Literature is one of my three loves (the other two are music and movies). I have my mother to thank for inculcating a love of reading in me way back when I was a kid still addicted to television. A couple of Enid Blyton set me on my way to a never ending journey of discovering new worlds. As far back as I can remember, I can be feeling low in the doldrums, but the excitement of turning the next page is a feeling that can always envelope me and lift me up again.
I read fiction of all genres but with a predisposition for detective procedurals. I live for the big twists, cruel turns and the OMG a-ha shocking reveals. And because I love stories, I have always likened my life to a narrative and it is up to me to create the big moments.
When I hear a great tune, see a great movie or read an amazing book, I can’t keep my mouth shut. So this blog is my way of giving back what books have given me for so long and to spread the joy of reading.
Another good one to recommend and the story of how this one came about is tied to The Kamogawa Food Detectives. If you stay till the end I will also share a cute story why there are 2 copies here.
So a friend read my post on the latter and shared with me a book that meant a lot to him in not so many words. I am a goner when someone shares something close to his/her heart because I know it is a huge risk doing that. I understand why it is a huge deal to share something precious because the other party might sometimes think what’s-big-deal and it somehow hurts a little bit and that would make the sharer more wary about sharing it again, which is a shame. So I always take someone’s recommendation seriously (the P5 boy not withstanding 🤣).
My friend told me Ajahn Brahm is a Buddhist monk and the book is an anthology of short stories. He assured me that the stories don’t do a hard sell on Buddhism and there is a profound wisdom to this thing called life. My friend really didn’t need to convince me because he had me at “stories”. I love stories because they are interwoven with life. Look at all the great teachers, they all used stories to communicate deep and abstract ideas. I love telling stories to kids too and it beats nagging and drumming ideas into their minds.
Anyway back to Ajahn Brahm’s Opening the Door of Your Heart. I read the first story in bed that very night my friend lent it to me. Boy was it good, the story of the two bad bricks. The way it’s written is so relatable – not by someone sitting in a throne and you on the floor placating to someone in authority. It feels like you are listening to a story told from the heart of an old friend in a cozy living room. The idea is simple and you have probably heard it before in the form of an advice, but communicated as a story the concept takes on such a poignant and achievable form. I shared a quote:
“We’ve all got our two bricks, but the perfect bricks in each one of us are much, much more than the mistakes. Once we see this, things aren’t so bad. Not only can we live at peace with ourselves, inclusive of our faults, but we can also enjoy living with a partner. This is bad news for divorce lawyers, but good news for you.”
See… the guy can also be witty.
There is another story that hit me hard. It’s about a woman who feels guilty because she thinks she caused the death of her best friend and the paralysis of her friend’s boyfriend. She lives with this deep and profound guilt that if she had not insisted they go for a buggy ride the misfortune wouldn’t have befallen them. She came to Brahm for advice and the words on the tip of his tongue were “it’s not your fault” but he realised in that moment the woman has heard these words a million times and they did not an ounce of good. So he changed tact and said: “it is good you feel guilty”. I will let you find out on your own what happened next but suffice to say the woman is in a better place.
I believe in this strategy and have employed it to great effect many times. But it isn’t easy because the first thing you want to do always runs contrary to it. I recall a story of a P5 kid who had the audacity to sleep during my lesson. I did something so out of character that the entire class started seeing me in a whole new way and not only did the boy not sleep in my class anymore, he started putting in a real shift. But that is a story for another day.
The above is another story that had me in stitches. There is a bit of me in it.
Ah… why are there 2 copies in the pic? When I showed Choo the book, she immediately uttered: “Wait! I think I have this!” and proceeded to take it out of her secret stash (I am going to find out what else she has in there). She told me it was a recommendation by a friend and she must have asked me to get it for her because it’s from Kinokuniya and only I frequent that book store. She shared that she has forgotten much of the book and she is now rereading it. I always love it when we both read something concurrently because lots of interesting discussions will ensue.
That’s it. I have a lot of work staring back at me. This sharing will be my good deed for the day 😇
You can see I have been neglecting my fiction matters blog. No excuse at all, but this I have to share because it is such a sweet story; not the book but the reason I picked it up. I will reproduce my post on Facebook:
This one is a funny little story.
