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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Hannah Beckerman

In brief: Honeybees and Distant Thunder; Cry of the Wild; Our Missing Hearts – review

An urban fox cub befriends a young girl in Charles Foster’s ‘highly imaginative’ Cry of the Wild
An urban fox cub befriends a young girl in Charles Foster’s ‘highly imaginative’ Cry of the Wild. Photograph: Duncan Usher/Alamy

Honeybees and Distant Thunder

Riku Onda (translated by Philip Gabriel)
Doubleday, £12.99, pp432

Set over two weeks of a fictional piano competition in Japan, Onda’s novel is a thrilling and often nail-biting depiction of music, friendship and personal demons. Aya is a former prodigy who has not played in public since her mother’s death. Akashi balances music with work and fatherhood, while precocious Jin is a disruptor in this rarefied world. Onda beautifully conveys the transcendent power of classical music in all its emotive, psychological and visceral glory.

Cry of the Wild: Eight Animals Under Siege

Charles Foster
Doubleday, £16.99, pp256

Foster’s latest, highly imaginative work of creative nonfiction envisages the lives of animals, from gannets to otters, in this harsh, human-dominated world. An urban fox cub befriends a young girl before encountering the terror of a hunt, while an orca matriarch is shot at by rampaging day-trippers on boats. Evocative and beautifully written, it’s a deeply immersive read.

Our Missing Hearts

Celeste Ng
Abacus, £9.99, pp352 (paperback)

Set in a dystopian near future, Ng’s outstanding third novel envisages a draconian US in which Asians and Asian-Americans are treated with mistrust, contempt and violence. Twelve-year-old Bird was eight when his Chinese-American mother vanished, after which his father destroyed every trace of her. When Bird receives a mysterious letter from her, it sets him on a quest to uncover the cause of her disappearance. Exploring the insidious repercussions of repressive regimes, the novel is a cautionary tale, a moving family drama and a compelling testament to the power of art.

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