LITERARY FICTION
FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES by Min Jin Lee
(Apollo £14.99) THE heroine of this vivacious saga is Casey Han, an Ivy League Economics graduate seeking to make her way and find love in Nineties Manhattan.
However, Casey’s progress — like that of her sister Ella — is complicated by her heritage: born in Korea but raised in the U.S., she is estranged from her conservative, working-class parents in the novel’s opening scenes.
Casey is, among other things, a fan of 19th-century novels, and at 550 pages, Free Food For Millionaires boasts a Victorian classic’s bulk.
Yet with its focus on mores and money, it’s Jane Austen that Min Jin Lee’s debut most often brings to mind. Indeed, there are two memorable episodes in which an exchange of gifts reveals a gulf in regard and understanding that could have been penned by Austen herself, so well are they judged.
The sisters’ stories bowl absorbingly along, while their mother is also permitted a poignant starring role, receiving the same sympathetic treatment Jin Lee extends to almost all her characters.
MY ABSOLUTE DARLING by Gabriel Tallent
(4th Estate £12.99) THE fulsome endearment of Tallent’s title takes on a different hue once you know that the speaker is a sexually abusive father. Widowed Martin Alveston lives with 14-year-old Turtle in a decaying house on the ruggedly beautiful north Californian coast. It is Martin who taught his daughter to shoot aged just six, and Martin who has imbued her with misogyny and self-loathing.
However, as summer arrives, Turtle realises that her life depends on breaking free — but can she do so without endangering her new friend Jacob?
This much-hyped debut has stirred up quite a fuss, and Tallent is nothing if not a compelling storyteller.
He smoothly combines intensely lyrical appreciations of the natural world, full-throttle survivalist exploits and a devastating, deftly executed portrait of toxic intergenerational damage.
If you liked Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, you’ll love this, which could almost be the Young Adult version. If you didn’t, however, the out-to-shock torments and overheated prose might ultimately leave you cold.
FRIEND OF MY YOUTH by Amit Chaudhuri
(Faber £12.99) IS THIS slice of auto-fiction-come-psychogeography a novel? Yes, argues its novelist narrator, Amit Chaudhuri — ‘The narrator might be created by the author, but is a mystery to him.’
As far as the reader goes, this at times frustratingly elusive book is itself something of a puzzle.
There’s not much in the way of plot: Chaudhuri returns to his childhood home of Bombay and reflects on his friend Ramu, a drug addict in rehab. It has been more than two years since the pair spoke, an occasion etched in the memory as being in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
Now, Chaudhuri finds himself returning to the Taj as he promotes his most recent book, amusingly mocking the business of literary journalism and the vanity of the writer in the process.
His reflections on history and trauma are also tantalising: powerful, but undeveloped. However, his relationship with Ramu sadly fails to move.