Passiontide by Monique Roffey
During Passiontide on St Colibri (Black Conch’s Caribbean sister island), the body of a young Japanese steel-pan player is found under a cannonball tree. This isn’t the first dead woman and won’t be the last on this island that has become numb to femicide. But with the efforts of a reporter, an activist, a politician’s wife and a sex worker collaborative’s leader, #AmINext becomes a national movement led by four very different women with a shared cause. A radical, intersectional feminist work told in Roffey’s powerful signature voice, this is a tale about violence as old as time, and a story which aspires to break that cycle. – Soffi
Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida
Matsui makes his living driving a cab in Tokyo, between the hours of 1am and 4am. As he traverses the network of the metropolis, he collects passengers and their ever-stranger stories.
There’s the movie props assistant looking for impossible items, the late night fruit thief, the woman hoping for an appropriate funeral for her old telephone… all are lonely and what they really seek is connection. As Matsui chornicles their quests, he begins to format a plan for each of them.
Whimsical, surreal and impossibly charming, this an absolute must-read for fans of Haruki Murakami and Before the Coffee Gets Cold. – Tom M
The End Crowns All by Bea Fitzgerald
Girl, Goddess, Queen was one of my favourite reads of last year, so I went into The End Crowns All with high hopes – and it still somehow blew me away. It’s a very different beast to Girl, Goddess, Queen, but has all the hallmarks that I’m coming to expect from Fitzgerald’s work. It’s an epic, with all the tragedy and joy and romance that extails, and a masterful handling of all the highs and lows, with dialogue and desciption that spit and soften in turns. It’s a clever, heartfelt, joyously original take on the story of Helen of Troy and Cassandra. They’re both so complex and compelling, the nuances of their situations heart-rendingly drawn. Fitzgerald takes her time with it, but it’s never slow. It’s beautiful, bitter, visceral. It’s a cry of anguish and a song of hope. It’s a love letter to these stories that have stayed with us so long, and a vivid, stunningly creative way to bring it to a modern audience. I loved it. – Rhian