I’m one of those writers who’d identify themselves as readers first, and as an oft-bullied queer kid growing up in Singapore, I often found refuge and salvation in writers whose works were able to refashion and reimagine our lives, however intimately or grandly. I grew up devouring fantasy of all kinds; I went from Enid Blyton to Charmed, for instance, before discovering in my later adolescence the manifold possibilities of magical realism and the other expanses contained within the realm(s) of speculative fiction. Many of the books in this particular list were especially useful in crafting my second novel, Lovelier, Lonelier.
It’s 1996, the Comet Hyakutake is approaching our planet, and strange, unexplainable happenings are taking place all over the city of Kyoto: fireworks are erupting over the Kamo River, dead artists reappear dancing in underground raves, while a phone call arrives with news of a parent gone missing.
But this is just the start for four friends, Jing, Isaac, Tori, and Mateo, whose lives are inevitably shaped by what they have witnessed, assailed with questions the universe won’t give them answers to. As we witness Jing and Isaac fall in and out of love with one another, the novel asks: what is the endurance of love in the face of life’s many insurmountable challenges?
This book is peak Atwood for me, a meeting place of so many things that made me fall in love with her as a reader: her dry humour; her playful approach to language; the wonderful ping-pong between the past and the present, the burning, smouldering heart that lay at the core of all her protagonists.
But the novel is also deeply in love with (and critical of!) the increasingly proliferate ways our hypermedia culture is able to tell a story, and this book's opening pages are a perfect primer for Atwood’s multi-thread account of her protagonist’s sister’s suicide and their relationship with a politically radical author of pulp science fiction.
The effect is dizzying, and its impact is tremendous; I distinctly remember reading this novel as a teenager, entering it unaware of what I would be getting into, and leaving its world completely blown away by what fiction could just do.
By the author of The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace
Laura Chase's older sister Iris, married at eighteen to a politically prominent industrialist but now poor and eighty-two, is living in Port Ticonderoga, a town dominated by their once-prosperous family before the First War. While coping with her unreliable body, Iris reflects on her far from exemplary life, in particular the events surrounding her sister's tragic death. Chief among these was the publication of The Blind Assassin, a novel which earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following.…
In my head, there’s a high I’m chasing, and it’s the high I got when I finally finished David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, the high of one synapse in my head connecting with one another in a bright feverish spark as I volley from one page to the next, one character to the next, one era to the next.
If I had to summarise what the book even is, I’d say it’s reincarnation and samsara in the hands of Mitchell’s trademark ventriloquism, arranged into this wonderfully nested set of Russian doll narratives. It sounds very smart and full of grand ideas about the nature of human suffering, and it is! But it is also deeply romantic and about the peculiar destiny that can tie one human soul to another all throughout eternity.
Six lives. One amazing adventure. The audio publication of one of the most highly acclaimed novels of 2004. 'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great…
The assignment was to recommend a book, when, of course, what I’m really doing here is recommending the entire His Dark Materials trilogy, a set of fantasy books that I must have read at least three (if not four) times, totally swept away by the scope of Pullman’s imagination and daring.
The ill-fated lovers in this book are Lyra and Will, two teens from two parallel universes going to war over the right to think, feel, desire, and be. That’s epic.
A stunning full-colour illustrated gift hardback to celebrate the 25th anniversary of NORTHERN LIGHTS, with breathtaking art throughout by Chris Wormell. First published in 1995, and acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, this first book in the series won the UK's top awards for children's literature.
"Without this child, we shall all die."
Lyra Belacqua and her animal daemon live half-wild and carefree among scholars of Jordan College, Oxford.
The destiny that awaits her will take her to the frozen lands of the Arctic, where witch-clans reign and ice-bears fight.
Her extraordinary journey will have immeasurable consequences far beyond her own…
Here’s another book with two lovers occupying two parallel realities, though I would say that the romance is almost beside the point in this book, where a multitude of stranger, more engrossing things are always threatening to steal the spotlight: Cults! A town of cats! The return of Ushikawa! Two moons! A novel named Air Chrysalis! You couldn’t ask for more, really.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her.
She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course…
This is what I said when Singapore Unbound invited me to nominate my personal Book of the Year on their blog, Suspect: “Rachel Heng's The Great Reclamation is a novel that thoroughly deserves the moniker of the Great Singapore Novel.”
And I mean it: I’m hardly patriotic, so trust me when I say that I was totally swept away with its vision, its heart, its loving attention to detail. Here, the only parallel realities that split our lovers apart are the sides of history they’ve chosen to occupy.
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE AND THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, TOWN & COUNTRY, KIRKUS, ELECTRIC LITERATURE AND BOOKPAGE!
"Stunning…epic…impressive…It is a pleasure to simply live alongside these characters.”—The New York Times
"A deep and powerful love story."—NBC The Today Show
"A beautifully written novel. I loved so much in this book: the richly imagined setting, the complicated love story, and the heartbreaking way history can tear apart a family."—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful
I became fascinated with 16th-century and 17th-century Europe after reading Don Quixote many years ago. Since then, every novel or nonfiction book about that era has felt both ancient and contemporary. I’m always struck by how much our environment has changed—transportation, communication, housing, government—but also how little we as people have changed when it comes to ambition, love, grief, and greed. I doubled down my reading on that time period when I researched my novel, Dulcinea. Many people read in the eras of the Renaissance, World War II, or ancient Greece, so I’m hoping to introduce them to the Baroque Age.
Dolça Llull Prat, a wealthy Barcelona woman, is only 15 when she falls in love with an impoverished poet-solder. Theirs is a forbidden relationship, one that overcomes many obstacles until the fledgling writer renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his bestseller.
By doing so, he unwittingly exposes his muse to gossip. But when Dolça receives his deathbed note asking to see her, she races across Spain with the intention of unburdening herself of an old secret.
On the journey, she encounters bandits, the Inquisition, illness, and the choices she's made. At its heart, Dulcinea is about how we betray the people we love, what happens when we succumb to convention, and why we squander the few chances we get to change our lives.
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