Gish Jen: Bad bad girl, 9781803513249, hardback, Granta Books,

Gish Jen's "Bad bad Girl" is definitly on my shelf of best books of the year!

Part memoir, part fictive,  she describes her troubled, almost abusive relationship with her mother  Loo Shu-hsin who came from a wealthy Shanghai banking family to study in the US for a PhD which was exceptional for women in the 1930-40. Instead, short of her degree, she marries a promising Chinese engineering student Chao-Pei, becomes a nationalized American and has five children, whom she all treats differently. Physical beatings are part of Chinese upbringing according to her parents  but her mother has it in for Gish who is smart, talks back and only gets criticism from her mother. "Bad, bad girl, you don't know how to talk" is her mothers standard phrase.  This remains the basis for their relationship until her mothers death during Covid, no matter how successful Gish becomes as an author or a loving mother of two children herself. 

It is a brilliant memoir, particularly since Gish chose a fictive conversation with her dead mother when looking back at her and her family's life going back to China up until her mother's death. My heart went out to her when she never gives up seeking approval or love from her mother only receiving glimps of it. Gish's life story will stay with me for a while, her honesty was heartwrenching to read when she recounts her troubled mother-daughter relationship. 5 stars from me. 

 Kiran Desai: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Hamish Hamilton, 9780241770848, C format

Rarely do I feel the way I did when I finished Kiran Desai's masterpiece " The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny". It left me stunned, I felt this way the last time when I read "Love in the time of Cholera" by Marquez and in my view she is the Indian equivalent. 

 My book of the year without a doubt, such beautifully crafted sentences and an absolutely magnificant story . 688 pages  took me away into a world of magic, Indian family madness, each a cosmos of their own, overbearing mothers and fathers, with Sonia and Sunny trying to fork out a life of their own,  both sharing the experience of feeling alien in the USA and India, their love for each other doomed or suffocated by family expectations or their secret past relationships.  Mystical experiences give the narration a surreal, magical edge. I could go on and on singing praises for this absolutely gem of a novel but buy a copy and find out for yourself.  

I hope Kiran Desai wins the Booker prize on Monday. She has my vote, 5 stars plus! 

 Maya Shankar: The other side of change - who we become when life makes other plans, Riverheas, 9780593713686, pub date Jan 16, 2026

Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar, herself not a stranger to life's disruptive plans, has spent decades studing the human mind and how people cope with major disruptions even when things seem hopeless. 

I found her book, composed of the stories of people whose lives were turned upside down, well written, thoroughly researched, thought provoking, wise and very helpful at understanding how even unsettling change can help us grow and discover a new person within us opening new doors if we embrace these changes. One part of the book compiles the scientific research applied to the case studies, the other of individual life stories which I found very demonstrative. 

 

Roxanne Bouchard: We were the salt of the sea, Orenda Books, paperback or ebook, 

I stumbled across this book when reading a review that prompted me to download the ebook. Set in Quebec' outlying Gaspe Peninsula, it provides a very atmospheric background for the small fishing community which appealed to me the most. The crime novel as such did not capture me as much as i had hoped. 

Catherine Day leaves Montreal to find her mother who had left her to be raised by friends to allow her to keep on sailing the world. When she gets to the village,  her mother's body has just been found and she learns that Marie Garant had been an independent spirits and a beauty who had twisted several men's heart. Detective Morales has just arrived in the village and finds himself investigating the death of this charismatic older woman with an equally stunning daughter. 

For me there was too much repetition of love stories between Marie and the men in the village, a story I found uninspiring  and when Detective Morales gets the hots for Catherine, I finally thought this novel did not deliever what I hoped it would. Such are differences in taste. I will not be reading book 2 or 3.

 S.R.White: White Ash Ridge, Headline, paperback 

I have a weakness for crime novels set in foreign countries such as Australia for example. S.R.White's detective Dana Rosso does not quite match Garry Disher's Hirsch or Chris Hammer' Nell Buchanan but it's a close call.

 White Ash Ridge is the name of a hotel in the Australian wilderness where the body of a guest is discovered during a heatwave. The hotel only had 5 guests who attended a meeting of a charity plus the hotel owner and his daughter, so Dana Rosso knows when tasked with the investigation that the murderer is most likely among these 6 people. It does not help that Rosso investigated the murder of the charity founders son which did not go too well caĺling for a tense first meeting between the media savvy mother and Rosso.

 I found the unraveĺling of the case  very well done, it certainly kept me guessing whose motive was enough for such an act, a very atmospheric portrait of the surroundings and an excellent crime novel.

 Chris Chibnall: Death at the White Heart, Penguin, 9781405959513

Chris Chibnall is an award winning screenwriter, playwrite and producer, of Broadchurch fame. 

His debut crime novel "Death at the White Heart" shows all the signs that this too could be turned into a series. I really liked this excellent whodunnit novel, with a stellar cast of characters and a very solid plot.  All the ingredients a good crime novel should have. 

Would love to read more of DS Nicola Bridge and her sidekicks Harry and Mel who swiftly solved the murder of pub owner Jim Tiernan who was found dead and naked, tied to a chair, in the middle of a road with stag antlers on his head.   

 Yanis Varoufakis: Raise your soul, Bodley Head, pub date Oct 2, 2025

Most of us probably remember Yanis Varoufakis, an economist, as the former charismatic finance minister of Greece.

 "Raise your soul" with the undertitle " A personal history of resistance" tells the fascinating story of his family, from the 1920ties to the present, with resistence to existing political systems seemingly being a  part of his families DNA.

 Through the biographies of the women in his family who influenced him the most, starting with his grandmother Anna who lived in Egypt and whom I was particularly drawn to,  this is a  portrait of tumultous years of Greek history, Nazi occupation, Communist uprising, Civil and Cold war. The personal suffering these political developments caused his family are vividly portrayed through the lives of Anna, Trisevgeni, Elina, Georgia and Danae. His father Yorgos is also an exceptionaly strong human being who had to suffer inprisonment and torture for his political conviction.

I found this an absolutely captivating, personal book and it is easy to see how his familiy history has shaped Varoufakis to this day.