Book Box: Women of substance
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SINGAPORE – In this week’s Book Box, The Straits Times looks at four books about women fighting back. Buy the books at Amazon
Book review: Kang Hwagil’s Another Person is an incendiary feminist thriller set in South Korea
Here is a tightly plotted thriller by a young South Korean feminist writer that lays bare the knives stowed in both the psyche of men and women in a patriarchal society.
Another Person by Kang Hwagil begins like a testimonial against an isolated incident of workplace and intimate violence.
Jina is told she has “ruined a good man’s life” when she brings her senior to court for assaulting her five times.
When Jina takes to the Internet to expose the injustice – Manager Lee is fined only three million won (about S$3,000) – she gets vitriol instead of support, including an anonymous comment that calls her a liar.
Book review: Zero Days is a perfectly thrilling beach read
Zero Days is the perfect beach read. Smart and zippy without being too brain bending, it is a classic Ruth Ware offering for the season.
The story opens with protagonist Jacintha “Jack” Cross breaking and entering an office building with the aid of her hacker husband Gabe.
It soon transpires that Jack is a “pen tester”, short for penetration tester, while Gabe is a white hat hacker. The duo run a small business testing companies’ physical and digital security systems.
What is supposed to be an ordinary work day takes an unexpected turn when Jack gets detained at a police station, then returns home late to the gruesome discovery of her husband’s corpse seated at his computer with his throat slashed.
Book review: Conviction has an exciting plot about moral choices, but lacks depth
British author Jack Jordan presents a moral conundrum in his latest thriller, Conviction.
Wade Darling is accused of murdering his family and setting the house on fire. His lawyer, Neve Harper, can either ensure his jail sentence or risk exposure of the secret behind her husband’s disappearance.
Torn between her integrity as a lawyer and the secret guilt she has carried for three years, the price for disobeying her blackmailers is the death of her stepdaughter, Hannah.
Book review: Maud Ventura’s debut novel My Husband addresses female hysteria and domestic unrest
Maud Ventura’s 2021 debut novel My Husband begins with a statement that is often a harbinger of trouble in paradise: “We need to find a moment to talk.”
Those dreaded words from her husband send the unnamed narrator, a 40-year-old Frenchwoman who works part-time as an English teacher and English-French translator, into a spiral. Separation from her husband is akin to death for her.
My Husband was first published in France and won the Prix du Premier Roman prize in 2021, which is awarded to the best French debut novel each year.
The Straits Times’ Weekly Bestsellers Aug 12
This week sees Every School A Good School by Ng Ziqin on the bestseller list for children’s fiction.
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