The Death of Bees, by Lisa O’Donnell (UK)
"Today I'm 15. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved." The shocking opening sets the tone for a black comedy, mixing The Ladykillers with Irvine Welsh's The Acid House. It's relayed in matter-of-fact prose by foul-mouthed yet vulnerable Marnie and her younger sister Nelly, a slightly autistic violin-playing prodigy who hides behind genteel, otherworldly language. The girls are helped in their attempts to preserve the secret of the parents' disappearance by a lonely elderly neighbour from their Glasgow estate. O'Donnell adeptly balances caustic humour and compassion, as the trio is pursued by social services, drug dealers and a sinister, long-lost grandfather. Catherine Taylor Photograph: PR
Disposable People: Inspired by True Events, by Ezekel Alan (Jamaica – self-published)
The pain and passion in this freewheeling text is so palpable it is hard to regard it as fiction. It reads like a memoir, a record of hurts and darkly humorous short stories woven together with diary entries and line drawings. It is the story of the coming of age of Kenny Lovelace in the rural village that is sometimes called “Depression” and otherwise referred to as “that hateful f-ing place”. Alan is brilliant in his analysis of Kenny’s relationship with his father and in the stories of abuse children suffered at the hands of village men. His novel is a wail of agony wrapped in spritely prose, deepened with irony and a bitter humour.Mary Hanna, from The Jamaica Observer
Photograph: PR
The Last Thread, by Michael Sala (Australia)
Broken into two parts, The Last Thread tells the story of Michaelis and his family’s migration from the Netherlands to Australia, then back to the Netherlands, and to Australia again. Largely autobiographical, it depicts his early years as the younger and, in his mind, less favoured of two brothers and their complicated relationship with their frustratingly inept mother. Detailing the years with a cruel and bullying stepfather, through the difficult terrain of family scandal surrounding their separation from an enigmatic father, and their mother’s frequently terrible choices in love and life, it is at times both beautiful and poignant. Nicole Hayes, Melbourne Musing
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Island of a Thousand Mirrors, by Nayomi Munaweera (Sri Lanka)
Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel attempts to transcend a little more than 60 years of history – the violent and strife-torn decades of post-colonial Sri Lanka – through three generations of two families. What it fails to entirely achieve is historical perspective – not everyone is well acquainted with the origins and details of the Tamil-Sinhala conflict. But what it does achieve, and quite remarkably so, is an idyllic, near-perfect picture of the island, beaded together from the childhood nostalgia of generations. Jasodhara Banerjee, Forbes India
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Sterile Sky, by EE Sule (Nigeria)
Murtala is the oldest of seven children born to a policeman and a small trader in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. After one of his brothers dies in one of many violent riots, his mother decides to return to her village, leaving father and son struggling to survive on meagre police wages. As Murtala hears more of his father's life story, it emerges that the village is not the safe haven his mother believed. Photograph: PR