I teach creative writing at this school and I always have a nice experience here. Anyway, on the first day I was waiting outside the classroom and this kid asked me if I am their teacher. I said yes and a conversation ensued and we started talking about books about amazing detectives. His eyes lit up at one point. Bear in mind our lesson hasn’t even started and he knows nothing about me. So his eyes lit up and he said something like “oh Mr Chiam you must read this book called Kurosawa Food Detectives. It’s so good!” Yes, I got the title wrong but I really wasn’t paying much attention to what he said so in my mind it sounded like “Kurosawa”.
Every week when I am there before class he would ask me if I read the book. On the third week I decided to be more sincere so I asked him for the spelling and typed the name into my library app. The boy even told me that if it’s troublesome to get the book I can just use the Libby app to read it and proceeded to teach me. I listened intently and told him I am old fashioned and prefer the printed page.
This evening I met Choo for dinner at Bishan and seeing the library made me remember the boy. As luck would have it, the book is available! I think he is going to get a hoot when I engaged in a discourse with him about “The Kamogawa Food Detectives” in 2 weeks’ time 😎
At that time I was reading 3 books so my plan was to give this to my wife and she can give me the Cliff notes version. After reading the first story, Choo shared in not so many words that it’s good and that I should read it, and I did.
The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a light read that hinges on nostalgia. Set in Kyoto, it centres on a father, Nagare and his daughter, Koishi who run a restaurant with no signboard and no menu. Their theory is that any customer who finds them is on a collision course with fate. However, they have a sideline – further within the restaurant is a detective agency who does one thing: they will find your food. Their clients are usually people who yearn for something in their past and it is always a particular food with a distinctive taste. There is Tonomi Iwakara who is looking for a particular mackerel sushi made by a neighbour. The simple food would always cheer him up when he was at his lowest. Then there is Hideji Kuboyama who longs to taste the ramen his wife, who has passed on, used to make.
The short 200-page novel is divided into 6 inter-linked stories, each one has a particular food as a title. I love how the passage of time is rendered through the description of the weather and nature. I love how the writer doesn’t need to do a detailed backstory for the father and daughter detective team and allows us to feel in the gaps. I love how the food is described in such loving detail that I felt my tummy rumble. I especially love the various human lessons that are served up without any higher-than-thou preachiness. I had many nice discussions with my wife with regards to each of the life lessons.
With anthologies there are bound to have weak stories, but in this case I would say all of them are quite evenly and well portrayed and it is the strongest stories that will stay in your mind (and stomach). I love the last story tremendously and I have been sharing that in some of the classes I teach and each time I would reach a point when I could feel a lump in my throat and my eyes would start to glisten. It is that good.
This is a comfort read that will transport you to a simpler time and perhaps make you think of people who had passed on. It made me think of my dad and when I think of him I always think about the restaurants he brought us to and all the usual dishes we would partake together.
If I have to nitpick I would say that for a novel about food detectives, the procedural component is not satisfyingly portrayed, but then again I doubt it was the author’s intention to delve into that.
Anyway, back to the primary 5 kid who shared the book with me. During one of the lessons, I brought out the book from my bag in front of the class and to witness the beaming face of a ten-year-old kid is quite something that money can’t buy. His mouth opened and a torrent of hyperboles and questions gushed out. I told him that we will chat after class. I thought it is more important for me to ask him probing questions to get him to go deeper into the book than me doing my thing. Really, this is not the usual primary 5 kid’s goto literature and I wanted to find out more. We walked and chatted all the way to the school gate where his mother was waiting for him. It was one of the best days of my life and I hope it is the same for him.
One last thing… whenever I watched, heard or read anything good, I can’t shut up. So other than sharing the story of the kid and the book on my socials, I have also been sharing the story to my classes and friends. I would like to think my words have moved mountains because as of this minute the book is no longer available in any library here and two weeks ago it was available in almost all of them. Wow!
I did one for my favourite albums, movies and TV shows, so I will do a quick one for the books I have read this year. Seems like I read fewer this year, no doubt because I have been reading a lot of graphic novels too. I will include my quick thoughts on the novels based on what I can remember.
1. The Book of Form and Emptiness – Ruth Ozeki
This has got to be the coolest opening for a novel. Very meta and clever. However, it was a slog to plough through the glacier pacing long-windedness. I get the book metaphors and the paean to how books can save lives, but the magic trick felt too on-the-nose.
