'Disclaimer' - Renée Knight

Disclaimer became one those great books that becomes impossible to put down and makes you feel a little bereaved when you finish it. It is very hard to believe that it is Renée Knight's debut novel; the narrative is addictively intriguing. Holding you its hostage from the very first page, it is a thriller to the very end.

Married documentary maker Catherine Ravenscroft finds a book in her new home that she does not remember buying, a book that turns out to reveal her deepest secret. Tormented by The Perfect Stranger, she strives to cover up her twenty-year old mistakes, but the author will not stop at just the book. Widower Stephen Brigstocke is determined to take his revenge after finding a manuscript written by his late wife. He is intent on destroying Catherine's relationships with the people she loves the most and the seemingly idealistic life she has created, but not everything is as straightforward as it seems. It is a complicated story of loss and pain, in which both love and trust are put to the test. 

It could be said that the secret is slightly disappointing and not as sinister as you originally expect from the beginning, but you can forgive Knight for this as the rest of the book makes up for it entirely. And don't get me wrong, the twist is still a surprise and the ending far less dark than I anticipated (you can choose whether this is a good thing or not). The writing standard never wavers, and in this way, Disclaimer stops any disappointment from seeping in and ruining what is otherwise a remarkable novel.

Knight has a real talent for making the simple discovery of a book's existence seem like a death threat. She keeps you wondering what Catherine's secret is for most of the book, never losing your interest and without the waffling that can occur from a debut novel. Disclaimer is full of twists and turns that keep you switching your allegiance back and forth between characters; Knight has you wrapped around her little finger and you barely notice, let alone care. And the cherry on the cake? Renée Knight is English, and an author we should be incredibly proud of.

'We Are Called to Rise' - Laura McBride

Every person has probably wondered at least once, out loud or to themselves, whether their lives and their actions make a difference in the bigger picture. The greatest thing about We Are Called to Rise is that in some way, this is answered. It delves into how people who have never even met can have an impact on each other, sometimes with consequences because of the decisions an individual makes. This might make the book sound heavy and philosophical, but Laura McBride presents this information to you in a story that entices you in from the start.

The voices of four different people are written, seemingly with completely separate lives apart from living in Las Vegas until a tragedy occurs combining their stories and leaving them all wondering how much little tragedies matter; '...so little matters so much, and so much matters so little.' The most heartbreaking voice of the four is Bashkim, an eight-year-old boy of an immigrant family, who is so innocent and good. Through his school, he writes letters to a 21-year-old soldier, the second voice, who is in hospital having been flown back from Iraq and whose memories of the war haunt him endlessly. The third voice is a woman whose marriage has just fallen apart, and whose son is also struggling to cope having returned from his third tour in Iraq, with devastating consequences. The final voice is a female volunteer for CASA, though I won't say anymore about her than this; I wouldn't want to ruin the story for you!

McBride takes on a serious challenge switching between these voices, with the differences in age and gender, but she copes perfectly. In fact, she seems to excel with the most difficult one, Bashkim, really bringing his character to life through the pages. Where some books leave you struggling to hop from character to character, she makes it easy and uncomfortable, never leaving it too long between voices, never allowing you to lose the thread. McBride also, through these four different people, presents unique perceptions of Las Vegas, defending it as a home and not just a Strip, perhaps because McBride herself has lived there for two decades. She also seems to have another underlying message, one about war and its potential consequences away from the warzone for the soldiers, how their actions can be affected by their experiences.

The ending should be a disappointment, with some of the loose ends left untied with no neat little bow; you're still left wondering when you run out of pages how all of the characters actually end up, whether they end up happy. But where there should be disappointment, you feel content, perhaps because a fairytale ending would have been too unrealistic for this particular story. Anymore would have been too much, and perhaps would not have been as compelling as it was at its peak. Despite being her debut novel, Laura McBride has clearly mastered many of the techniques experienced authors still struggle with, particularly when to stop whilst you're ahead!

'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' - Richard Flanagan

Not for the fainthearted, The Narrow Road to the Deep North tackles a subject I was yet to read about in fiction, and it's truly heartbreaking. Tasmanian born Richard Flanagan's father was a survivor of the Burma-Siam Railway, also known as the Death Railway, and despite being filed under fiction, most of the events are likely to be based on fact. The starvation, the struggle, the strain of the workload for the prisoners of war all come to life in this novel; despite it being hard to imagine and impossible to understand, Flanagan tries his hardest to make you, and it's easy to see why this book won the Man Booker Prize 2014.

The story mainly focuses on Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon who becomes a POW by the Japanese Imperial Army, forced to build the railway with hundreds of others under his command, just a small group compared to the 13,000 Australians who were captured and used for this purpose. He is struggling to cope with the growing number of deaths, and finding it ever harder to save those who have fallen sick from the horrendous conditions the prisoners are forced to work in. He knows he has to stay strong for his men to keep up morale, as well as to make up for the guilt that he feels for the affair he had with his uncle's wife, even as her face slowly fades from his memory.

The beginning is difficult at first, switching consistently from past to present day, as the memories of war stay with the Dorrigo Evans even after he is freed. Though this starts off as trying, it soon becomes second nature and reading it becomes effortless as the story begins to build. Flanagan writes viewpoints from other prisoners, as well as members of the Japanese Imperial Army who guarded those working on the line, providing perhaps a little insight into both sides of the story. The sympathy remains with the Australians but it's refreshing to attempt to understand what the Japanese were trying to do and why they felt that they had to do it. 

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is at times a chilling novel, standing as a reminder of what war can cause humans to be capable of doing to each other. It is also, through the imagination of Flanagan as well as the construction of the prose, a reminder that war does not end when the countries are at peace; it lives in those who survive it. It is an incredibly powerful and emotional story, that would remain in my thoughts hours after I'd put it down, to the point that I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it with the same strength of anger and sadness inside me. Definitely a recommended read, though be prepared for its effect.