Flashlight
Susan Choi
Careless People
Sarah Wynn-Williams
Death of an Ordinary Man
Sarah Perry
Fundamentally
Nussaibah Younis
Every One Still Here
Liadan Ní Chuinn
Things in Nature Merely Grow
Decolonising My Body
Afua Hirsch
The Tiger's Share
Keshava Guha
Consider Yourself Kissed
Jessica Stanley
The Leopard in My House
Mark Steel
Minority Rule
Ash Sarkar
Colum McCann
Looking at Women, Looking at War
Victoria Amelina
Silvia Park
Gabriel Weston
Big, bold and surprising
Flashlight Susan Choi
Susan Choi’s Flashlight is a novel of considerable scope, both domestically and geopolitically. It spans locations from a strawberry farm in Indiana to the North Korean border, exploring the lies that unravel families and sustain empires. This is Choi’s sixth novel.
The story begins in the late 1970s with a scene originally published as a short story in the New Yorker: a tense standoff in a psychiatrist’s office. Ten-year-old Louisa, brought in for a consultation, resists engaging with the doctor. The doctor remarks,
“This room is full of tricks to get children to talk, but you’re too smart for them,”to which Louisa retorts,
“I’m too smart for compliments.”
Louisa’s father has drowned, and her mother has become an enigmatic invalid. Louisa’s feelings transcend grief or sympathy; her response is more akin to rebellion. During the session, she steals an emergency flashlight from the office, a symbolic act linked to the night her father disappeared while holding a flashlight.
Throughout the novel, flashlights serve as a recurring metaphor for absence and secrecy, illuminating brief moments much like a child spinning a torch in a dark room. The narrative unfolds in fragments, revealing slices of life.
The novel flashes back to Louisa’s parents. Her father, Serk, an ethnic Korean raised in Japan, embodies postwar displacement, caught between nations and identities. He attempts to start anew in America, but the country imposes its own challenges. Louisa’s mother, Anne, is a defiant woman who, after giving birth at 19 to a child she cannot keep, shapes her life around this absence. Louisa inherits her mother’s stubbornness.
Serk’s death leaves a profound silence, erasing the past. Louisa is left with two absent parents: one physically present but emotionally distant, the other a mythic figure. Flashlight examines absence in narrative, inheritance, place, and affection, asking what remains when there is no story to claim.
Zuckerberg and me
Careless People Sarah Wynn-Williams
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams offers a critical insider’s view of Facebook (now Meta) during the early 2010s. The narrative is set in a lively historic present, recounting the author’s youthful idealism upon joining Facebook’s global affairs team in 2011 after serving as New Zealand’s ambassador. A turning point occurs when she witnesses a female agency worker having a seizure on the office floor, ignored by management, leading to a disillusionment with the company culture.
The book details Mark Zuckerberg’s early political engagements, including his first meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2012, his unsuccessful request to sit next to Fidel Castro at a dinner, and his 2015 proposal to Chinese President Xi Jinping to name his unborn child after him, which was declined. Zuckerberg’s interactions with Barack Obama, including a reprimand about fake news, are also recounted.
In 2016, Facebook embedded staff within Donald Trump’s campaign, contributing to his electoral victory. This experience inspired Zuckerberg to consider a presidential run, leading to a 2017 tour of swing states. Concurrently, Facebook sought business opportunities in China, providing the Chinese Communist Party with a "white-glove service," while misinformation on the platform contributed to genocide in Myanmar.
Wynn-Williams portrays Zuckerberg as a man with inflated self-assessment, exhibiting traits of the Dunning-Kruger effect. His colleagues indulge his behavior, and he deflects responsibility for personal oversights. The author left Facebook in 2018 to engage in unofficial US-China AI weapons negotiations. The book notes that Meta has since responded, describing it as containing outdated information and false accusations.
A brilliant meditation on mortality
Death of an Ordinary Man Sarah Perry
Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man recounts the final months of her father-in-law David’s life, who died of oesophageal cancer in 2022. The narrative spans from their last trip together to Great Yarmouth to his death less than two months later, nine days after diagnosis.
The book poignantly captures the coexistence of death’s monumental nature with everyday life’s mundanity, such as council bin collections and neighbors’ routines. Perry challenges the phrase “dignity in dying,” describing David’s decline as undignified, marked by confusion, fear, immobility, and incontinence. Yet, she also observes a transformation in his body, describing his hands as resembling those of a Russian pianist and his skin as vellum parchment, portraying a majestic diminution.
Reflecting on her earlier desire for dramatic experiences to fuel her writing, Perry has instead crafted a compelling account of an unexceptional man’s life and death, illustrating that no life or death is ordinary.
Witty debut about Islamic State brides
Fundamentally Nussaibah Younis
Nussaibah Younis’s debut novel Fundamentally follows Nadia, a criminology lecturer at UCL whose research on Islamic State brides gains international attention. Tasked by the UN to lead a deradicalisation organization in Iraq, Nadia confronts skepticism within the UN and the complexities of her mission.
Escaping personal challenges, Nadia arrives in Baghdad hopeful for "women helping women," but soon encounters the bureaucracy and sanctimony typical of foreign aid. She meets Sara, a British Asian who joined Islamic State at 15 and now resides in a refugee camp. Nadia advocates for Sara’s repatriation despite Sara’s distrust of rehabilitation programs and suspicion of the UN.
The novel explores themes of radicalism, racism, faith, and friendship with humor and care. Nadia’s struggle with an "ungrateful refugee problem" and Sara’s skepticism highlight the difficulties of repair and healing, emphasizing that these processes are slow and complex.
An extraordinary debut
Every One Still Here Liadan Ní Chuinn
Liadan Ní Chuinn’s Every One Still Here is a slim debut collection of stories set against the backdrop of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. The narratives reveal the enduring impact of violence and the persistent weight of history on the present.
The title story features Jackie, whose father falls into a vegetative state, symbolizing a Northern Ireland that forgets its past. Ní Chuinn’s subtle writing avoids overt metaphor but conveys the inescapability of history, echoing Faulkner’s sentiment that the past is never dead.
The stories address family secrets, abuse, fraudulent fertility clinics, and human trafficking, focusing on unresolved entanglements rather than epiphanies or neat resolutions.
A shattering account of losing two sons
Things in Nature Merely Grow Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow is a profoundly moving account of life after the suicide deaths of her two sons, Vincent in 2017 at age 16, and James in 2024 at age 19. Li rejects terms like "mourning" or "grieving," finding them insufficient to express the depth of her loss.
She recounts factual details about her sons’ lives: Vincent’s love of baking and knitting, and James’s brilliance as a linguist at Princeton. Li reflects on James’s engagement with Albert Camus’s works, particularly the line
“Men die; and they are not happy.”She contemplates whether James’s philosophical readings and Vincent’s death influenced his decision.
Li emphasizes that grief has no definitive endpoint and that life continues with wounds unhealed. Her book is a meditation on living and radical acceptance, offering solace to those facing profound loss.
Support resources are provided for readers affected by suicide.
An intimate epic begins
The South Tash Aw
Tash Aw’s The South is set on a family farm in rural southern Malaysia during a hot, dry summer in the 1990s. The story focuses on two estranged brothers approaching middle age and their adolescent children, capturing a world reminiscent of Chekhov’s plays.
The novel opens with an intimate scene of two boys experiencing their first sexual encounter in an orchard, highlighting themes of time and connection. Aw’s Malaysia is depicted as a place undergoing rapid modernization and environmental challenges, with the orchard’s destruction symbolizing loss and climate threats.
This is the first in a planned quartet described as an "epic for our times." Aw’s writing blends timelessness with historical specificity, offering a Proustian exploration of bodily and mental experience.
Reclaiming beauty
Decolonising My Body Afua Hirsch
Afua Hirsch’s Decolonising My Body chronicles her journey of self-discovery and reclamation following her 40th birthday. The book explores her efforts to reconnect with ancestral traditions of bodily adornment and to challenge Eurocentric beauty standards.
Hirsch combines personal anecdotes with cultural analysis, examining rituals such as sacred menstrual practices and the history of tattoos and scarification. The work is not a self-help guide but a thoughtful inquiry into identity, heritage, and self-care.
The book reflects Hirsch’s search for rest and care rooted in ancestral knowledge, inviting readers into her process of unlearning and relearning.
