Reviewed by Alison Burns
The vicissitudes of Midhat’s adult life are handled with great sensitivity, within a political narrative that is unusually searching. The reader is made to reflect upon and better understand divided loyalties, differing value systems, revolt against patriarchal as well as imperial patterns of behaviour. One of the betrayals in the story is academic in its purpose, but unforgiveably condescending in practice [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by N.J. Cooper
In The Silent Patient, the sleuth is Theo, a psychotherapist at a rundown mental hospital with a special interest in one patient, Alicia Berenson, who has been mute since she was convicted of killing her husband. When she attacked a fellow patient before Theo’s arrival, she was sedated and is still controlled by heavy medication. Theo’s account of his work with Alicia is interspersed with sections from the diary she wrote before her husband’s death. Nothing is straightforward in this clever and manipulative novel, and it pulls you on to the devastating conclusion [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by Alison Burns
This is a novel full of mental as well as of physical violence, in which one man stands out. Griff’s quick-fire put-downs of everyone around him are contemptuous, deliberately unmanning. The cold elegance and comfort of his expensive London home, his impeccable travel arrangements, his retinue of lawyers and fixers, are accompanied by the icy entitlement and easy cruelty of the self-made man. He has his own greedy secrets, too, and in the end these will bring the whole family down [Read more...] in Reviews
* Shortlisted for the EBRD prize
* A 2018 Notable Book
Reviewed by Rachel Hore
Although the oppression of life under Communism infuses this tender tale, Soviet Milk is principally a story about individual character, not politics. There’s no doubt that the mother is a wounded soul, who struggles and fails to be happy, but the author offers no pat answers about why. She is so delicately and warmly evoked, however, that the reader is stirred to empathy rather than impatience [Read more...] in Reviews
Reviewed by Alison Burns
Yukiko Motoya has been mentioned in dispatches for some time as a startling new voice in fiction. Her stories mix an almost deadpan ordinariness with entertaining flights of fancy that should lift the sternest critic off her feet. Magritte meets Murakami in tale after tale of the oddest things happening in the very path of daily life [Read more...] in Reviews
* A 2018 Notable Book
Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner
Ma has referred to her book as ‘an apocalyptic office novel’ and its critique of capitalism, done slyly yet tellingly, is a central ingredient in her fusion of narrative themes. There’s suspense too in the gothic, survivalist scenes, complete with maggot-infested corpses. There’s contemplative analysis in Candace’s musing on the oddities of her world and her place in it. There’s a battle of wills, between our steely heroine and the autocratic leader of the survivalists. And there’s the sardonic take on routine, work, wage slavery and consumerism [Read more...] in Reviews
* A 2018 Notable Book
Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner
This is a story of wide and significant scope that spans continents and decades, even though it unspools itself mainly in the UK in the twenty-first century. And there’s more to it than mammals or birds, or wildlife or gardens. This is also a book about war and trauma, about refugees and immigrants, survival and the unexpected by-products of suffering. And last, but far from least, it’s a love story. [Read more...] in Reviews