2. Carrie Soto is Back – Taylor Jenkins Reid
This is an enjoyable read but it can’t hold a candle next to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo or Daisy Jones and the Six. I love the sports element and Reid obviously did her research, but what failed for me is the half-baked romance and Soto’s relationship with her coach/dad. They are portrayed in a clichéd manner and did not explore the relationships in a new light or with any depth. So Soto’s ultimate breaking of her ego felt a tad unconvincing.
3. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
I usually devour anything by Murakami in a quick burst, but this was the hardest novel of his for me to get through. It took me the better part of half a year and in the interim I was reading a lot of other stuff. The spine of the story was fine but when Murakami took big detours into the metaphysical, the mumbo-jumbo and the zen stuff, I felt like I was floundering through a thick fog. It got a bit too indulgent for my taste. I was glad to be done with this and I am left with the final Murakami novel left unread, The Wild Sheep Chase.
4. The Last Orphan – Gregg Hurwitz
Is there even a lousy Orphan X novel? This time Evan Smoak is out of his comfort zone, doing a job for the President who will guarantee his freedom if he does it. The action is over the top and the whole novel reads like a clever action thriller. The cool thing about this #8 installment is that Smoak is not as invincible as before which gives the narrative a new direction.
5. A Death in Tokyo – Keigo Higashino
I never miss a Higashino novel. My wife and I read it concurrently and the constant back-and-forth discussion was always so fun. This is #3 in the Detective Kaga series and compared to the earlier ones, this one is soaked in melancholy. It is a complex and dense story. As much as it is a detective procedural, it is also a journey into the depths of the unfathomable human heart. I have to say there are elements that didn’t sit down well with me and it has too many elements that needed to hit their mark in the correct timing for the story to work, which makes it a little unbelievable.
6. Billy Summers – Stephen King
No horror, no supernatural elements, no ghosts, unless you count the Easter eggs cleverly placed throughout the story like the clown in the backseat and the hedge maze of the Overlook Hotel. I love how King employed the book-within-a-book narrative, something I thought he has perfected in Misery. Here, King uses the magic trick in a surprising new way and even wrote two amazing endings (think Spike Lee’s 25th Hour). It is a crime story with enduring characters, but it also interrogates the art of writing. I am convinced this is one of King’s best.
7. The Housemaid – Freida McFadden
My wife read this first and she told me the twist was brilliant. Coming from her, this is high praise. It took me a while to get into this because I found the sentences too functional with the sole motive of pushing the plot forward. I like my writers with a certain verve with sentence construction. This felt too simplistic for me. Then it happened – I was warded in the hospital for a health issue and I only had this novel for company. Oh my goodness… I finished the last 100 odd pages in a jiffy a little past my bedtime. With one single light on the page I finished the novel, forgetting to breathe. Wow! This one gobsmacked me in such a cool way. Only one element with the detective felt too convenient, but I could easily look past that misstep. The moment I finished the book I texted my wife and the back-and-forth with her was so good. There is a sequel and I already have it in my possession. It will be the first thing we read in 2024!
8. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store – James McBride
McBride is an accomplished saxophonist and jazz artiste, so it comes as no surprise he writes this novel like it’s a jazz piece. There is a free flow buoyancy to the story and the plot takes a while to materialise just like jazz. I love the way he paints characters – so funny, so poignant and so human. I have a habit of copying down great sentences into a note in my iPhone. It is my way of holding on to the magic of reading something magical. This year no other novel made me so busy typing out so many lovely sentences. I will never forget Chona, a lovely woman who lives her life large even though she is handicapped. I fell in love with her very early and in chapter 3 I was already praying McBride doesn’t kill her off. Thankfully, he didn’t. The novel taught me some important life lessons – it is important to do better and not be satisfied with just being good, and to keep your eyes peeled for lost human connections and to reconnect them.
9. Sleeper 13 – Rob Sinclair
This is an action-packed international thriller and it reads like it’s a Jason Bourne movie. This is intense and bare-knuckled stuff and the pace is relentless. It is told in dual narratives with lots of flashbacks to underscore the anti-hero’s motivations. I can see this being optioned as a TV series and the perfect actor as #13 will be Riz Ahmed. There, you read it here first.
