CONTEMPORARY  | Daily Mail Online

CONSENT

by Annabel Lyon

(Atlantic Books £14.99, 224 pp)

I raced through this gripping read about sisters, guilt, grief and revenge. Twins Saskia and Jenny look the same but that’s where the similarities end.

While Saskia is studious and follows the rules, Jenny is a party girl who does what she pleases. When Jenny is left in a coma after a car accident, it is Saskia who must decide to turn off the machines keeping her alive.

Meanwhile, Sara and Mattie are sisters with equally different personalities. Mattie needs full-time care thanks to an intellectual disability, making her a child trapped in an adult’s body. Sara is obsessed with high-end fashion, fine wines and luxury.

When their mother dies, Sara moves Mattie in with her, but first has to get rid of the man her sister has become obsessed with. Full of twists, the surviving sisters eventually find each other — which leads to a shocking denouement. I couldn’t put it down.

TEMPORARY

by Hilary Leichter

(Faber £12.99, 256 pp)

Some readers won’t like this unique, often elusive but always beautifully written narrative: is it about work or identity, love or loss?

It is challenging and weird but, for me, this not really knowing is a huge part of the novel’s charm.

It follows an unnamed female protagonist as she navigates a world full of possibilities, trying her hand at being a pirate, a mother and a murderer’s assistant among others, never settling to one role however hard she yearns for steadiness.

It’s absurd and dreamlike, sad and funny, and I totally lost myself in it.

Leichter is particularly brilliant on the nature of people being replaceable or interchangeable. A bizarre yet compelling book.

THE COMMITTED

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

(Corsair £18.99, 368 pp)

This is a sequel to the Vietnamese-American author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel The Sympathiser, but it also works as a standalone.

It features the same deep-thinking, often guilt-ridden narrator, Vo Danh (‘nameless’), a veteran of the South Vietnamese Army where he worked undercover for the communists. With his blood brother Bon he survived both re-education and refugee camps.

The book starts with them arriving in early 1980s Paris in search of a different life.

Our protagonist is both charmed and disgusted by this new world, keen to assimilate but it’s not easy for the Vietnamese living in France, where racism remains rampant.

It is especially difficult for Vo Danh when he becomes a drug dealer, the ultimate capitalist. A brilliant rollercoaster of ideas and action.