Eight Arms and Loads of Charm
As soon as I realised an octopus was a narrator of this novel, I simply had to read it. However, it needs to be noted that the octopus is only one of several narrators, and has the least amount of...
Fiction
A Year in the Lives … at an American mall
That quintessentially American icon, the suburban shopping mall, is at the center of this quiet and pleasing debut novel. This particular mall, in a small town in Pennsylvania, is dying, and only a few shops are still open, with the...
Speaking troubles
Angie Kim’s second novel, after her first, Miracle Creek, follows much the same format, style, and even texture, as her first. This is not a criticism, however, because both novels are well done, well written, well planned. Her second, Happiness Falls,...
Singapore Ma’ams and Filipino Maids
The blurb intrigued me, being the story of 3 Filipino domestic workers in Singapore, part of the almost 40% strong migrant workforce in Singapore. Angel, Cora, and Donita become friends, and we are give their very different backgrounds and stories,...
Crazy Rich Nigerians
Among the flurry of novels set in Nigeria of late is The Nigerwife. It stands out because the author is neither Nigerian nor Caucasian, but is a Black English writer, Vanessa Walter. Based on her own experience living in Lagos,...
Translation – facilitor of peace? And/or an act of betrayal?
Amusingly, Kuang feels the need to begin this 540+ page novel with an author’s note on her representation of Oxford university. Accurately, she says, The trouble with writing an Oxford novel is that anyone who has spent time at Oxford...
Treaties made “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”. And then abrogated.
I have read a couple of other Erdrich novels, and so far, this one was the most accessible to me. Not that any of the others were less well written, but this one made access easiest for the non-initiated American...
Grief, loss and squash
It is always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a debut South Asian woman writer, so I was very pleased to give this novel, which had been shortlisted for the 2023 Booker, a try. It begins with 11 year...
Jaffna Eyes
Let me tell you about dark men with white smiles, these Tamil men I loved and who belonged with me. In my house there were four of them. Each of my brothers resembled my father in a different way. All...
Parallel Threads
This is one of those novels that are told in parallel timelines, with one in the mid 1850s, of the potato famine in Ireland, and the other is the current day timeline in New York. The protagonist of the mid-1850s...
Swimming in fraught waters
Set as it is in an upscale American suburb and focusing on the few nonwhite residents, this first novel may remind readers of Celeste Ng’s Little Flowers Everywhere, but to my mind, Vibhuti Jain’s Our Best Intentions tackles a complex...
Murder noir, by the Tiger Mother
Amy Chua burst into popular public consciousness with her third book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. An memoir about her strict Chinese-parenting approach, the book was both wildly entertaining and wildly controversial. Her next book also created controversy:...
Una Vida Entera
Right from the first, I was totally charmed by this book, and also right from the first, I realised what a slim volume I was holding in my hands, and despaired that it is just not going to last very...
With the blessings of Janus
This is one of those novels which features a protagonist designed to be unlikeable. From the outset, June (Junie, Juniper) Song Hayward is openly envious of her friend and colleague, Athena Liu. The two girls knew each other in Yale,...
Not really my town
Readers who grew up in America and loved Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (described by Edward Albee as “the greatest American play ever written”) will probably love Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Tom Lake. Our Town appears both explicitly and implicitly in...
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