Book Review of Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami

(Translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio)

  

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(Fair review based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK.)

This well-crafted novel is a long and enjoyable read, even though it’s all about alienation, exclusion, poverty and injustice. Hana, of High School age but no longer going to school, has no effective means of establishing her identity, cannot have a bank account, access insurance, medical care, or any of the many things which normal citizens take for granted. And because she has no means of establishing her identity, she has no way of getting any sort of document, or card, which allows her to legitimise her existence. Nonetheless, females in this position can get grey-economy or zero-hours jobs which permit them to exist (and serve the society which excludes them) whereas it’s very hard for males in the same boat to get ANY legal or even gig-economy position without the help of organised crime; the price of which is constant obedience and never-ending obligation.

As ever, in any part of the world and not just in Japan, the existence of a mandatory means of proving your entitlement to be part of society is, first and foremost aimed at the exclusion from society of those whom the rich and powerful despise, or those that they fear. That is a universal truth and it is why this novel will speak to any thinking resident of the United Kingdom in 2026. It will, however, be lost on the unthinking, whether they actually constitute a majority or not.

Having said all that, what makes this an enjoyable read is the relationship which develops between Hana and an older woman, Kimiko, who’s been in a similar bind for many years. Kimiko’s hopeless situation has destroyed any ability she might once have had to scheme her way out of her situation, but at the same time she has no qualms about sharing any resource that she has access to with anyone who needs it. If someone is thirsty, Kimiko tries to find something for them to drink, if they are sad she tries to cheer them up. From a position of being unable to help herself in any useful way, she helps others, especially Hana, even if it’s only to get through one more day.

They get some breaks from atypically generous landlords who fell into wealth and are not hugely worried about IMMEDIATE payoffs, and much more sustained assistance from a seasoned and remarkably cautious gangster who has realised, from the experience of his elder brothers, that ambition and greed are very dangerous things if you are part of organised crime! Organised crime exploits societal greed: its foot soldiers are in mortal danger the moment they cease to be content with what they are given. He helps Hana and Kimiko as far as his own survival permits and is perhaps the only man Hana loves; certainly he’s the only man in Hana’s world worthy of her trust.

One of Hana’s older female friends falls into the hands of a more typical gang member (he mistakenly thinks he is upwardly mobile) and pays the inevitable price, causing a crisis which breaks up the friendship group, perhaps forever, but certainly until the Coronavirus pandemic puts the whole of Japan into the sort of state which has been normal for Hana all her life.

Somewhat ironically, Hana’s greatest financial success (this doesn’t last long) comes from the exploitation of cloned debit and credit cards: the very instruments of her exclusion from law-abiding society! At the end, Hana has lost everyone she loves, but that loss means they are always with her, which is the very last thing Kimiko teaches her. She finds peace.

Sisters in Yellow is published in the UK by Picador on 19^th of March 2026

Book Review of Death Watch Cottage by T. Orr Munro

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(Review based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)

 

 Murder mystery where victims, killers and motives proliferate.

In this novel, there’s no whittling-down of suspects, either for murders or police corruption and attempts to pervert the course of justice.

The heroine is a Cornish crime scene investigator, who finds several pieces of significant evidence to do with a number of possibly separate cases, starting with what looks like an accidental death of an environmental campaigner in the splendidly ambiguous “Death Watch Cottage”, whilst going through an extremely bad time as a soon to be homeless single mother with a teenage daughter and with accusations of professional misconduct and even corruption flying in more than one direction. All of which makes it very hard to correctly understand the true, or the full, significance of anything until it has all been found, and even then the proper context is supplied by a single crucial but not very noticeable fact mentioned outside of the active investigation itself.

And even when the investigator has solved all the known crimes to her own satisfaction and their housing issues to her daughter’s satisfaction, there’s a twist still to come when her thoughts turn to a mystery connected with the same Death Watch Cottage from several years before the killing which triggered her investigation.

The rich list of suspects includes: a property developer, a different sort of environmental campaigner to the deceased, a possible gang of anti-second home vandals, an adulteress, a bullying police inspector, a publisher of illegal voyeuristic pornography and a teenage porn addict with an online handle of “Tate Boy” and a diminishing list of friends. The puzzle is not so much to sort out the innocent from the guilty as to match the offenders to the correct offences, which is really quite absorbing for the reader.

Death Watch Cottage by T. Orr Munroe is published in the UK by HQ on the 26^th of March 2026

Book Review of The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley

  

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The history of a friendship.

 

(Review based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)

The saving grace of any nostalgic novel stretching across the Blair years ought to be that it does not mention Mr B at all, so score one for the author there.

A younger literary woman works, intermittently, for a magazine mostly edited by an older man, with whom she gets on very well. Quite what the magazine “Sequence” actually publishes is never quite clear; what matters is the politics of producing it! Quite why she is so tolerant of and loyal to her erstwhile boss becomes clear as she remembers some of her past relationships, which range from the abusive to non-sinister weirdness. And the (completely unproductive) two-year reign of “Shove” Halfpenny as editor of Sequence will strike a chord with people in almost any industry or other field of endeavour with experience of those born to executive privilege who rise relentlessly up the ladder regardless of the wrecked enterprises they leave in their wake.

The attractive thing about this book is that there’s no real rancour about the bad stuff, merely observation and endurance. The point of this book is that you have to get through the bad stuff because what you value, forever, are the people and places who get you through.

That may even be why the bad stuff has to happen: to smoke out those who actually care.

 

 The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley is published in the UK by Picador on the 2^nd of April 2026.

Book Review of Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo (translated by Joheun Lee)

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(Review based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)

 

Both a thriller and a study of obsession and modern-day idolatry.

This is a novel (based, apparently, on real incidents) about four women (two are young, two middle-aged) with an obsession in common, or as it turns out, different obsessions with an object in common, which happens to be a highly popular young male Korean pop star, who is perhaps a one-hit wonder or very nearly so.

This leads to their working at cross-purposes as they work together. At the same time, almost everyone else with any relationship to the pop idol in question is likewise plotting in some direction or another and most of those who aren’t plotting at all, swiftly fall victim to the plots. Although most of the outcomes in this novel are tragic, the kidnap of the pop idol by the four women does at least save him from what his manager sees as a neat (and very final) solution to the dangerous levels of obsessive behaviour exhibited by other fans, especially when it leads to violence against his colleagues and he could well be next!

The company’s chairman, though, is greatly impressed by the enterprise and inventiveness of the young female fans and thinks they are more talented than their Western or Japanese counterparts and they would be an asset to Korea if they had something more important to do, such as resisting an invasion or overthrowing a domestic dictatorship. And although all this is set in South Korea, more than one of the characters sees North Korea as a possible escape route back towards a simpler way of life, more in keeping with Korean tradition than the present-day South Korea.

This is not an idea likely to appear in any non-fiction published by or for South Koreans, however “free” the country might be according to the official narrative. There are very few countries in the world, let alone the Far East, where the idol of constant change in the name of “progress” can be safely questioned and to worship it is the only really safe course of action in most societies these days. What makes it a fantasy is that the North is just as obsessed with its own version of “never ending progress” as the South.

The boy pop star, is indeed an idol as well as a vulnerable and wickedly-exploited young man, he is also Korea, North and South, and even beyond that, the boy is the wider modern world, secretly desperate for a less frantic direction.

Spoiler alert: he is presumed dead, but narrowly survives and is found washed up on a beach by a young woman who decides a young man with nothing at all, not even a memory of who he is, is just what she is looking for. Obsession destroys, love redeems.

Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo is published in the UK by Picador on the 5^th of February 2026.