The Honjin Murders

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The Honjin Murders

by Seishi Yokomizo

One of Japan’s greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour – it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.

Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music. Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house. Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime?

My thoughts: What a delightful mystery.

I was instantly intrigued by the great cover. I had never heard of Seishi Yokomizo but a Japanese locked room mystery set during winter sounded perfect and I’m so glad I got the chance to read this novel, it’s a delight from start to finish. The tone is pleasant and light hearted, the translation by Louise Heal Kawai is wonderful.

If you love a cozy murder mystery in the style of Agatha Christie but in a Japanese setting, this is the book for you.

If I Had Your Face

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If I Had Your Face

by Frances Cha


A glitteringly dark and unsettling debut novel about four young women struggling to survive in South Korea

‘Absolutely stunning . . . Assured, bold, and electrifying, If I Had Your Face marks the entrance of a bright new voice in fiction’ Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of DAISY JONES & THE SIX

‘Engrossing… Each voice in this quartet cuts through the pages so cleanly and clearly that the overall effect is one of dangerously glittering harmony’ Helen Oyeyemi, author of GINGERBREAD

If I Had Your Face plunges us into the mesmerizing world of contemporary Seoul – a place where extreme plastic surgery is as routine as getting a haircut, where women compete for spots in secret ‘room salons’ to entertain wealthy businessmen after hours, where K-Pop stars are the object of all-consuming obsession, and ruthless social hierarchies dictate your every move.

Navigating this hyper-competitive city are four young women balancing on the razor-edge of survival: Kyuri, an exquisitely beautiful woman whose hard-won status at an exclusive ‘room salon’ is threatened by an impulsive mistake with a client; her flatmate Miho, an orphan who wins a scholarship to a prestigious art school in New York, where her life becomes tragically enmeshed with the super-wealthy offspring of the Korean elite; Wonna, their neighbour, pregnant with a child that she and her husband have no idea how they will afford to raise in a fiercely competitive economy; and Ara, a hair stylist living down the hall, whose infatuation with a fresh-faced K-Pop star drives her to violent extremes.

‘I devoured it in a single sitting, and so will you’ Janice Lee, NYT Bestselling Author of THE PIANO TEACHER

‘Frances Cha, like her quartet of narrators, has a rebel’s heart.’ —Jonathan Dee, author of THE LOCALS

‘Few American novelists know Seoul the way Frances Cha does, and in her intimate, panoramic debut, she brings that dazzling city to life.’ — Ed Park, author of PERSONAL DAYS

My thoughts: If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha was an entertaining novel that allowed me a deeper glimpse into South Korean society, specially the huge amount of pressure women are under to look a certain way and to have achieved a certain status within a very narrow timeline.

The four women described here are all flawed like real human beings are and I was interested in their journeys, specially Ara’s as her story allowed insight into how South Korean society deals with disability. Would definitely recommend this novel to anyone interested in South Korea.

Minor Feelings

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Minor Feelings

A Reckoning on Race and the Asian Condition

by Cathy Park Hong

‘Minor Feelings is anything but minor. In these provocative and passionate essays, Cathy Park Hong gives us an incendiary account of what it means to be and to feel Asian American today … Minor Feelings is absolutely necessary.’ – Nguyen Thanh Viet, author of the Sympathizer ‘Hong says the book was ‘a dare to herself’, and she makes good on it: by writing into the heart of her own discomfort, she emerges with a reckoning destined to be a classic.’ – Maggie Nelson, author of the Argonauts What happens when an immigrant believes the lies they’re told about their own racial identity? For Cathy Park Hong, they experience the shame and difficulty of “minor feelings”. The daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up in America steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality. With sly humour and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche – and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth.

My thoughts:

“The Rise of white nationalism has led to many nonwhites defending their identities with rage and pride… …But a side effect of this justified rage has been a “stay in your lane” politics in which artists and writers are asked to speak only from their personal ethnic experiences. Such a politics not only assumes racial identity is pure — while ignoring the messy lived realities in which racial groups overlap–but reduces racial identity to intellectual property.
…
“The soul of innovation thrives on cross-cultural inspiration. If we are restricted to our lanes, culture will die.”

