An excellent collection exploring the lives of women buffeted by powers beyond their control. Squeezing themselves into the gaps left by rabid urbanisation, patriarchal structures and a government struggling with racial and religious divisions, these women find their lives twisted in disturbing ways. 

Reading Ho Sok Fong's stories, one thinks of David Szalay's and Eileen Chang's elegant tales, where both the told is beautifully told and the untold is masterfully evoked. In precise and disquieting prose, Ho draws her readers into a richly atmospheric world. A naked sleepwalker wanders into a rehabilitation centre for wayward Muslims; a hotel checks-in the same seemingly amnesiac guest each day; a literature class is accidentally charged with the politics of religion. Lake Like a Mirror is peopled with the ghosts of unsaid words, unmanaged desires and uncertain statuses; it is both surreal and utterly real.