Insurrecto

Gina Apostol
Soho Press, £12.99, pp336

There’s a telling line in the acknowledgments to Gina Apostol’s complex though entertaining novel. “Is it a mystery, a history, a dirge, a comedy, why the hell is it all of the above?” she writes. Quite. Trying to explain its bizarre brilliance is tricky, but essentially it tracks American film-maker Chiara and translator Magsalin as they try and make sense of a 1901 atrocity committed by US soldiers on Samar, an island in the Philippines. The pair go on a road trip, pick up fragments of stories and write their own versions of the massacre in non-sequential chapters. The truth about the awful event isn’t as important as the fact it has been recognised.

Turbulence

David Szalay
Vintage, £7.99, pp144 (paperback)

Like the structure of Szalay’s Man Booker prize-shortlisted All That Man Is, Turbulence was conceived as a “continuous thing”, rather than a collection of short stories, and here the conceit works brilliantly, with each tale carrying on from the last, interconnected by characters on a journey somewhere. The transitory nature of modern life is captured magnificently, building into a fine meditation on 21st-century anxiety.

Son of Mine

Peter Papathanasiou
Salt, £12.99, pp320

Aged 24, Peter Papathanasiou was summoned to his mother’s bedroom and told he was adopted. This kickstarts a search for identity that echoes across decades and continents as the author moves between his mother’s life in Greece and Australia. Though this is a unique family history, there’s something universal about this affecting memoir, particularly when Papathanasiou becomes a parent himself. The writing is graceful but never portentous, filling this debut with heart and meaning.

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