10. Strange Sally Diamond – Liz Nugent
I am still currently reading this and aimed to finish this by the end of the year. I like this so far and it deals with heavy issues like physical and sexual abuse, emotional violence, paedophilia and all manner of gross emotional manipulation. In Sally Diamond, we get an endearing Eleanor Oliphant character but Liz Nugent wisely doesn’t write her for laughs which would cheapen her heartbreaking ordeal. They are two narrative voices here across two different times and it’s not a big surprise who “S” is. Just like what Emma Donoghue did in Room, Nugent examines two types of trauma here. This is a story about the worst and the best that humans are capable of.
Lastly, this is my favourite novel of the year:
11. Yellowface – R.F. Kuang
R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface is meta-fiction, a suspense thriller and an inside look at the publishing industry. If you ever wonder about the languorous process of putting a novel into the palm of your hand, it’s all here in all its illuminating detail.
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.
So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller?
This is also about the art of lying, to the populace and also to oneself. I love reading June’s self-justification for doing what she did and yet she has the cheek to diss Athena when her novel gets blow-back. The dark humour really hits the spot.
It is also a razor-sharp in the way it comments on how Asian writers are being typecasted, marginalised and ostracised. So the novel grapples with questions of diversity, racism and cultural appropriation. Might Kuang be writing from her own experience in the publishing industry? I won’t be surprised if it’s true.
Yellowface also gives you front row seat to the terrifying social media shitstorm. You want to know what it feels like to be canceled in the virtual world? It’s downright scary. You can understand why people take their lives when the shit hits the fan.
This is a propulsive and gripping read, and it sticks the landing. Deluded June having one more go at serving up a confessional bestselller – I would read that in a heartbeat.
That’s it for 2023 and I am already getting my next year’s novels ready. I am definitely starting with The Final Curtain and The Housemaid’s Secret. There will be a new Orphan X novel dropping in Feb. For the longest time, I feel like re-reading Miyuki Miyabe’s All She Was Worth. What I need now is more time.
I did one for music, movies and TV shows, so I will do a quick one for my favourite novel this year. This year I only read 14 novels and gave up on two (but I went back to one of them and completed it).
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
How Do You Live – Genzaburō Yoshino
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Silent Parade – Keigo Higashino
Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
It Ends With Us – Colleen Hoover
Slow Horses – Mick Herron
Bloody Foreigners – Neil Humphreys
My Annihilation – Fuminori Nakamura
The Angel’s Game – Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Summer, Fireworks and My Corpse – Otsuichi
Hail Mary – Andy Weir
The Woman in the Purple Skirt – Natsuko Imamura
Circe – Madeline Miller
Out of this 14 my favourite has to be Madeline Miller’s Circe. This is Greek mythology told from the point of view of Circe, a child devoid of her parents’ love and banished to an island for eternity. There she finds her calling – witchcraft.
I tend to stay away from the classics like The Iliad and The Odyssey, but this I can take, hook, line and sinker. Written with a clear-eye focus and prose that is so propulsive. Miller collapses that unreachable distance between the past and the present into mere air and she could somehow make the story so relevant in these present times. This is a story of a woman who is ostracised and marginalised, but yet eventually comes into her own in a male-dominated world. It is a story for the ages. Utterly readable, the novel is not mired in old English vocabulary and the scope is immense. Thousands of years condensed into 385 pages. Get ready to meet gods, warriors, monsters, titans, divinities, nymphs and many more. This is so good I already ordered Miller’s The Song of Achilles.
I gave up on Slow Horses but only for the super entertaining TV series to encourage me to pick it up again. The one other book I gave up on is Kaoru Takamura’s Lady Joker. A 600-page tome of a book that is not even complete because it’s just Volume One. I hit page 175 and I told myself life is too short to do something I have no love for. It’s probably sacrilegious to say this when the book is practically a studied and much revered text in Japan. I can only say it’s not for me.
One cool “book” story happened in a P5 class. I was teaching writing and I noticed this girl holding Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us and the sequel to her chest like her life depended on them. I know when kids do this it is a statement. I used that moment to transcend the rapport I already have with the class to rock star status by sharing what’s so great about the novel. You should see the glow on the girl’s face like I just gave her the world’s best affirmation.
