In brief: Missing Persons; Compendium of the Occult; Under the Eye of the Big Bird – review

Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets

Clair Wills
Penguin, £10.99, pp208 (paperback)

Wills’s memoir investigates the scandal of Irish mother and baby homes – religious institutions for unmarried women and their children. Though the author is a half-Irish woman who enjoyed idyllic summers on the family farm in Cork, it was only as an adult that she discovered one of her cousins was born in such a home. Unravelling her own family’s past alongside the cruelty and shame instilled by the Catholic church and Irish culture, she observes that “a whole society learned not to look, or not to look too closely, and certainly not to ask too many questions”.

Compendium of the Occult: Arcane Artifacts, Magic Rituals and Sacred Symbolism

Liz Williams
Thames & Hudson, £18.99, pp256

What is the difference between magic, religion and the occult? In her wide-ranging compendium, Williams takes a chronological approach to chart different forms of belief through the ages. Beginning with the origins of western occultism, and taking in divination, rituals, talismans, curses and secret societies – from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to Anglo-Saxon Britain and the Freemasons – it’s a richly illustrated and comprehensive anthology.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird

Hiromi Kawakami (translated by Asa Yoneda)
Granta, £14.99, pp288

With her new science-fiction novel, Japanese writer Kawakami returns to her literary roots. It is set in a dystopian future where “human population was in freefall”: people are cloned in factories using the DNA of animals as well as humans, and “mothers” oversee procreation. Despite the evident imagination on display, the lack of narrative arc and coherent timeline makes for a somewhat disjointed and at times confusing tale.

• To order Missing Persons, Compendium of the Occult or Under the Eye of the Big Bird go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply