2024 Best Reads: Ong Sor Fern picks The Great When, Invitation To A Banquet and The Grey Wolf

Top three reads

The Great When by Alan Moore

Reading is the best escape into other worlds and this year’s best trip to an alternate universe is definitely legendary British author Alan Moore’s The Great When. 

The book is a meta-fiction

powered by both Moore’s love of high- and low-brow cultures, as well as his fondness for the city of London. His hapless protagonist Dennis Knuckleyard gets his hands on a book which should not exist. In attempting to return it to its rightful place, he is propelled headlong into the “real” London, a meta-verse of all the ideas and concepts underpinning the city. 

Densely descriptive, tightly plotted, jampacked with pop cultural and literary allusions, The Great When is a trainspotting geek’s delight.  

Invitation To A Banquet by Fuchsia Dunlop

Who can resist an invitation like this? English writer Fuchsia Dunlop promises, and delivers,

a satisfyingly diverse banquet in this 466-page tome exploring her favourite topic – Chinese food. 

Chinese people who have grown up with the cuisine can sometimes take the culinary tradition for granted. But Dunlop brings an outsider’s perspective, fuelled by curiosity and passion, that dissects the origins, evolution and dynamism of Chinese gastronomic traditions. And she does so with understanding and nuance that bridge the gap between the West and the East. 

Beyond the deep scholarly detours into varied topics, this is simply the most entertaining book. Just do not pick it up hungry. 

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny 

The 19th instalment of the beloved Inspector Armand Gamache series feels like a return to top form by Canadian author Louise Penny after A World Of Curiosities. That one featured a strained villain who was much too Hollywood and Hannibal Lecter, so much so that I feared the series might finally have jumped the shark. 

But The Grey Wolf, which harks back to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups in 2012’s The Beautiful Mystery, is a tightly constructed psychological thriller in the best Gamache tradition. A phone call that Gamache refuses to answer and a missing coat which gets returned kick-start a series of events that leads the chief inspector into a dangerous mission to stop a terrorist attack. 

Penny cranks up tension through the wily inspector’s insights and deductions, while also offering subtle social and political commentary on the madness of the real world. A thrilling read that will keep you up chasing the conclusion and cursing the cliffhanger. You have been warned.  

Disappointment

The Book Of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville

Readers will wish they were anywhere but trapped in

this risible narrative.

This is an extension to a franchise, beginning as a comic book intended for film and television adaptation starring Keanu Reeves. The hot media premise of an immortal berserker warrior chased by a berserker pig is way too basic to support English writer China Mieville’s cold media ruminations about life and death.