Catherine Raynes: It Could Have Been Her and Nothing To My Name

It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell  

It was the night she almost died.  

Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and then - a scream and the sound of something falling upstairs - and Jane senses she's in a bad place and in danger. She runs.  

Twenty-five years later, Jane finds herself outside the same house, this time to return a small white dog who's been found near her home in the country; a dog whose owner has just been reported missing.  

A fleeting glimpse of a haunted looking woman through the window sends Jane on a mission to uncover the house's secrets - secrets more terrifying than she could have ever imagined, especially when she realises it could have been her...  

A missing woman, a dysfunctional family and dark, dark secrets... 

Nothing To My Name by Kangkang Li Kovacs  

Inspired by the author’s own family history, and spanning the past hundred years of Chinese history, this multi-generational family saga explores how women survive the tsunamis of history 
 
Nothing to My Name chronicles the intertwined fates of three generations of Chinese women: Ah Xue, Mimosa, and Fei. The Grandmother, Ah Xue, witnesses the rise of the Communist Revolution while earning a meager living combing the hair of the few wealthy ladies in her small fishing village. Mimosa, the Mother, grows up in the shadow of her parents’ struggles as the growing tension of the Cultural Revolution threatens to pull their family apart. And Fei Fei, the Daughter, brought up as a “boy” by her activist father, grapples with gender identity in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre. 
 
Awash in the tides of societal upheaval, Ah Xue, Mimosa, and Fei Fei are all driven by the instinct to survive, weathering hardship that splinters the boundary between the personal and the political. For readers of sweeping upmarket book club fiction like Pachinko and Homegoing, Nothing to My Name is a braided history of suffering and dignity, of loss and reckoning, and of the unexpected joy that sustains family bonds. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
At be Catherine Rains is our book reviewer on Saturday
mornings every week. At this time she gives us her
recommendations for the weekend, and she's here with us now,
go day, Catherine, Good morning Jack. Let's begin with It
Could Have Been Her, which is a new book by
Lisa Jewel.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
So this is about Jane Travalli and she's in her
mid fifties, and she had a pretty traumatic childhood and
now in her fifties, she's sort of very lonely and
doesn't really know where she fits in the world. And
she's out walking one day and she comes across this
lost dog, and the girl that was seen with this
dog earlier has vanished, and so and she goes to

(00:49):
the local vet and tracks down this owner, and then
when she gets to the house, she realizes that that
she's still missing. But there's something about this house that
really haunts her. She knows that she's been there before,
but none of the locals really seem to care that
this woman is missing. And so Jane and the help
of her steps on a man called Dexter to help
and uncover the secrets and what's going on, and so

(01:12):
you get this really unsettling atmosphere to the book, and
this it's got quite a slow burned pacete, but it
really helps ramp up the tension and you get these
character flaws and not knowing who to trust in the book,
and it jumps from one thing to another continuously, which
helps to addswer to that creepy, eerie feeling that you're getting.
And it's a really well told psychological thriller. It's got

(01:35):
some dark themes in it, but the twists keep you
reading as you just really need to know what's happened
to this woman and what's happened to Jane and what
the backstory of it all is.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, Okay, this sounds interesting. So that's it could have
been her. That's by Lisa Juel. Next up, Nothing to
My Name by King King Lee kovacs that.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
This is historical fiction, but the author draws on her
own family history and she covers a century so sort
of those brutal chapters of Chinese history, the Chinese Civil
War and the how society completely changed and the Cultural
Revolution and the tensions that arose from that, and then
the aftermath of the nineteen eighty nine tenem And Square massacre,

(02:14):
and she centered the focus with the story over the
three generations of Chinese woman. So it begins in nineteen
forty eight in a fishing village of Sanjoo, and twelve
year old Azoo is Azu is observing her mother's kind
of quiet labor really, and she combs here for wealthy clients,
and it's just kind of get absorbed in the story here.

(02:35):
But it's as the Civil War and the Communist Revolution
are about to happen. And then you follow her daughter Mimosa,
who navigates the cultural revolution and what her parents have
gone through and what she's going through. And then the granddaughter, Fay,
who's raised as a boy by her activist father, And
there you get this significant impact of the one child
policy and the direct impact it has on Phay's life

(02:57):
as she sort of navigates both her identity and the
politics all at once. And it's just this story is
beautifully written, and it focuses not only on these massive
events and history, but the small events in each of
their characters' lives. You know, the silences of the family,
the small acts of defiance, you know, the weight that
family secrets carry and as these women navigate their way

(03:18):
through what's thrown at them by history. It's beautifully written,
it's character driven story, and it's one of those stories
that stick in your mind long after you've finish reading
it and just you know, kind of the thoughts of it.
And even though it's historical fiction, obviously those chapters of
Chinese history occur, and it's really really fascinating story.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Okay, so that's nothing to my name by King King
Lee Kovacs, Catherine's first pick for us. It could have
been Her by Lisa Jewell, and both of those books
will of course be News Talks EDB dot co dot
m Z.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to News Talks EDB from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio