When it comes to an obsession with marrying off the children, Jews have more in common with others than they sometimes care to admit. Here are two affectionate portraits of British ethnic communities: 2013 Man Booker Prize long-listed The Marrying of Chani Kaufman and Marriage Material, a portrait of Sikhs in the Midlands after Arnold Bennett. Eve Harris and Sathnam Sanghera compare notes.

Susie Orbach has called Lyndall Gordon a “biographer of soul”…  This acclaimed biographer of Emily Dickinson, TS Eliot and Henry James turns to examine her own life in this fascinating memoir, recounted with searing honesty and candid self-analysis. Lyndall Gordon was shaped by her poetic but volatile and ill mother, whom she disappointed by failing to act on a Promised-Land dream. From South Africa, through New York, to Oxford, the author’s life has undergone ma...