REVIEWS PENELOPE DEBELLE, NICK HOPTON, SHELLEY ORCHARD

Fiction SING, UNBURIED, SING Jesmyn Ward Bloomsbury Circus $24.99 The title is strange, until you understand that the dead are still part of the life of this poor Mississippi family. Jojo and his sister Kayla are cared for by their grandparents, Mam, who is dying, and Pop who does his best while their ice-addicted mother, Leonie, haphazardly plans to meet her man on his release from prison. When she is high Leonie sees her brother, Given, who was shot in a racially motivated accident which the authorities overlooked. He turns up in the car with her, looking on in judgment. Jojo sees Richie, who was in prison with Pop, and their old story is unfinished. The family’s struggles, told from differing first-person perspectives, reveal a nightmare of southern life and the wrenching truth that goodness itself is a struggle. Crime/Thriller BONFIRE Krysten Ritter Hutchinson $29.99 Actor Krysten Ritter

(Breaking Bad) treads a familiar path with her first foray into fiction but delivers it with style. Lawyer Abby Williams returns to her hated rural roots to investigate a plastics factory with a murky water record. But Barrens, Indiana, is a company town and Optima’s tentacles are everywhere. If that wasn’t enough, she has unresolved issues with both her puritanical father and her former classmates — the gang of golden girls who made her feel like a bullseye in a field of arrows — and especially the former best friend who apparently skipped town after a mysterious illness. As Abby’s hard-won adult confidence begins to crack, the money trail leads to dark and dangerous places. The town may have become prosperous but at what cost? Ritter’s way with imagery salvages a plot bordering on cliche. Memoir REVEAL: ROBBIE WILLIAMS Chris Heath Echo $34.99 You only need to read a little bit of press about Robbie Williams to realise the English pop singer grapples almost daily with anxiety. So it’s little wonder this second slice-of-life memoir — after 2004’s Feel, also by Heath — teeters on a fine line between hilariously addictive and self-indulgent. Heath continues Feel’s formula, living with Williams, wife Ayda and their kids in LA and following the former Take That singer on tour. The author must have had his recording device on 24/7 as he captures funny and touching exchanges between Williams and Ayda, once-estranged songwriting mate Guy Chambers and collaborators such as Rufus Wainwright. Heath captures the cheeky essence of the former drug addict.