who have been healed through ‘the talking cure.’

Indeed Solms starts The Only Cure with an unemployed young doctor who is literally falling apart to the extent he cannot drive a car, can’t sleep, let alone treat his patients. Today, after years of psychoanalysis with Solms, he is an outstanding paediatrician. I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing Mark Solms and I think you will thoroughly enjoy reading him.

If you’ve read the much lauded, The Light between Oceans by ML Stedman, you will know what lies in store for you with her, A Far-Flung Life (PRH). It’s an intergenerational saga, set in the Australian outback, about a sheep farming family.

We read upfront that the father of two grown-up sons swerves violently to avoid a kangaroo whilst driving near the farm, killing himself and one son. That leaves the other son, a daughter and his wife to run the farm.
Even more drama hits the remaining family with deep secrets and death set amongst the characters. The prose is pure poetry.

I’m mad about Jane Harper, also Australian, and this, her sixth book Last One Out (Macmillan), is set in a dying, fictional town that’s slowly being strangled by a coal mine. The son of an unhappily married couple just disappears on his 21st birthday. His footsteps were clear to see embedded in dust in three homes, in and out, but five years later his disappearance is still a total mystery.

Sam’s mother, his father and his sister have come together to pay homage to him and to try, once again, to solve the mystery of his absence. Compelling stuff.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall