Debut Novels Recent Picks

August 2008

The underlined titles will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Voice over, by Céline Curiol ; translation by Sam Richard. (2008)
"A young woman works in Paris, at the Gare du Nord. She spends every day talking into a microphone, announcing platforms and timetables, invisible to the world. And then she falls in love with a man who, in turn, loves another. To our heroine, her rival is stunningly beautiful, as beautiful 'as an angel'. So she decides not to pursue the man, rather, she is prepared to wait, alone. That is, until one night a male friend of the 'angel' asks her what she does for a living and without thinking she answers, 'prostitute'. She decides to play her new role to the hilt." (Amazon)

A case of exploding mangoes, by Mohammed Hanif. (2008)
"Why did a Hercules C130, the world's sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988? Was it because of: mechanical failure; human error; the CIA's impatience; a blind woman's curse; generals not happy with their pension plans; the mango season or was it the narrator of this story Ali Sihigri. As young Ali Shigri moves from a mosque hall to his military barracks before ending up in a Mughal dungeon, there are questions that haunt him: What does it mean to betray someone and still love them? How many names does Allah really have? Who killed his father, Colonel Shigri? Who will kill his killers?." (Amazon)

The Foreigner, by Francie Lin. (2008)
"Emerson Chang, a 40-year-old virgin who's a financial analyst, travels from San Francisco to Taipei on a quest to scatter his mother's ashes and re-establish contact with his shady younger brother, Little P, who's been bequeathed the family hotel. Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle's karaoke bar, and he conceals a secret crime that has not only severed him from his family, but may have annihilated his conscience. Hoping to appease both the living and the dead, Emerson isn’t about to give up the inheritance until he uncovers Little P's past, and saves what is left of his family." (Amazon)

Last last chance, by Fiona Maazel. (2008)
"A lethal strain of virus vanishes from a lab in Washington, D.C., unleashing an epidemic and the world thinks Lucy Clark's dead father is to blame. The plague may be the least of Lucy's problems. There's her mother, Isifrid, a peddler of high-end hat wear who's also a crack-head and pagan theologist. There's her twelve-year-old half sister, Hannah, obsessed with disease and Christian fundamentalism; and Lucy's lover, Stanley, who's hell-bent on finding a womb for his dead wife's frozen eggs. Lastly, there's her grandmother Agneth, who believes in reincarnation (and who turns out to be right). And then there is Lucy herself, whose wise, warped approach to life makes her an ideal guide to love among the ruins. Romping across the country, from Southern California to the Texas desert to rural Pennsylvania and New York City, Lucy tries to surmount her drug addiction and to keep her family." (Book cover)

Personal days : a novel, by Ed Park.(2008)
"A scathingly funny look at a group of office workers who have no idea what the unnamed corporation they work for actually does. When it looks like the company may be taken over, fear of redundancy unleashes a deliciously Kafkaesque plot full of the tedium and mistrust of corporate life and the backstabbing bitchiness of our survival-of-the-fittest instincts. We meet Pru, the ex-grad student-turned-spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric whose work anxiety follows him into his tooth-grinding dreams; and Jonah, the secret striver who must pick his allegiance. Assailed from all sides, this idiosyncratic cast of characters battle paranoia, boredom and the complexities of the lunch break as each struggles to figure out who among them is trying to bring the company down, and why." (Amazon)

The semantics of murder, Aifric Campbell. (2008)
"Jay Hamilton lives a comfortable life in fashionable west London, listening to the minor and major dysfunctions of the over-privileged clients who frequent his psychoanalysis practice. But the darker recesses of his own psyche would not stand up to close examination: his brother Robert, a genius professor of mathematical linguistics, was apparently killed by rent boys in Los Angeles and Jay was the first on the scene. Author Dana Flynn is determined to scratch beneath the surface while researching a biography she intends to write about Robert, and finds that Jay's life is as morally dubious as his personal relationships." (Book cover)

Love marriage : a novel, V.V. Ganeshananthan. (2008)
"In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, there are only of two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most people spend years running away from the first towards the second. Among the categories that exist outside these two carefully delineated boundaries are the Self-Arranged Marriage, the Outside Marriage, the Cousin Marriage, the Village Marriage, and the Marriage Abroad. There is the Marriage without Consent. There is the Marriage under Pressure. There is even marrying the Enemy, who, it turns out, is not the Enemy at all. Reverse a family tree and branches of blood are whittled down to one person, in this case, the young female narrator, Yalini, composed of all the women and men who came before her; the result of many marriages. Parents want nothing more than to prevent their children from colliding with inevitability: that in a different world, there is a different kind of marriage." (Amazon)

The rehearsal, by Eleanor Catton. (2008)
"A high-school scandal jolts a group of teenagers into a new awareness of their own potency and power. The sudden and total publicity seems to turn every act into a performance, and every platform into a stage. But when the local drama school decides to turn the scandal into a show, the real world and the world of the theatre are forced to meet, and soon the boundaries between the public and the private begin to dissolve." (Book cover)

The actress, Elizabeth Sims. (2008)
"While she's charming the crowd at storytime at the L.A. public library, a celebrity defense attorney approaches her with an unusual job offer: So long as she's discreet, Rita can rake in a thousand dollars a day preparing his client for her appearance in court. Easy money? Hardly. His client, Eileen Tenaway, is a wealthy heiress and a queen of the tabloids, and she's been charged with the murder of her own child. The attorney needs Rita to coach Eileen secretly to help her seem more sympathetic, more human. He needs the jury to believe not only her words but the subtle cues of body language, facial expressions, even vocal style. Rita knows she can do it, but what she doesn't know is how determined she'll become to find out what really happened to Eileen's family." (Book cover)

Without a backward glance, by Kate Veitch. (2008, c2006)
"On a stifling Christmas Eve in 1967 the lives of the McDonald children, Deborah, Robert, James, and Meredith, changed forever. Their mother, Rosemarie, told them she was running out to buy some lights for the tree. She never came back. The children were left with their father, and a gnawing question: Why had their mother abandoned them? Over the years, the four siblings have become practiced in concealing their pain, remaining close into adulthood, and forming their own families. But long-closed wounds are reopened when a chance encounter brings James face-to-face with Rosemarie after nearly forty years. Secrets that each sibling has locked away come to light as they struggle to come to terms with their mother's reappearance, while at the same time their beloved father is progressing into dementia." (Book cover)

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