I absolutely loved this book. I learned so much reading these fantastic essays. Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings expanded my mind and my understanding of the Asian American experience, of history and language and race relations.

The essay Bad English is so intelligent about the flaws of “stay in your lane” politics and the essay Portrait of an Artist about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was heart breaking.

I feel this is an important book and I hope that it will be talked about a lot when its published, it deserves to be given as much attention as possible.

How We Disappeared

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How We Disappeared

by Jing-Jing Lee

The heart-rending story of survival and endurance in Japanese-occupied Singapore

Singapore, 1942. As Japanese troops sweep down Malaysia and into Singapore, a village is ransacked, leaving only three survivors, one of them a tiny child.

In a neighbouring village, seventeen-year-old Wang Di is bundled into the back of a troop carrier and shipped off to a Japanese military brothel. After sixty years of silence, what she saw and experienced there still haunts her.

And in the year 2000, twelve-year-old Kevin is sitting beside his ailing grandmother when he overhears a mumbled confession. He sets out to discover the truth, wherever it might lead, setting in motion a chain of events he could never have foreseen.

Weaving together two timelines and two very big secrets, this evocative, profoundly moving and utterly dazzling debut opens a window on a little-known period of history, and heralds the arrival of a thrilling new literary star.

My thoughts: Harrowing and heartbreaking account of a comfort woman during the Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War II and how the suffering continues through public shaming from the comfort women’s own families and communities.

Braised Pork

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Braised Pork

A Novel

by An Yu

One autumn morning, Jia Jia walks into the bathroom of her lavish Beijing apartment to find her husband dead. One minute she was breakfasting with him and packing for an upcoming trip, the next, she finds him motionless in their half-full bathtub. Like something out of a dream, next to the tub Jia Jia discovers a pencil sketch of a strange watery figure, an image that swims into Jia Jia’s mind and won’t leave.

The mysterious drawing launches Jia Jia on an odyssey across contemporary Beijing, from its high-rise apartments to its hidden bars, as her path crosses some of the people who call the city home, including a jaded bartender who may be able to offer her the kind of love she had long thought impossible. Unencumbered by a marriage that had constrained her, Jia Jia travels into her past to try to discover things that were left unsaid by the people closest to her. Her journey takes her to the highplains of Tibet, and even to a shadowy, watery otherworld, a place she both yearns and fears to go.

Exquisitely attuned to the complexities of human connection, and an atmospheric and cinematic evocation of middle-class urban China, An Yu’sBraised Pork explores the intimate strangeness of grief, the indelible mysteries of unseen worlds, and the energizing self-discovery of a newly empowered young woman.

My thoughts: 3.5 stars

I enjoyed the writing and felt parts of it were a interesting examination of the life of a widow, while the later part had a slight Murakami, specially A Wild Sheep Chase, vibe.

Real life with a touch of magical realism.

All This Could Be Yours

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All This Could Be Yours

by Jami Attenberg

Jami Attenberg’s work is so deeply attuned to humans and our imperfect attempts to love each other … Attenberg handles it all with an expert touch and a keen sense of what, despite all the sadness and secrets, keeps people connected, striving for moments of beauty and tenderness in a dark world.‘ Emma Cline, author of The Girls

‘An ambitious and utterly delectable novel about families and their secrets that opens up, pleasurably, like a set of nesting dolls.’ – Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

Victor Tuchman – a power-hungry real estate developer and an all-round bad man – is finally on his deathbed. His daughter Alex feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who he really was and what he did over the course of his life. She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tight-lipped mother, Barbra. As Barbra fends off Alex’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous married life.

Meanwhile Gary, Alex’s brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drug stores while bursting into crying fits. As each family member grapples with Victor’s history, they must figure out a way to move forward – with one another, for themselves and for the sake of their children.

My thoughts: 4.5 Stars

Fantastic novel about a dysfunctional family. The writing is so on point and the inner lives of these characters so well observed. This book has so much to say about the relationship between men and women.

Reminded me of the writings of Philip Roth.

