"Bellies," by Nicola Dinan

When my friend SM recommends a book, I listen. Over the years, I have written here about several books she recommended to me. Today I write about a novel she recently spoke highly of: "Bellies" (Hanover Square Press, 2023), by Nicola Dinan. This novel is the kind I most like: about relationships. In this case, the relationships include those among friends, lovers, and sometimes family members. The two main characters here are Tom and Ming, two young men who meet in college and are both friends and lovers. They have a group of friends who have various gender and sexual identities. There is also an international context to their story, as they mainly live in London, but Ming is from Malaysia, and part of the story takes place there. Tom's and Ming's relationship is changed and complicated when Ming, who had earlier dated women, then men, begins transitioning to female. Tom and Ming truly care for each other, and continue to be a couple for a while, but their time together becomes more complex, more fraught, as they try to find their way through these evolving identities and circumstances. These two young people and their friends live in a world of privilege but at the same time of uncertainty and vulnerability. The novel is original and absorbing, and made me think about the complex intertwined identity issues portrayed. But the author never uses the characters just as examples of certain identities; they are distinct and mostly relatable young people whom the reader can empathize with.