Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks

June 2009

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.

Honolulu, Alan Brennert. (2009)
This is the story of Jin, a young 'picture bride' who leaves her native Korea, and journeys to Hawaii in 1914 in search of a better life. Instead of the prosperous young husband and the chance at an education she has been promised, Jin is quickly married off to a poor, embittered labourer who takes his disappointments out on his new wife, forcing her to make her own way in a strange land. Struggling to build a business with the help of her fellow picture brides, Jin finds both opportunity and prejudice, but ultimately transforms herself from a naive young girl into a resourceful woman. Prospering along with her adopted city, which is fast growing from a small territorial capital to the great multicultural city it is today, Jin can never forget the people she left behind in Korea, and returns one last time to make her peace with her former life. (Amazon)

Harare North, by Brian Chikwava. (2009)
This is the story of a stranger in a strange land, one of the thousands of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants seeking a better life in England, with a past he is determined to hide. He carries nothing but a cardboard suitcase full of memories and an email address for his childhood friend, Shingi. After spending a few restless weeks as the very unwelcome guest in his cousin's home he tacks down Shingi in a Brixton squat. As he struggles to make his life in London and battles with the weight of what he has left behind in a strife-torn Zimbabwe, every expectation and preconception (both his and ours) is turned on its head. This is an arresting account of London as it is experienced by the Africa's dispossessed. (Amazon)

The spy game : a novel, by Georgina Harding. (2009)
On a freezing January morning in 1961, eight-year-old Anna's mother disappears into the fog. Looking back, Anna will wish that she could have paid more attention to the facts of that day. That same morning a spy case breaks in the news, the case of the Krogers, apparently ordinary people who were not who they said they were; people who had disappeared in one place and reappeared in another with other identities, leading other lives. Obsessed by stories of the Cold War, and of the Second World War which is still a fresh and painful memory for the adults about them, Anna's brother Peter begins to construct a theory that their mother, a refugee from eastern Germany, was a spy working undercover and might even still be alive. (Amazon)

The immigrant, by Manju Kapur. (2009)
Nina is a thirty-year-old English lecturer in New Delhi, living with her widowed mother and struggling to make ends meet. Ananda has recently immigrated to Halifax, Canada; having spent his twenties painstakingly building his career, he searches for something to complete his new life. When Ananda's sister proposes an arranged marriage between the two, Nina is uncertain: can she really give up her home and her country to build a new life with a husband she barely knows? The consequences of change are far greater than she could have imagined. As the two of them struggle to adapt to married life, Nina's whole world is thrown into question. And as she discovers truths about her husband, both sexual and emotional, her fragile new life in Canada begins to unravel. (Amazon)

Crossing the Hudson : a novel, Peter Stephan Jungk ; translated by David Dollenmayer. (c2008)
Gustav Rubin, a historian turned fur dealer, has returned from Europe to Manhattan to take his mother for a vacation at his lake house, but the trip goes awry at every turn, culminating in an epic traffic jam on the Tappan Zee Bridge. Lending a note of urgency is Gustav's need to arrive at his lake house by dusk; as an Orthodox Jew (a faith his mother neither shares nor much respects), he must cease driving before the Sabbath begins. Mother and son bicker and reminisce about Ludwig Rubin, the family's recently deceased patriarch, As he and his mother hammer out the many disappointments of Ludwig's life, Gustav becomes increasingly aware of his parents power over his own life. (Amazon)

Gone tomorrow, Lee Child (2009).
Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs, mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers. Riding the subway in New York at two o'clock in the morning, Jack Reacher knows the twelve giveaway signs to look out for. Watching one of his fellow-passengers, he becomes sharply aware of one. One by one, she ticks off every bullet point on his list. Will he intervene, and save lives? Or is he wrong? And could his intervention cost lives, including his own? (Amazon)

Their finest hour and a half, Lissa Evans. (2009)
It is 1940. France has fallen, and only a narrow strip of sea lies between Great Britain and invasion. The war could go either way and everyone must do their bit. Young copy writer Catrin Cole is drafted into the Ministry of Information to help 'write women' in propaganda films, something that the men aren't very good at. She is quickly seconded to the Ministry's latest endeavour: a heart-warming tale of bravery and rescue at Dunkirk. It's all completely fabricated, of course, but what does that matter when the nation's morale is at stake? (Amazon)

Secret son : a novel, by Laila Lalami. (2009)
Youssef is a young man of very meagre circumstances living with his widowed mother in Casablanca while he attends college as English major. The city's ancient streets teem with political unrest, but Youssef seems disconnected. His thoughts are haunted by the loss of his father in a freak accident when he was an infant. Shocked by his doting mother's precipitous confession that he is not the son of her late husband, Youssef determines to find his real father, who turns out to be a successful local businessman. The man sets up Youssef in a chic apartment, quite a contrast to the slum Youssef has called home. But such a sudden turn of fortune cannot endure a time of turmoil. (Amazon)

Handle with care : a novel, Jodi Picoult. (2009)
Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe are the parents of Willow, six, who has brittle-bone disease, suffering 68 broken bones in her short lifetime, including 7 before she was born. Charlotte gave up her job as a successful pastry chef to care for Willow full time, doing whatever she can to prevent the inevitable breaks and trying to lessen Willow's discomfort when they occur. After a lawyer broaches the possibility of a wrongful-birth lawsuit, which would find Charlotte's doctor (also her best friend) guilty of failing to diagnose Willow's illness early enough for a possible abortion, the family unravels. (Amazon)

The secret speech, by Tom Rob Smith. (2009)
Soviet Union, 1956: Stalin is dead. With his passing, a violent regime is beginning to fracture, leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals, and the criminals are innocent. The catalyst comes when a secret manifesto composed by Stalin's successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant and a murderer. Its promise: The Soviet Union will transform. But there are forces at work that are unable to forgive or forget Stalin's tyranny so easily, that demand revenge of the most appalling nature. Former MGB officer Leo Demidov is facing his own turmoil. The two young girls he and his wife Raisa adopted have yet to forgive him for his involvement in the murder of their parents. They are not alone. Now that the truth is out, Leo, Raisa and their family are in grave danger from someone with a grudge against Leo. Someone transformed beyond recognition into the perfect model of vengeance. (Amazon)

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