Books of the month: From Marian Keyes’s ‘Grown Ups’ to Anne Enright’s ‘The Actress’

Martin Chilton reviews six of February’s releases for our monthly book column

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Family traumas and secrets are a source of constant inspiration for novelists and February’s fiction includes new novels from Anne Enright, Marian Keyes, Hannah Rothschild and Cho Nam-Joo all featuring fractured, unhappy households.

Rothschild’s engaging tale House of Trelawney (Bloomsbury) cleverly satirises an unconventional aristocratic clan who have run into money troubles, while Keyes’s Grown Ups (Michael Joseph) is a sharp-eyed account of an unravelling family called the Caseys.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (Scribner), written by former South Korean television scriptwriter Cho Nam-Joo, sold a million copies in Asia and is credited with igniting the #MeToo movement in Japan. In the novel, translated by Jamie Chang, Nam-Joo blends fiction and reportage to tell the backstory of a 33-year-old woman having a nervous breakdown – and the misogyny that helped cause her problems.