Book Box: A deep dive into love
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SINGAPORE – In this week’s Book Box, The Straits Times explores love in all its forms. Buy the books at Amazon. These articles include affiliate links. When you buy through them, we may earn a small commission.
One Day author David Nicholls on hiking and music in new middle-aged romance You Are Here
David Nicholls' You Are Here is a tale of two middle-aged loners unexpectedly thrown together in Northern England.
PHOTOS: SCEPTRE, SOPHIA SPRING
One might be forgiven for an intrusive curiosity about David Nicholls’ love life.
The British author is, after all, best known for his heartbreakingly tragic One Day (2009), superbly adapted by Netflix in 2024 and for which he was the executive producer.
The 57-year-old, however, is quick to shut down any suggestions that his own experience of love has been anything but undramatic.
“I won’t describe it as smooth-sailing, but I’m very lucky,” Nicholls says of his marriage to spouse Hanna Nicholls. “I’ve been in the same relationship for coming up to 20 years now. I haven’t been on a date since 1997.”
Book review: Jiaming Tang’s Cinema Love a tender swirl of double lives and loveless marriages
Jiaming Tang’s debut novel, Cinema Love, flits between New York City’s Chinatown and rural China in a depiction of Chinese gay men's double lives.
PHOTOS: JOHN MURRAY PRESS
A brick hurled at a gay bar in New York City in 1969 during the Stonewall riots is often cited as the impetus for America’s gay liberation movement.
Cinema Love, depicting an arson plot at a workers’ cinema for “sissy” men in 1980s rural Fuzhou, stages a similar protest. Its aftermath, however, is bloodshed and exodus.
Mawei City Workers’ Cinema is a bustling gathering point for gay men from nearby cities and faraway provinces. Here, men trade furtive glares, cruise for intimacy, gossip about former boyfriends – and hide from their wives.
Book review: Pretentious and sex-obsessed internal monologues in debut novel How To Leave The House
How To Leave The House is the debut novel of London-based film-maker Nathan Newman.
PHOTO: ABACUS BOOKS, ADRIAN MCDONALD
Natwest spends his last day before he leaves home for university chasing a deeply embarrassing package before it is opened by the wrong person. As he races through town, he encounters people whose lives are tangled with his in some manner or another.
A debut novel by London-based writer and film-maker Nathan Newman, it is an ambitious attempt to weave multiple lives and perspectives into a thoughtful story about what identity and love mean amid the lies the characters tell themselves.
However, many of the perspectives and subplots are lost while Natwest runs frantically around town, lost in his own selfishness.
Book review: Conceptual art and money in Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin
In Blue Ruin, British author Hari Kunzru delves into the art world and its insularity.
PHOTOS: KNOPF, CLAYON CUBITT
British author Hari Kunzru is a culture aficionado. His novels are known for their deep dives into particular artistic milieux.
For example, White Tears (2017) was about a pair of young, white hipsters caught up in a blues music thriller. Red Pill (2019) followed a recipient of a prestigious writing fellowship, suffering a breakdown at the taunting of a monster of an antagonist.
Blue Ruin completes this trilogy that mirrors Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Three Colours film projects. The title, this time, refers to an actual object – an art masterpiece by a famous, plagiaristic painter.
The Straits Times’ Weekly Bestsellers June 1
Singaporean author June C.L. Tan debuts her sophomore novel Darker By Four at No. 3 on the Children’s Bestsellers list.
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