Marian Keyes’s engaging tale of fresh starts and old flames; a kaleidoscopic family drama spanning six decades; and an absorbing study of ancient rocks from space. Marian Keyes. Penguin, £9.99, pp624 (paperback). Anna Walsh swaps her high-flying PR job in New York for a small Irish coastal town to help her friend Brigit launch a luxury wellness centre against local opposition. There, she faces ghosts from her past: ex-flame Joey and estranged best friend Jacqui. Keyes’s brilliance is in tackling thorny issues – the invisibility of fortysomething women, perimenopause, bereavement, female desire – with empathy and wit, in engaging prose. This latest novel is another reminder why she is the doyenne of modern fiction.
Karissa Chen. Sceptre, £18.99, pp512. Chen’s debut novel tells the story of two families against the backdrop of Chinese history over six decades. Haiwen and Suchi meet as schoolfriends in Shanghai and fall in love in their teens. They are separated in 1947, when Haiwen joins the Nationalist army. Political events send them further afield – Suchi to Hong Kong, Haiwen to Taiwan – until their paths cross in Los Angeles in 2008. Chen skilfully interweaves the personal and the political to produce a kaleidoscopic and affecting work.
Helen Gordon. Profile, £20, pp288. Gordon’s highly readable book is an engrossing blend of the scientific and the human. As she visits meteorite landing sites across the globe, the author meets people who have an intimate connection to these billion-year-old objects: those who study them, collect them (at vast expense), have found them, or are simply fascinated by them. We learn about the history of meteorite study and the clues revealed about deep time.
