Book Review – Flashlight by Susan Choi

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About the Book

A moment is all it takes to shatter a family. The echoes last a lifetime…

One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town. Hours later, Louisa wakes on the beach, soaked to the skin. Her father is missing: presumably drowned.

This sudden event shatters their small family. As Louisa and her American mother return to the US, Serk’s disappearance reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened that night slowly unravels.

Format: Papeback (528 pages) Publisher: Vintage
Publication date: 26th February 2026 Genre: Literary Fiction

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My Review

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Flashlight was my book club’s pick for April. Had it not been, I suspect I might not ever have picked it up. Its size – over 500 pages – for one thing. However, I’m glad I did because, although I had some issues with it, I enjoyed it and learned things about the history of Korea I didn’t know before.

The book’s compelling opening scene is the starting point for a story that unfolds over decades. I enjoyed reading about Serk’s childhood in Japan. An excellent student, he embraces Japanese culture and language. His sudden discovery that his name is not Hiroshi but Seok and he is of Korean heritage, his parents having fled from the small island of Jeju to the Japanese mainland, turns his life upside down. There’s a particularly poignant scene in which he approaches his teacher with a request to look at a map so he can find the location of Jeju. With the defeat of Japan in 1945, external forces come into play. Korea is now free but divided in two – North and South Korea. When war breaks out between the two, Serk’s parents are lured by the promise of a better life in North Korea, something he fears will not be the case, while he moves to America to study.

There he meets and marries Anne, and they have a daughter, Louisa. Anne and Serk’s marriage is not a harmonious one. The only thing they really have in common is Louisa but even here they differ in approach with Serk being almost obsessively protective and Anne much more laidback.

Eventually the family return to Japan. Louisa quickly assimilates into her new surroundings, mastering the Japanese language, but Anne does not leaving her increasingly isolated. She starts to experience episodes of muscle weakness and intense fatigue, initially dismissed as psychosomatic, leaving her even more isolated and often completely incapacitated. It’s for this reason that, during a holiday on the coast, Anne is left behind when Serk and Louisa embark on their customary night-time walk on the beach, armed only with a flashlight. Serk disappears, presumed drowned, whilst Louisa is left with no memory of events of that night.

Anne and Louisa return to America. Louisa eventually leaves for college, their relationship reduced to infrequent letters and phone calls. A chance discovery forms a link with a campaign which I won’t say more about for fear of spoilers. Eventually in the final, very powerful and moving section of the book, we learn what really happened that night and its aftermath.

Condensed down like this it sounds more fast-paced than it does when you’re reading it. There were long sections during which my abiding thought was why do I need to know this? For example, a lengthy description of Anne’s method of preparing spaghetti bolognese. In other places there were big time jumps leaving gaps in the character’s lives, including quite significant events such as births, marriages and deaths. The glacial pace of some parts of the book I’m afraid made it more of a slog than it should have been. However, even the sections that felt superfluous were well-written. It just seemed as if the author having written them couldn’t bear to part with them even if they didn’t advance the plot, only flesh out the characters even more.

In case you’re wondering, there was a mixed reaction from book club members. A few really loved it but most felt a little as I did that it was an engrossing, well-written story let down by its uneven pace. Pretty much everyone agreed the final sections of the book were the most compelling and very moving. Like me, most people found Anne a very sympathetic figure. As you can tell, it was a good choice for a book club, provoking a lot of discussion and different opinions.

In three words: Fascinating, emotional, sweeping
Try something similar: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee or The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

About the Author

Susan Choi is the author of the novels Flashlight, Trust Exercise, My Education, A Person of Interest, American Woman and The Foreign Student. She has won the National Book Award for Fiction, the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction, the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and has been a finalist for the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. Flashlight began as a short story and received the Sunday Times Short Story Award.

Susan Choi lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

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Book Review – Relative Failures: The Lives of Willie Wilde, Mabel Beardsley and Howard Sturgis by Matthew Sturgis @HoZ_Books

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About the Book

History remembers the greats – but what about those who lived alongside them?

In the cultural ferment of late nineteenth-century London, three fascinating but often overlooked figures navigated the world in the shadow of their celebrated brothers. Willie Wilde, the hapless yet charming older sibling of Oscar, never quite matched his brother’s literary genius. Mabel Beardsley, the striking and ambitious sister of Aubrey, played a crucial role in his artistic ascent before forging her own path on the stage. And Howard Sturgis, a minor novelist with a sharp wit, watched as his brother Julian achieved the success he himself never quite grasped.

