Today I'm Alice by Alice Jamieson Pan, HK$100
Theirs was a model nuclear family, writes Alice Jamieson. Her father was a proud solicitor and her mother a glamorous secretary. With her brother Clive, who was four years older than her, they were considered educated, kind and a bit old-fashioned. But shiny, happy people they were not. Jamieson's father molested her before she even understood what was happening to her, and shared his daughter with other paedophiles. When she confronted him as an adult, he raped her at knifepoint. Readers should be prepared to be disturbed by Jamieson's story. Although it falls into the misery-lit genre, it offers more than just episode after episode of suffering and may help others who have been abused. Jamieson, for whom the trauma began at two, coped in different ways: as a teenager she stopped eating, took drugs, cut herself and developed multiple personality disorder. From 16, she began hearing the voices of what would become her nine 'alters', among them five-year-old Billy; JJ, 10, who liked adult company; and Kato, who was into harming himself. Jamieson wrote the book for herself as much as for others. One can't help hoping the therapy worked.