In the opening chapters of Nicola Dinan’s debut novel, Ming, an intelligent young playwright from Kuala Lumpur, is seen from the perspective of adorably awkward Tom. They fall for each other at a British university, where Ming presents as a fey boy with an air of self-possession. But the lovers wake in bedsheets drenched from night sweats, a side effect of the citalopram prescribed for Ming’s OCD. Ming’s mother, and lodestar, died six years ago. Tom learns about Ming’s vulnerabilities in