The reason I read fewer books this year is because I was reading so many graphic novels. I actually kept a list of what I read but I didn’t bother to update the list when it hit over 50. I rediscovered Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and nobody writes and draws monsters like him. I love Ed Brubaker’s Reckless graphic novels and I am surprised no studios have optioned it yet for a TV series. Then there is James Tyrion IV’s Something is Killing the Children and I hope Netflix don’t eff this up but something Netflix didn’t eff up was Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. I have started rereading it and this time in the Absolute editions. This is one of those rare books I can read again at different stages of my life and something new will always jump out at me. Literature in comic form, I kid you not. If I can collect 10 cents each time I recommend this, I would be quite a rich man. Yesterday, a 10 year-old kid entered my room of comics and his eyes lit up. He was flipping through The Walking Dead. Half an hour later he asked me if he can go in again and I went in with him. I pointed at Sandman and asked him to remember it and to read it when he is older. I hope he still remembers what I said.
This was a wistful and blissful read at a compact 216 pages. It will probably draw lots of comparison with Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, but to me it does more than comment about loneliness, Japanese social structures and work hierarchy.
The story is plucked out of a stalker 101 handbook: the woman in the yellow cardigan (she is never named) observes the woman in the purple skirt like a hawk. She will observe from afar and the distance between them will gradually shorten as the story progresses. She follows her day and night, keeping a journal of what Ms Skirt does and all her quirks. Ms Cardigan wants to become friends with Ms Skirt but she is not sure how that can happen. Meanwhile, she will help Ms Skirt in whatever ways possible including leaving shampoo samples at her door because Ms Skirt’s appearance doesn’t look fetching and leaving notices of job opening for her.
The voyeuristic nature of the narrator comes into the foreground. She is an unreliable narrator in that how is it even possible to know Ms Skirt’s every thought. But her obsession knows no bounds and in turn we become obsessed with her obsession with Ms Skirt. It’s not kinky or icky at all and at times Ms Cardigan is almost like a fairy godmother to Ms Skirt. Imamura’s matter-of-fact prose is gripping and disquieting, giving Ms Cardigan a firm and singular voice.
What I also like about the novel is that it lets you enter the world chamber maids working in hotels; the work hierarchy can be quite cutthroat and an atmosphere of mistrust permeates the system. Gossip is rife and one has to be part of a team or perish; you just have to choose the right side. Imamura once worked as a cleaning lady at a hotel and I find it easy to believe how she paints the interesting world of chamber maids.
Where the novel falters is with the last act. After leading us to a solid climax, it just doesn’t land with a much needed catharsis for this reader. Yet, I must say it is time well-spent and Natsuko Imamura is a writer with a rare talent and a refreshing writer’s voice.
One of my favourite books is The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura and I keep hoping against hope that his next novel can surpass it. I have read every one that is newly released but I have yet to find the next best thing. My Annihilation has to be one of the most frustrating reads ever.
My Annihilation might as well be the annihilation of my mind as I read this. I finished this yesterday I have no inkling of all the plot machinations. I get the story and it’s a story to die for – guy assumes the identity of someone who is dead and starts to read a diary that belonged to the man. The story then becomes a story within a story. Multiple stories layering on each other to conjure a convoluted plot. This one takes the unreliable narrator to a whole new level.
This being Nakamura expect to read misogynistic violence of the highest order, sex and murder to the nth degree. I don’t mind that because Nakamura owns this genre of Zen noir like he invented it, but he writes with little clarity and it doesn’t help that all the characters are written in the same voice.
Don’t believe all the blurbs you read behind the novel that sell this to the high heavens. This one left me empty.
Based in Singapore, Neil Humphreys writes hilarious articles that tear football teams apart. He has no solidarity with any football club and all are ripe for his pointed skewering. I always get a good laugh reading his football columns. So with a lot of anticipation, I bought a signed copy just to find out if he is also adept at writing detective procedurals; he is.
It starts with a bloody hook: “Mohamed Kamal knew he was dying. The puddle told him. He was sitting in his own blood. He tried to move, but the pain stopped him. His body was shutting down… Kamal watched his killer take the bloody knife and scrawl four capital letters into the Victorian brickwork. MEGA. Kamal knew what the acronym meant. Make England Great Again.”
As story starters go, this one is a grappling hook. I had no idea this is the third book in the series and Inspector Stanley Low (pronounced as “lau”) comes fully formed. He is cantankerous, always angsty, stubborn to a T. Suffering from bipolar, Low’s mood swings across the spectrum but it seldom affects his investigative eye for details. I find him wonderfully odd and eccentric, a fascinating character. When the story begins we find him being seconded to London to give lectures because he must have pissed off somebody important in Singapore (now I need to read the previous instalments). When a Singaporean teenager is killed, his expertise is sought and the London police has no idea what they are in for.
