Best of Friends, by Kamila Shamsie

This is a book of two distinct parts. The first is set in Karachi in 1988, where 14-year-old best friends, Maryam and Zahra, attend an exclusive private school. It’s a heady time of self-discovery, with a growing awareness of bodies and sexuality, amid a turbulent political situation in Pakistan. The end of the Zia dictatorship and the advent of Benazir Bhutto makes the girls feel anything is possible, especially for those in their privileged positions. But a disturbing and frightening incident sparks big changes, especially for Maryam, and has repercussions that echo into the future. Thirty years later in London, Maryam finances tech start-ups while Zara is a human rights lawyer and civil liberties campaigner. Despite their fundamental differences they remain best friends, but this comes into question when a murky figure from their past enters the picture. Part one is hugely evocative of time and place and perfectly captures the awkward anticipation of adolescent girls, however privileged. Part two is less successful, the overweening privilege of expats less tolerable in adult women. It is really difficult to understand how the friendship can endure their major differences and the ending is plain puzzling.

Wolfe Island, by Lucy Treloar

The author’s first novel, Salt Creek, was a moving and frustrating look at Australia’s dystopian past. This one takes a leap forward to a dystopian near future in the US, where climate and other refugees are demonised and persecuted.
Artist Kitty Hawke has an almost mystical connection to the island she lives on, the last of generations of her family. Her attachment has cost her a marriage and a good relationship with her children and she is the last inhabitant, all others having fled to the mainland as their houses succumbed to the sea.
Her satisfying if solitary life is disrupted when her estranged granddaughter turns up with some friends, who clearly have secrets and troubles that could threaten everyone’s future.
Kitty is drawn back into a family of sorts, which ironically takes her off her beloved island.
But with love comes loss and Kitty becomes a vagabond, adrift in a dangerous land, searching for what is truly home.
Treloar employs poetic and evocative language that never goes OTT into the realms of pretension in the telling of her tale.
The scenario is all too believable and Kitty’s painful reengagement with the world and her family is moving and emotional.

Blood Kin, by Ceridwen Dovey

A coup in an unnamed country has led to regime change. The deposed president is said to be guilty of terrible and brutal crimes. This kind of sweeping political change has been seen many times in many parts of the world, but what is the impact on the people who live through it and the families of those who don’t live through it? Dovey names none of her characters; there is the President, his barber, his chef, his portraitist, his barber’s brother’s fiancé, his chef’s daughter, his portraitist’s wife; the commander and various guards. All are described as such throughout – defined by their relationship to power. It turns out they are all closely linked, their lives intertwined. The book is divided into two main parts – first the men demonstrate the immediate consequences of the coup. Then the women in their lives provide a different perspective on their relationships and on the damage they have suffered because of them. A short third part goes back to the men for the unpleasant and depressing conclusion. The nation is not named either; it could be somewhere in Africa, somewhere in South America. It could be anywhere. This slim volume is not an easy read, as it precisely details how power corrupts no matter which douchebag is in charge. It is toxic masculinity writ large and it’s always the women who bear the brunt.