Book reviews

New Boy Tracy Chevalier

Shakespeare’s tragic hero Othello morphs into a 1970s black schoolboy in Tracy Chevallier’s reworking of one of the Bard’s most powerful plays. The betrayed Moor of Venice becomes Osei, a Ghanaian student who joins a new, all-white school in Washington, DC and has to navigate the petty bigotries of the playground. Chevalier’s backdrop of primary/junior school relationships and the loneliness and challenges of the new student trying to forge friendships strikes a chord even without the additional and pivotal racial backdrop. But ultimately it struggles to convince and some of the child dialogue feels pretty unconvincing. 7/10

Men Without Women Haruki Murakami

Over seven progressively off-kilter short stories, Japanese author Haruki Murakami delves into the subject of loneliness and, in particular, how it impacts on seven men. Among them, there’s a widower who finds comfort in his formidable new driver’s gear changes; a thirty-something reflecting on a friendship at university and a love that wasn’t to be; a recent divorcee who sets out on a new path in life and a plastic surgeon who has an unexpected change in outlook in his middle age. Bearing hallmarks of his earlier stories, there are references to the Beatles, suicide, disappearances, melancholic humour in unexpected places and a sense the world is ever so slightly off balance across the collection. 7/10

All That’s Left To Tell Daniel Lowe

This may be a first novel by US author Daniel Lowe but he is an experienced writer and it shows in this engrossing tale about a father kidnapped in Pakistan. Marc is restrained in his captivity and prevented from seeing his interrogator, Josephine. At first her inquiries are about who might pay a ransom for him but then she wants to know why he didn’t go home for his daughter Claire’s funeral after her killing in the US. Our journey winds out from there into a maze of narratives involving characters who may or may not exist. Does it matter any more? We never know or see more than hostage Marc and Josephine as they tell tales of Claire as she was, is, or might have been in a different future, in their different minds. While the premise may seem hard on the emotions, it is not a difficult read. The power of the book lies in Lowe’s ability to reveal profound events in a straightforward narrative. 8/10