Humphreys describes a London whose patience is wearing thin since Brexit. It is a modern city like any others where a wrong word or a badly worded social media post can lead to angry cries of racism, classism and xenophobia. Someone wants to make England great again and he is not opposed to killing foreigners who are deemed to have stolen the citizens’ livelihood. All this makes for a rip-roaring read with a pulse on today’s fractured society.
This is a fast-paced and gritty read. I particularly enjoy reading Low’s use of the Singaporean colourful vernacular including curse words that are worse than the F word. The twists and turns, cul-de-sacs are always surprising, with a storyline ripped from today’s and tomorrow’s headlines. Inspector Low is definitely a character I want to find out more. In fact, I just found out that the library at my workplace has four copies of the first book (rubbing my hands in glee now) and one of them will be mine.
The Nowhere Man is back! For his seventh mission, Evan Smoak has to help a drug kingpin rescue his kidnapped daughter from a cartel leader. He will take some time to decide to help a bad guy but you know he will eventually come round to it.
This one has Evan stepping inside an ethical minefield that has him questioning his principles. Even his private life throws him in a moral quandary recognising that he has responsibility to the people close to him.
The usual gang are all back: Tommy, Mia, Peter, Joey, Dog the dog and the residents of Evan’s condo. Mia gets some really bad news and Joey is at a crossroads. As much as I love the action scenes, I also love Evan’s interaction with the cast of regulars, especially the one with Joey that had me at the brink of tears.
Action-wise this is quite spectacular with the last act an explosive and bloody affair. That said, I had to suspend disbelief with the ease Evan can infiltrate a drug cartel. If the cartel leader actually believes Evan is part of his cartel, he deserves to eat lead. At 500 pages, this novel also feels too long with too many preachy and solemnisation scenes.
The story ends on an enticing premise and Evan’s old enemies will be back. This is not my favourite entry in the series, but it still hits the action junkie’s pallet in me.
I was browsing in a bookshop and I overheard a conversation about Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us between a young girl and her boyfriend. The couple was probably studying in a Junior College since I recognised the uniform. I like serendipitous situations like these and my ear inched ever forward. She adored the novel and was waxing lyrical about it, but the interest from the boy felt forced. He picked up the novel, read the synopsis cursorily and put it back before he was even finished. However the enthusiasm radiating from her was genuine and affecting. I found myself unconsciously picking up the novel and walking to the counter. A young girl in front of me in the queue was holding Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. In a different time, I would have struck up a conversation over my love for novel with her but that’s probably a story for another time.
Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up — she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.
Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.
It Ends With Us starts off as a romance story with a meet-cute that would look amazing on screen. In fact, I am pretty sure Hoover wrote this with a movie adaptation in mind because it is filled with Hollywood rom-com situations and memorable lines of dialogue from the likes of “Jerry Maguire”. As it progressed, I realised it isn’t a romance story, but a love story… scratch that… it becomes a story about love in all its guises and what love isn’t. How sometimes the one who loves you is the one who hurts you the most; how jealousy can destroy something beautiful and how generational cycles of emotional and physical abuse can be a prison for both the abuser and the abused.
The topic and themes sound heavy; it’s not. Hoover’s electric prose is always fleet-footed and has a zip. The writing is sure-footed and I found myself falling in love with all the characters and getting my heart broken in the best possible ways.
The novel gave me front row seats to understanding why women in situations of domestic abuse find it so hard to break the circle of violence with the person they are married to. Hoover never draws a simple portray of domestic violence and paints so much details in the grey areas, so much so that I wanted Lily to look past the abuser’s faults and just give him one more chance. The ending, when it comes, comes like a tsunami of feels. It may not be the ending I wanted but it is an important and necessary one.
I can count on the fingers of one hand books that made me tear up. This is not one of them. Is it time for a naked truth? The author’s note right at the end of the novel in which she detailed where the inspiration for It Ends With Us came from, made me all teary-eyed. These clear-eyed 6 pages written so candidly are powerful and comes from a place of deep hurt. These 6 pages made me see the novel in a whole different light.
Fiction Matters 