The Story Of A Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam (Granta, £8.99)
This arresting debut novel spans just over a day in a refugee camp during Sri Lanka’s pitiless civil war. Shells rain down daily, body parts litter the ground and the ceaseless fighting has left people numbed and passive. Dinesh is assisting the medics as best he can when he is approached by an older man who pleads with him to marry his daughter, Ganga, because the status of a married woman would give her some slight protection if she were captured. Dinesh accepts, not least because he expects to be dead soon and would like to experience marriage first. But it’s not an easy frame of mind to slip into under the harrowing circumstances, and the author sensitively shows two young people taking awkward, faltering steps towards each other, trying to find common ground in whatever time they may have left. It’s a lyrical and affecting book, its emotional resonance heightened by Arudpragasam’s emphasis on the physicality of their existence.
Can You Hear Me? by Elena Varvello (Two Roads, £13.99)
Both a rites of passage story and the study of a disturbed killer, Can You Hear Me? recounts the memories of an Italian boy, Elia, from the summer of 1978. Having lost his job, Elia’s father has gone off the rails, his breakdown coinciding with the disappearance of a boy who is later found murdered. When a young woman disappears a few months later, it doesn’t take long to figure out the culprit. For teenager Elia it’s already been a summer of complex emotions, even without his father’s odd behaviour. He’s struck up an ambivalent friendship with a boy called Stefano, which his mother disapproves of because she has old issues with Stefano’s mum. Worse still, Elia is becoming attracted to this older single woman. Interspersed with flashbacks to a murder, this is a spare, underplayed and suspenseful story about a terrible crime eating away at the heart of a family – informed, the author reveals, by Varvello’s experiences of her own father.
Miss Jane by Brad Watson (Picador, £7.99)
In Jane Chisholm, Watson presents us with a rich and memorable character based on his own great-aunt, who was born with a genital defect which prevented her from having sex and caused lifelong incontinence. Conceived while her father was drunk and her mother insensible through laudanum, Jane is born unwanted in rural Mississippi in 1915, and is believed by her indifferent mother to be a punishment from God. On her side, though, Jane has the kindly Dr Thompson, who encourages and mentors her from the start of what he knows will be a challenging and uncertain life. Jane enjoys dances and likes boys, but because of her condition learns to live in isolation, communing with nature and becoming a keen, detached observer of people. Watson’s writing is captivating, depicting Jane’s process of growing up strong and spirited, and finding her place in the world, with a humanity and empathy that make it a welcome addition to the ranks of Southern literature.
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