Page Turners – October 2026 review

In October the Page Turners read ‘The Names‘ by Florence Knapp. This book was the winner of the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year in 2026.

The book begins in 1987 when a mother sets out to register her new baby son. Should she follow family tradition and name him after his domineering father and grandfather; should she choose the name suggested by his young sister; or should she use her own choice? The book follows all three possible versions of the boy’s life and we see the impact of each of the choices.

We were all fascinated by the concept and spent some time thinking about the way a person’s name might affect the way in which their personality develops and the way in which other people react to them and all of us had stories to tell about this. However we tried to concentrate on the stories in the book.

The book is very powerfully written and we were all engrossed in the different ways the family’s life played out but there is domestic violence in all three scenarios with a long lasting effect on the characters and some of us found this very difficult to read.

The chapters of the book alternate between the three different stories. We needed to concentrate and had to keep turning back to remind ourselves of where we were but on the whole we felt this structure was worth the extra work to enable us to contrast the characters at different times in their lives. It was fascinating to see how a change to a child’s name might impact so many different people and the final sentences of the book open up so many more possibilities.

Despite containing some upsetting scenes, on the whole we felt this was an extremely good read and would recommend it as a Page Turner.

Deborah Wallis, convenor