Books of the month: From Pity by Andrew McMillan to The Fetishist by Katherine Min

A new novel from Howard Jacobson, the insightful diaries of women across the ages, and Paul Theroux on George Orwell’s time in Burma – Martin Chilton picks the best reads for this month

Books about Irish miners, Saddam Hussein, and risqué sex clubs are among this month’s picks (Serpents Tail, Jonathan Cape, Canongate, Hamish Hamilton, Allen Lane, Batsford, iStock)

Older book lovers who visited or grew up in central London may well have fond memories of Silver Moon, the defiant women’s bookshop on Charing Cross Road, founded in 1984, which sold radical and feminist books in an era of rampant homophobia and misogyny. Jane Cholmeley, one of the co-founders, tells its intriguing 17-year history in A Bookshop of One’s Own: How a Group of Women Set Out to Change the World (Mudlark). There are highs – including a delightful signing session by Margaret Atwood – and some lows, including a court battle with a petty Westminster Council and the dubious career delight of “having to clean the carpet from a w**ker’s sperm”. A Bookshop of One’s Own is funny and warm.

The spectre of Donald Trump as president is back and so it seems timely to look at two books in which the dangerous orange oaf features. John Rennie Short, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, takes an (unduly, I fear) optimistic view about the “fading” political future of Trump. In Insurrection: What the January 6 Assault on the Capitol Reveals about America and Democracy (Reaktion Books), Short writes that he believes Trump will be “abandoned by the political leadership of the Republican Party”.

Nevertheless, in his thoughtful study of the polarisation in the United States that led to the attack on Congress, Short offers a damning account of the impulse for Trump’s alleged incitement of insurrection. “The prime motivation for Trump’s actions was to avoid being seen as a loser. He told White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, ‘I don’t want people to know we’ve lost… this is embarrassing,’” writes Short. “Democracy was shaken, seven people died and 114 law enforcement officers were injured, all because Trump did not want to be seen as a failure.”