~Ponti, by Sharlene Teo ~ The name of this novel (set in Singapore) is an abbreviation of “pontianak”, a Malay/Indonesian word denoting a ghost, or a monster; a femme fatale which usually preys on men, and is usually depicted with...
The (first) No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is probably one of the most charming detective novels ever. Set in Botswana, it featured Precious Ramotswe, 34 years old, with a small inheritance and no detective experience, but plenty of common sense....
Young parents who separated soon after her birth, a father who denied paternity and only paid child support under duress, and a mother who was barely scraping by would add a whole new level of complexity to anyone’s coming-of-age memoir....
~ A Ladder to the Sky, by John Boyne ~ Maurice Swift is an ambitious novelist with a unfortunate limitation: he is good with words, but has no ideas for plots. He is extraordinarily handsome, though, and both men and...
~ Number One Chinese Restaurant, by Lillian Li ~ Joining other recent debut novels by Asian/Chinese American authors such as Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart, 2017) Lily Wang (Family Trust, 2018), Lillian Li’s novel also purports to examine relationships and family...
~ Family Trust, by Kathy Wang ~ This novel predominantly set in the Bay Area – though it is also partially sited in Hong Kong, Bali, etc. – features elite Asian Americans who attended Ivy League universities and hold high-paying...
~ Winter’s Bone ~ Book and Movie ~ Daniel Woodrell’s slim, bleakly powerful novel Winter’s Bone is set in the Ozarks, in a house where the road “has got rough to where you about can’t call it a road no...
~ The Windfall, by Diksha Basu ~ Diksha Basu’s The Windfall is not as light and flaky as many contemporary ‘society’ novels on the Indian-Writings-in-English literary scene. In fact, it is quite an astute and well observed novel under the...
Good Omens is now a TV series! What a crazy, delightful book! I won’t even attempt to summarize it. Suffice it to say that it involves the Apocalypse, an angel called Aziraphale and a demon called Crowley who are the...
~ The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder, by Sarah J. Harris ~ In 2003, there was Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, a ground breaking novel which provided the reader the then rare and charming...
Last year we got a new Tana French and a new Robert Galbraith, both of which I had been waiting for impatiently. (If only all my favourite mystery authors would come out with one solidly satisfying book a year). This...
~ Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey through the World’s Strangest Brains. By Helen Thomson ~ In 1985, neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote a marvellous book: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. He describes some of the more unusual cases...
~ Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, by Balli Kaur Jaswal ~ The Punjabi widows of the title live in London, perhaps not one’s first guess at a location for women living heavily circumscribed lives. But these women live in Southall,...
~ Bel Canto ~ the book and film ~ If only Ang Lee had directed the film of Bel Canto. The exquisite novel by Ann Patchett is widely thought to be her best. It is approximately based on the 1996...
~ Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill ~ Although I was born and brought up in a cricket-mad country and have been surrounded by cricket-o-philes for much of my life, I have no particular interest in the sport and can name only...
The Color of Me
Survivor
Undignified distortion of a classic character
Vietnamese diasporic rom-com
Outsidership, through the prism of friendship
Existential Coming-of-Age, with an American Multilingual Twist
Ripples in the lives of the Red River Valley
Migrants, murder and racism
Delicate passion, enduring stoicism
Identity Crisis
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