Hopeless sons vs brilliant daughters
The Tiger's Share Keshava Guha
Keshava Guha’s second novel, The Tiger's Share, begins with a family meeting where patriarch Brahm Saxena declares he will abandon obligations to his children to pursue a higher purpose focused on environmental concerns in India.
The story follows the impact of Brahm’s ecological awakening on his daughter Tara, a successful lawyer, and his son Rohit, who struggles in her shadow. Rohit adopts a contrary stance, advocating for human prosperity over conservation.
Guha explores complex questions about patriotism, nationalism, and India’s evolving identity through nuanced character interactions without offering definitive answers.
A delightfully grounded romance
Consider Yourself Kissed Jessica Stanley
Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley is a romance centered on Coralie, an Australian copywriter, and Adam, a single father, who swap homes for a night. Their immediate connection is sparked by shared literary interests, particularly Coralie’s collection of Virago Press books.
Despite their affection and intellectual compatibility, the relationship faces universal challenges, including gendered dynamics around workspaces and personal space. Coralie reflects on the difficulty of creating fairness in relationships, questioning whether personal and global betterment are interconnected.
Finding the funny side of living with cancer
The Leopard in My House Mark Steel
Mark Steel’s The Leopard in My House is a cancer memoir distinguished by humor and warmth. Steel recounts his experiences during radiotherapy, including interactions with fellow patients and medical staff, using sporting metaphors to describe his journey.
The book offers insight into the emotional and physical challenges of illness, providing comfort to those affected by serious disease and their loved ones. Steel’s candid and comedic approach makes the narrative both inspiring and accessible.
Identity fraud
Minority Rule Ash Sarkar
Ash Sarkar’s Minority Rule critiques the British left’s decline and the rise of culture wars. She argues that rightwing media and political actors have shifted working-class disaffection away from class struggle toward identity-based conflicts.
Sarkar contends that fears of minority rule by marginalized groups legitimize minority rule by elites. She critiques left-liberals for fostering division through identity politics, which has weakened solidarity and ceded ground to the hard right’s racialized class politics.
Her energetic prose and sharp observations make the book a compelling political analysis.
Globalism and a voyage into danger
Twist Colum McCann
Colum McCann’s novel Twist follows John Conway, an engineer and free diver who repairs undersea data cables connecting the global internet. Narrated by journalist Anthony Fennell, the story details a voyage from Cape Town along Africa’s west coast to fix a cable break.
The novel combines detailed reportage with reflections on the natural world and human impact, highlighting the fragility of global connectivity and environmental degradation. Conway’s enigmatic character is central to the narrative’s mystery and depth.
A precious and powerful work of literature
Looking at Women, Looking at War Victoria Amelina
Victoria Amelina’s Looking at Women, Looking at War is a nonfiction diary chronicling the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Amelina was fatally injured in a missile strike in Kramatorsk in June 2023. The book was completed posthumously by an editorial team including her husband and fellow writers.
The work blends personal narrative with portraits of women involved in the conflict, including soldiers, activists, and cultural workers. Amelina’s writing offers testimony and literary insight into war’s human toll, serving as a vital document of resilience and witness.
A major new voice in SF
Luminous Silvia Park
Silvia Park’s debut novel Luminous explores themes of humanity and technology in a future unified Korea. The protagonist, Ruijie, a schoolgirl with a degenerative disease, scavenges robot parts and befriends Yoyo, a discarded robot boy.
The novel blends young adult adventure with adult cyberpunk elements, addressing robot addiction, social dependency, and questions of authenticity and identity. Park’s narrative reflects contemporary anxieties through a vividly rendered speculative setting.
A revelatory study of the body
Alive Gabriel Weston
Gabriel Weston’s Alive is an interdisciplinary exploration of the human body, combining anatomy, philosophy, history, and art. Drawing on her experience as a surgeon and English graduate, Weston argues for a holistic understanding of bodies beyond mechanical function.
The book covers detailed anatomical information enriched with personal reflections, medical ethics, and cultural insights. Weston advocates for more empathetic patient care and invites readers to reconsider their relationship with their own bodies.
Alive is a bold and humane work that challenges conventional medical narratives.
