Paperbacks

‘It is one of the clichés of parenthood that the behaviour which comes most easily (a reproving tone of voice, say, or an attitude to your child’s tears) reflects what your parents did with you,’ began the Guardian’s Aida Edemariam in her review of Philippa Perry’s The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That you Did) – Penguin Life, 272pp, £9.99. ‘This is the book Perry [a psychotherapist and wife of the artist Grayson] wishes she could have read and she hopes that it will help people who love their children to like them a bit too,’ explained Cathy Rentzenbrink in the Times. She continued: ‘This is a kind and forgiving book that advocates kind and forgiving behaviour, to ourselves and our partners.’ But in the Irish Times, Dr Paul D’alton, himself a clinical psychologist, wanted to ‘like this book’ but found the ‘potential unintended consequences’ of her narrow focus and the ‘sometimes simplistic approach to complex psychological issues’ made it ‘hard to like’.

Exciting Times (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 288pp, £8.99) is the first novel of Naoise Dolan, who was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award in 2020. She was born in Dublin, has lived in Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore and England – and, inevitably, has been compared with Sally Rooney. Exciting Times ‘has been one of the only novels that’s brought me any pleasure in these testing times’, wrote Johanna Thomas-corr in the Times. ‘It’s about the romantic entanglements of three twentysomethings living in Hong Kong: girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl meets girl, boy comes back to find two girls. That it hinges on two now-forbidden concepts — travel and physical intimacy with strangers — makes for pleasurable escapism.’ It ‘is a funny novel (both haha and weird)’, said Leslie Pariseau in the LA Times, ‘resisting the pull of melodrama in favour of a sharp point of view and an intense concern with language’. And in the Evening Standard, Phoebe Luckhurst thought that the novel was an ‘assured’ debut.

House of Glass (4th Estate, 464pp, £9.99) ‘is the story of the journalist Hadley Freeman’s grandmother Sala Glahs [pictured] and her brothers Jehuda, Jakob and Sender. It is the product of 20 years of research, and it amounts, by sheer cumulation of detail, to a near-perfect study of Jewish identity – of Jewish being – in the 20th century. If there is a better book about the anguish of Jewish survival I have yet to read it,’ enthused Tanya Gold in the Telegraph, calling it a ‘masterpiece’. For Philippe Sands in the Guardian, ‘To survive and to prosper may be a matter of chance and strategy. Does one go with the flow, and what if different flows pull in opposite directions? “How much of one’s ancestral identity must one give up to live in the modern world?” Freeman asks. The question is pe pertinent once ag again, as matters of po populism, na nationalism and ra racism come to the fo fore. House of Glass is interspersed with Freeman’s own thoughts on matters of assimilation i il ti and d social mobility. Past and present exist in a state of constant interaction, and this finely honed and engaging account draws the threads between then and now.’

‘What a treat,’ began Alison Flood’s review of Mark Billingham’s Cry Baby (Sphere, 560pp, £8.99) in the Guardian. ‘This is a prequel to Billingham’s excellent and longrunning crime series, showing his protagonist Tom Thorne as a young detective sergeant in 1996, haunted by a horrific crime he couldn’t prevent, and desperate to find a seven-year-old boy who has just gone missing.’ ‘Throughout this bleak tale, Billingham plays with the humour inherent in hindsight,’ explained the Times. Mark Sanderson’s verdict? ‘The tense, double-edged ending shows Billingham has become one of Britain’s best crime writers.’