TALK TO ME

TC Boyle

(Bloomsbury, £13.99)

Boyle opens with student Aimee catching a TV show in which Psychology professor Guy Schermerhorn demonstrates his ability to communicate in sign language with his chimpanzee, Sam. Inspired, Aimee immediately applies for a position in Schermerhorn’s house to help raise the chimp. She proves invaluable, and the trio forms something of an interspecies love triangle as Aimee grows attached to them both. But disaster strikes when Sam is taken away by his legal owner to be kept in a cage and assigned to another team, so Aimee decides it’s up to her to find a way to rescue him. As one of the US’s most talented and consistently interesting novelists, a new novel from Boyle is always worth checking out, and the standouts here are the chapters told from Sam’s perspective, probing the consciousness of an animal that’s been taught to think like a human and asking how close interspecies friendships can truly be.

The Herald:

INDIAN SUN

Oliver Craske

(Faber, £12.99)

Surprisingly, for an icon of so many years’ standing, this is only the first authorised biography of Ravi Shankar, who died in 2012. Oliver Craske, a man with an enviable grasp of Indian music, has put 25 years of research into it, consulting previously unseen letters and conducting dozens of interviews. He leaves the reader in no doubt as to Shankar’s significance, or his extraordinary life. Born in 1920, Shankar revived a moribund classical tradition in India before spreading it across the world, becoming a revered ambassador for Indian culture and hugely influential on a generation of Western musicians. But the genial, greatly-loved sitar player was also a serial womaniser and, for long stretches, absent father, frequently criticised in India for his jet-setting lifestyle. Craske’s balanced biography gives weight to both sides, going beyond the well-worn PR biog to confirm the importance of spirituality in his life and uncover childhood traumas which affected him deeply.

The Herald:

BREASTS AND EGGS

Mieko Kamakawi

(Picador, £9.99)

Published in part in 2008 and only translated into English last year, Breasts and Eggs shocked Japan’s more conservative readers with its frank discussion of womanhood and procreation, but made a star of its author. In its first half, Natsuko is visited in Tokyo by her sister Makiko, who is seeking breast enhancement surgery, and Makiko’s daughter Midoriko, who refuses to talk, disturbed by the changes puberty is having on her body. A decade later, Natsuko finds herself wanting a child, but can’t stand the thought of having sex, and artificial insemination for single women is illegal. Seeking counsel, she hears arguments for and against bringing new life into the world. An exploration of the condition of being a woman and the place of working-class women’s bodies in a capitalist society, this starts as a tight character piece but, some comic and surreal moments aside, trails off in the dialogue-heavy second half.

ALASTAIR MABBOTT