DEBUTS
THE AGE OF LIGHT by Whitney Scharer (Picador £12.99, 320 pp) The love affair between photographer and model Lee Miller and surrealist artist Man Ray is well-documented. here, Scharer fictionalises the story from Miller’s point of view, framing it with a portrait of Lee in later life and intercutting it with scenes from her life as a war reporter.
In 1929, Lee arrives in bohemian Paris to be taken to an opium den where she meets Man Ray. having persuaded him to take her on as his assistant, she becomes his muse then his lover, and finally a photographer in her own right. But ‘ . . . in the end they took everything from each other — who can say who was more destroyed?’
The author achieves a compelling, exhilarating intimacy with Miller that shows her own identity struggle as she journeys from one side of the camera lens to the other.
Scharer simultaneously conjures Paris of the Thirties — whether artists’ studios, seedy dives or glamorous parties — with the deftest of brush strokes. NUMBER ONE CHINESE RESTAURANT by Lillian Li (One £14.99, 336 pp) The Beijing Duck house in Rockville, Maryland, is a gaudy Chinese restaurant that has seen better days.
Its late founder has left it to his warring sons, Johnny and Jimmy han. Now, Jimmy wants to shed his father’s legacy and start a new restaurant of his own, funded by the sale of his mother’s house — though not if his mother can help it. New beginnings don’t come that easy.
When disaster strikes thanks to the machinations of their Uncle Pang, the repercussions are far-reaching. As Li depicts the complicated loves and lives of management and staff, she also vividly captures the frenetic behind-the-scenes business of a restaurant kitchen. This darkly comic multigenerational saga has a compelling energy that speeds along the pages and marks a delicious start to a writing career. WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens (Corsair £14.99, 384 pp) The body of Chase Andrews, local football legend and womaniser, is found in the swamp outside a small town on the North Carolina coast with no indication of how he got there.
The immediate suspect is Kya Clark, a girl who has grown up wild in the marshes.
Abandoned by her mother when she was six, then by her siblings, Kya is left with her father, an unreliable drunk who disappears for days. Rejected by the local community as ‘swamp trash’, she turned to the marsh for protection and company.
Part murder-mystery, part coming-of-age novel, its evocation of the marshland and its inhabitants is as unforgettable as Kya herself. A story of loneliness, survival and love that’s as engrossing as it is moving.