Civil service

A novel about the shameful history of sterilisation in the US is based on a real-life court case.

- ANNA ROGERS

Dolen Perkins-Valdez: offers some intriguing angles in Take My Hand.

TAKE MY HAND, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Hachette, $37.99)

While reading this third novel from American writer Dolen Perkins-Valdez, I found I was asking myself a question: is fiction the right choice when there's a cause to be fought for, a wrong to be exposed? Charles Dickens certainly believed so, but then he happened to be a genius. Some novels - The Tattooist of Auschwitz comes to mind - find enormous success more because of the gripping real-life stories they tell than their writing style or the depth of their characterisation. But what are the literary risks when a book's message, the immensity of its concerns, dominate and the author isn't a Dickens?