LATEST TITLES

HOLD by Michael Donkor, 4th Estate, hardback £12.99 (ebook £7.99) ★★★★★

THERE’S something terribly moving about Hold, Michael Donkor’s debut novel. We see diligent, sensible house girl Belinda plucked from her position in Kumasi, Ghana, and transported to middle-class south London, where school fees are high and straight-A student Amma is running her mother ragged with worry.

The idea is, Belinda’s steady influence will help. The two girls – Belinda, conscientious and missing her irrepressible sidekick, fellow house girl Mary, who makes sweetly rambling yet wise phone calls from Ghana; and Amma, sullen, surly and grappling with feelings she knows she can’t share with her parents – are utterly at odds. Just when they find themselves growing closer (in large part thanks to the rapping of Missy Elliot) things begin to shatter.

Written as a three-hander across four seasons, this is beautifully formed and heartrending in all the right ways.

THE LOST LETTERS OF WILLIAM WOOLF by Helen Cullen, Michael Joseph, hardback £12.99 (ebook £7.99) ★★★★★

WANNABE writer William Woolf works in the Dead Letters Depot where he spends his days trying to track down the intended recipients of letters and parcels which have gone astray.

The detective work distracts him from his writer’s block and ailing marriage, but letters from a mysterious woman to her ‘Great Love’ make him see the world anew. William becomes infatuated with a woman he has never seen or met, while his relationship with wife Clare reaches breaking point.

Cullen brings William, Clare and their unhappiness vividly to life while letter-writing romantic Winter is quirky and enigmatic, yet always believable.

It’s a strong debut from Cullen, an Irish writer living in London. Her great strength is the way she writes so movingly about how day to day life can chip away at a once solid relationship until it crumbles.