The most recommended Bohemianism books

While not exactly a light read – it contains adult explorations of trauma and violence – Purcell’s writing is drum-tight and entirely absorbing.

This book broke my months-long reading slump and writer's block, reminding me that all it takes to fall in love with stories again is one really, really good one. I’m not much of an annotator, but the pages of my copy are splattered with pen, most often exclamation marks and underlines and obscene exclamations of enthusiasm and grief.

Split between multiple perspectives, locations, and decades, The Lessons is a heart-wrenching romance without fluff, tropes, and suspended disbeliefs. A story of expectations and disappointments, promises and betrayals, it’s full of sharp observations about writing and writers, social constructs, and human behaviour.

I devoured it in days, and can’t wait to forget all the details so I can come back to it and fall in love all over… show more.

I never thought I’d love a book written in verse; poetry just isn’t my thing. Yet, Chris Baron’s work took my breath away. I was mesmerized and couldn’t put it down.

It’s about Ari, an overweight kid, who struggles with his self-worth because of his size. I’ve struggled with my weight too–all my life. So I understood what he was going through. It broke my heart when Ari harmed himself, but I appreciated seeing him make it through this tough time. He showed determination and grit.

The definitive, authorised Johnny Thunders biography, beautifully written by a beloved confidant of the late New York Doll. With a star like Thunders, lesser writers would give in to the temptation to mythologise, but Antonia is a balanced, clear-eyed biographer, presenting her friend’s complex story with style, compassion, grace, and honesty. Nina is the bohemian queen of decadence and rock ‘n’ roll’s darker side, and this book is one of many jewels in her crown.

Who doesn’t love a good coming-of-age story—especially one set on the beautiful, summery, and storied beaches of Cape Cod?

It’s the type of location I find irresistible. Set in the 1980s, the book centers on a young, aspiring novelist named Eve who crosses path with a literary power couple at their Cape Cod home. She lands a job as a research assistant, falls in love with their intriguing son, and scores an invitation to their famous book party.

This novel made me nostalgic for the time I was Eve’s age, full of dreams and waiting for the world to open its arms to me! So atmospheric and evocative!

I was transported back to a time that I don’t often think about, a time that was magical while it lasted. I didn’t want the book to end!

Argentinians in 1950s Paris argue about art and philosophy. They fall in and out of love to a jazz soundtrack. The novel itself is in love with the modern city and the secret patterns of chance. Prefacing it is a ‘table of instructions’ in which the author writes that "this book consists of many books, but two books above all. The first can be read in a normal fashion and it ends with Chapter 56... The second should be read by beginning with Chapter 73 and then following the sequence indicated at the end of each chapter."

There’s an exhilaration of structure, a deadpan formal playfulness that still thrills. It’s the book that taught me the most about reading. And, not entirely coincidentally, it’s the book that made me realise I was going to become a writer.

Set in London in the early 1920s, Huxley’s Antic Hay follows a cast of young bohemian and artistic characters, all affected in various ways by the Great War, as they search for SOMETHING to give meaning to their lives. London has changed, the world has changed, and they are lost. Cripplingly shy Theodore Gumbril, the main character, (inventor of Gumbril's Patent Small-Clothes, trousers which contain an inflatable cushion in the seat) searches for love, and meaning, in the shattered society following the end of the war. His search for love – including the donning of a false, confidence-boosting beard, makes for an absurd kind of comedy. Antic Hay is a savage satire, a switchback of emotions, swooping between humour and despair – though the slight plot does sometimes get rather side-lined by intellectual discussions and I admit to skipping the odd page. However, it gives an excellent flavour of the… show more.

I’d been working on my novel when I heard about the publication of The Artist’s Portrait. I at once read it because I adore the topic and also because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t writing about material that was too similar (it wasn’t!).

In Julie Keys’ beautiful novel, we see why there’ve been so few women artists… and we also get a good dose of excitement as there is murder and mystery too.

I love this book because it makes me realize mine wasn’t the only crazy bohemian family out there! This extremely funny read with authentic ’60s photos is structured as a test to determine if you really are an ACOH (Adult Child of Hippies). People might find this strange, but humour was a necessary ingredient in my coming to terms with my father’s suicide (and the reason my novel is both tragic and funny). Although my father struggled with mental illness and addiction, he had a wickedly funny black sense of humour. For me, it is a tribute to my father to see the ridiculous and laugh even in the face of grief. Certainly, there is much to laugh about in the flower child era.

I read this book under the covers with a flashlight when I was probably too young to know what I was really reading. Still, I was deeply impacted by the story of these early settlers in the American West.

Although today I read it with a greater awareness of the history of the native people of that land, I am still stunned by the description of a seemingly one-dimensional but beautiful landscape and the world we most often now "fly over." 

This is no less than Kasril’s fourth memoir, and the one that resonates most with my own existential worries as a privileged white man. Why did a nice, working-class, Jewish boy from Johannesburg take up armed struggle against institutionalized racism? Become a cabinet minister in the country’s first democratic government devoted to expanding social welfare for Africans? Become a trenchant critic of the rot that subsequently set into the party he helped bring to power?

With profound humility and wit, Kasrils takes us through his boyhood years to reflect upon the often-humiliating process of acquiring political consciousness. He speaks to anyone with a leg up in a rigged system: it’s good to have existential doubts about your privileges. But you should still, and more importantly, you can still do the right thing.