This is an exceptional memoir that makes you feel you are right there with the author as she finds herself in a psychiatric ward with a personality that is changing in ways she doesn’t understand.

Just months after giving birth to her first child, Catherine Cho finds herself tipped into a frightening mental state, caught in a “reflection of the world” that she can’t escape from.

She writes: “I was a mother, I was still trying to figure out what that meant. The axis of my world had changed. Everything was now in relation to this other life”.

Motherhood, the biochemical change that comes with it, stress, relationships and pulling oneself back to wholeness are the gripping themes packed into this elegant memoir.

I was thrilled to speak to the literary agent-turned-author who is just as measured in conversation as she is in the written word. She patiently shared insights on healing as we discussed her experience of a rare form of postpartum psychosis that afflicts one in about a thousand women.

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My criteria for quarantine reading is simple. If it does not hold me from the first line, I do not waste a minute more on it. Living through a pandemic makes life feel more precious. So strap yourself in because this book won’t let you go.

In this post-apocalyptic thriller from 2014, a fictional swine flu pandemic whittles humanity down to a small tribe of survivors. Mandel’s fourth novel won the Arthur C Clarke award for good reason. Her take on relationships, the power of dramatic literature and the connections we need to survive held me enthralled. Read this nail biter before it takes over the world as a 10-episode HBO miniseries.

We look up at the statue of Raffles when we stroll down the Singapore River, but what symbolic posture would Raffles take when regarding us? In a 1971 essay, highly regarded Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas argued for a critical appraisal of Raffles as humanitarian reformer. That historical work has been republished by his son, who is National University Singapore’s Professor of Sociology Syed Farid Alatas.

Prof Alatas told me that in the 1970s the work was hardly engaged with by an academic world convinced it had already understood Raffles place in it. Thankfully, the work now has a new lease of life.

You don’t have to be a sociologist or amateur historian to enjoy this traipse back into our own past for a front row seat of Raffles’ actions. One of the books that has made a big impact on my life is Edward Said’s “Orientalism“ and this book feels like it shares its spirit. I mention that to Prof Alatas who then tells me his father was regarded by Said as an important influence. I love it when good books connect in some way.

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When it’s time to settle in for something more pensive I turn to “This Side of Heaven”. That heaven or hell is what you make of every instant is an idea that stays with me long after I’ve put down Singapore Literature Prize Winner Cyril Wong’s new tale.

In the first lines we encounter a blinding light that throws us from this world to perhaps another plane of existence. I enjoy fiction that leads us to some sort of understanding of ourselves. In understated, beautiful prose, Wong leads us to explore states of minds in an otherworldly setting.

As a reader I wonder whether it is the lost souls’ warped memories or sheer force of habit that determines whether they get a fresh start or face a painful loop of their own judgement. Poet, author and critic Wong tells me the writing grew out of a meditation years ago when he perceived a chorus of voices, each voice straining to be heard. As we make our way through a sometimes surreal present, this is the perfect novel to wrestle with the theme of transition.

Text: Michelle Martin, Additional text: Elizabeth Liew

For more great reads, tune into “Read with Michelle Martin” on Money FM89.3, every weekday at 9.15 am.