Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
Amy Chua has been pilloried from a height for her new book, and she seems to accept that she deserves some of the criticism. Determined to raise her daughters ‘the Chinese way’, despite the fact that the girls were being raised in the ultra-Western U.S., Chua devised a list of things they were never allowed to do: attend sleepovers or have playdates; be in a school play; watch TV or play computer games; choose their own extracurricular activities; get any grade less than an A; not be the number one student in every subject except gym and drama; or play any instrument other than the piano or violin. Daughter number one, Sophia, appeared to be fairly biddable and went along with the Tiger mother way of parenting. Something of a piano prodigy, helped no doubt by the Tiger-mandated hours of practice of every day, she played a concert at Carnegie Hall when she was just 12. Daughter number two, Lulu, was a different story, however, and fought her mother every step of the way. As Chua notes in the prologue: “This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.” A captivating, if at times stomach-churning, read.
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Lasting Damage by Sophie Hannah
Like all of Sophie Hannah’s psychological thrillers, Lasting Damage opens with an event which hooks the reader in almost from the very first page. It’s late at night and Connie can’t sleep so she’s logged on to a property website to take a virtual tour of a house she seems fixated on. As the camera pans through the house, she is appalled to see the blood-stained body of a woman lying on the carpet in the living room. She wakes her husband, but when he takes the same tour, the living room is pristine and there is no sign of anything out of the ordinary. But Connie can’t shake the disturbing image, and decides to get in touch with a rather eccentric policeman whom she hopes will take her seriously. When it emerges, however, that Connie has had this particular house in her sights for quite some time, and believes her husband is leading a double life, the police begin to wonder about her mental health. When a second woman appears to back up her story of the body on the virtual tour, the investigation begins to take a turn for the serious. A riveting tale, right up until the last quarter of the book, when it all seems to fall apart slightly and the conclusion is not altogether satisfying.
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