Books To Read When You’re A Cancer & Need Something Just As Compassionate & Homely As You Are  

Highly intuitive, sensitive and home-orientated – that’s the Cancer we know and love. As a water sign, you feel very intensely, but tend to keep your sentiments in your shell. With so much going on in your watery depths, what better for a Cancer than to curl up with a good book and channel all those feelings? We’ve chosen the ideal reads to keep you satiated this summer, from quiet, introspective stories to sprawling family and friendship sagas. Crab signs, get your pincers into these picks...

All The Lovers In The Night by Meiko Kawakami

Yes, this is novel that some poor soul on Goodreads described as the “ultimate sad girl book”. But don’t let that put you off, dear Cancer – it’s full to the brim with Meiko Kawakami’s heartrending and introspective writing. This short novel follows Fuyuko, a sensitive Tokyo-based copy editor who yearns for deeper connections. This quiet, emotional character with a rich inner life finally begins to open up with the kind and patient Mitsutsuka. The story considers trauma and its role in individual agency, along with the small victories of making a new friend – or simply holding another’s hand. It’s perfect for the sensitive, intuitive Cancer, who takes their time to reveal their true selves.

Milk Teeth by Jessica Andrews

The perfect heady summer read for our thoughtful Cancers. We meet the unnamed, troubled narrator of Milk Teeth in a dingy bar in Peckham, Southeast London, locking lips with her love interest for the first time. It’s girl-meets-boy with a healthy helping of early twenties crisis mode. Just as things seem to be going well, he tells her he’s moving to Barcelona for a work placement and invites her to stay with him. She tentatively follows, but scrabbles to pinpoint what true happiness means for her, despite the gorgeous surroundings and pulsing Spanish heat. The push and pull between longing for a true home of her own and the overwhelming desire to be loved (very Cancer) drives this delicious, sticky novel.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Cancers, we know you like to keep all that sensitivity locked up inside, but take this next novel as your warning. If you really want to sink your teeth into decades of obsessive yearning, find a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love, but Fermina chooses a wealthy, respectable doctor to marry, leaving Florentino heartbroken and bereft. He whiles away the years with (quite literally) hundreds of unfulfilling affairs, but he just can’t get over his true love. Give yourself over to Gabriel García Márquez’s beautiful writing about a nonetheless contentious character; here, love is less a selfless act of letting go and more a decades-long, insidious plot. It’s definitely not giving Disney, but the sensitive Cancer will love this sweeping, epic read and may relate to keeping all those feelings inside just a little bit too long.

My Friends by Hisham Matar

Moving fluidly between Benghazi, Edinburgh, London and Paris, My Friends maps the coming-of-age of Khaled. Upon hearing a strange, haunting short story on the radio in Libya, he is inspired to go to Edinburgh to study literature, where he meets fellow Libyan, Mustafa. When the friends go to London to attend a protest against Gaddafi’s regime, an unthinkable act of violence renders both men stranded in limbo, unable to return to either university or their homeland for fear of being exposed as radicals, imprisoned, or worse. This absorbing novel starts slowly and thoughtfully, perfect for the more guarded Cancer, but the short chapters keep the story driven – we are in Khaled’s mind every step of the way. It’s a meditation on family, home, loyalty and the deep bonds of friendship: everything the compassionate Cancer values most.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

If you’re looking for a sprawling saga for the family-oriented Cancer, look no further than Pachinko. The story opens in Korea and focuses on plucky Sunja, a teenager from a humble family who falls for a wealthy stranger, Koh Hansu. On finding out she is pregnant, and he is married with children, she abandons her home – and Koh Hansu’s full wallet and empty words – to begin anew in Japan. This decision sets in motion a powerful saga of events that reverberates down her family tree, set in the context of 20th-century Japanese colonisation and the war with Korea. It’s a deeply educational novel, with hyper-vivid characters that you can barely believe aren’t real. If you want to stay with the fascinating history and engaging characters even longer after you turn the final page, don’t miss the brilliant TV series (and Dua’s interview with the author, here). Home is difficult, fleeting, and longed-for in Pachinko, and Cancers will fall in love with this unforgettable, multigenerational family story.