Moving through bohemian clubland, West End theatres, literary salons, and the pages of The Yellow Book, these siblings were more than just footnotes to history. Their lives – filled with ambition, scandal, devotion, and missteps – offer a fresh perspective on the glittering world of the 1890s.

Drawing on family history, sharp storytelling, and original research, Matthew Sturgis reveals the vibrant, overlooked figures who shaped their era. For lovers of literary and cultural history, it is an invitation to explore the road less travelled – a sidelight that, as Mabel Beardsley knew well, can sometimes be the most illuminating.

Format: Hardcover (320 pages) Publisher: Apollo
Publication date: 16th April 2026 Genre: Nonfiction, Biography

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My Review

The concept of exploring the lives of three siblings of more famous individuals is an interesting one. As the author argues in the Introduction, ‘There is, of course, a curious attraction about ‘minor’ figures: they offer the excitement of discovery; they are alive with possibility; they lead one down the road less travelled. The very fact that they are so little known ignites our curiosity.’

What must it be like to grow up as ‘the brother of…’ or ‘the sister of…’? Does that allow you to bask in their reflected glory or act as a constant reminder that you will always be in second place? Do you ride on their coat-tails in an attempt to make a name for yourself or devote yourself to promoting their work or preserving their legacy? The three lives the author has chosen display elements of all these but also reveal some fascinating characters who enjoyed a particular kind of lifestyle and common social connections.

Although as equally gifted as his younger brother Oscar, Willie’s is a story of someone never able to fulfil his potential, drifting from one thing to another. However, he always took pleasure in Oscar’s success, promoting his work in whatever way he could. Always the life and soul of the party, as the author notes, ‘A fatal sort of indolence was beginning to make itself apparent as perhaps Willie’s most distinctive characteristic, just ahead of his capacity for food and drink.’ He wasn’t good at managing money either, being declared bankrupt in 1881. However, he never wavered in his support for his brother, even after the disgrace of Oscar’s trial and imprisonment.

Mabel Beardsley was also a passionate advocate of her brother Aubrey’s artistic talent, including after his early death. She herself harboured ambitions as an actress but was destined never to be more than second-rate, often cast in roles that reflected her off-stage persona. Mabel’s real forte was as hostess, at first presiding over the family’s Thursday afternoon tea parties attended by musicians, artists and writers, and later her own soirees. A striking rather than beautiful woman, she had plenty of admirers and a wide circle of friends. Always beautifully attired and never one to turn down an invitation, I think Mabel would have been a lot of fun to be around. I found her courage during her final illness rather moving.

The author admits he chose to include Howard Sturgis partly because he was a distant relation – a great-great-uncle. Yet while most people will have heard of Oscar Wilde and many of Aubrey Beardsley, I doubt whether pretty much anyone today has heard of Howard’s brother Julian or read one of his novels, including me. Therefore in this final part of the book it is Julian who rather fades into the background.

I found Howard an entertaining character. Much like Mabel, he was ‘a host of genius’, albeit a rather laidback one. “No attempt was made to dragoon the houseguests into organized activities or exhausting expeditions. The ‘plans for the day were made on the spur of the moment’ and rarely extended beyond a constitutional walk.” Howard had female friends but showed no romantic interest in them. Instead he had close male friendships that were passionate but probably not sexual in nature. Later in life he formed a friendship with the author Henry James and Edith Wharton. Although he wrote one reasonably successful novel, his later years were overshadowed by money worries and ill health.

It’s clear from the copious footnotes and end notes that a huge amount of research went into the book. There were times when I thought there was a little too much extraneous detail but overall I found Relative Failures an engrossing read with many humorous moments.

I won a proof copy in a giveaway organised by the publisher.

In three words: Detailed, fascinating, lively

About the Author

Matthew Sturgis is the author of acclaimed biographies of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Sickert, as well as Passionate Attitudes: The English Decadence of the 1890s. He has contributed to the TLS, Harpers & Queen and the Independent.

Oscar: A Life – a Sunday Times and TLS Book of the Year – was nominated for the Wolfson History Prize. (Photo: Agent website)

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