The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida

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The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida

by Clarissa Goenawan

From the critically acclaimed author of Rainbirds comes a novel of tragedy and dark histories set in Japan.
University sophomore Miwako Sumida has hanged herself, leaving those closest to her reeling. In the months before her suicide, she was hiding away in a remote mountainside village, but what, or whom, was she running from?

Ryusei, a fellow student at Waseda who harbored unrequited feelings for Miwako, begs her best friend Chie to bring him to the remote village where she spent her final days. While they are away, his older sister, Fumi, who took Miwako on as an apprentice in her art studio, receives an unexpected guest at her apartment in Tokyo, distracting her from her fear that Miwako’s death may ruin what is left of her brother’s life.

Expanding on the beautifully crafted world of Rainbirds, Clarissa Goenawan gradually pierces through a young woman’s careful façade, unmasking her most painful secrets.

My thoughts: 4 stars

Beautiful if sad novel about love, grief and family. I really liked this book, I read it in two days. For readers who love Murakami’s Norwegian Wood and the works of Banana Yoshimoto.

The Starless Sea

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The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

The magical new novel from the bestselling author of The Night Circus.

Are you lost or are you exploring?

When Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a strange book hidden in his university library it leads him on a quest unlike any other. Its pages entrance him with their tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities and nameless acolytes, but they also contain something impossible: a recollection from his own childhood.

Determined to solve the puzzle of the book, Zachary follows the clues he finds on the cover – a bee, a key and a sword. They guide him to a masquerade ball, to a dangerous secret club, and finally through a magical doorway created by the fierce and mysterious Mirabel. This door leads to a subterranean labyrinth filled with stories, hidden far beneath the surface of the earth.

When the labyrinth is threatened, Zachary must race with Mirabel, and Dorian, a handsome barefoot man with shifting alliances, through its twisting tunnels and crowded ballrooms, searching for the end of his story.

You are invited to join Zachary on the starless sea: the home of storytellers, story-lovers and those who will protect our stories at all costs.

My thoughts: 4 stars

A magical story about the magic of stories and storytelling from the Author of The Night Circus.

Beautifully written, would love a spin-off for Kat Hawkins alone.

Lake Like a Mirror

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Lake Like a Mirror

by Sok Fong Ho

A portrait of Malaysian society in nine stories, by an author described by critics as ‘the most accomplished Malaysian writer, full stop’. Lake Like a Mirror is a scintillating exploration of the lives of women buffeted by powers beyond their control. Squeezing themselves between the gaps of rabid urbanisation, patriarchal structures and a theocratic government, these women find their lives twisted in disturbing ways. In precise and disquieting prose, Ho Sok Fong draws her readers into a richly atmospheric world of naked sleepwalkers in a Muslim women’s home, mysterious wooden boxes, gossip in unlicensed hairdressers, hotels with amnesiac guests, and poetry classes with accidentally charged politics – a world that is both bizarre and utterly true.

My thoughts: 3.5 Stars

Fascinating look into Malay society. Loved the writing style. Not the easiest book to grasp if you don’t have any previous knowledge of the history of Malaysia but these stories might open exactly this door into another culture.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

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Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

by Cho Nam-Joo

The multi-million copy selling, international bestseller.

Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy.

Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own.

Kim Jiyoung is a female preyed upon by male teachers at school. Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her when she is harassed late at night.  

Kim Jiyoung is a good student who doesn’t get put forward for internships. Kim Jiyoung is a model employee but gets overlooked for promotion. Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity.

Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely.

Kim Jiyoung is depressed.

Kim Jiyoung is mad.

Kim Jiyoung is her own woman.

Kim Jiyoung is every woman.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the South Korean sensation that has got the whole world talking. The life story of one young woman born at the end of the twentieth century raises questions about endemic misogyny and institutional oppression that are relevant to us all.

Riveting, original and uncompromising, this is the most important book to have emerged from South Korea since Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. 

My thoughs: 4 Stars.

Eye-opening account of the gender discrimination women in South Korea have to deal with from the moment of birth.

Reading about the small and big but always constant moments of injustice was very moving.

Makes for a very good every-day life counter piece to Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.