Monthly Archives: July 2025

I read this in one sitting on a long flight and it was very satisfying. Mrs Dalloway is one of my all-time favorite novels so I am quite leery of re-tellings, but this one is effective, precisely because it doesn’t cleave too closely to the original (if you didn’t know, you might not even thinkContinueContinue reading “The Days of Afrekete, Asali Solomon”

What I kept thinking as I read this was man, Adichie really despises academics, and has a special place of rage reserved for ‘woke’ African American scholars. She is absolutely vicious skewering the hypocrisy and self-congratulatory elitism of Americans lecturing Africans about race. And while some of the critique is no doubt valid, it readsContinueContinue reading “Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”

Some 3/4 of the way through this book, Chihaya talks about reading other memoirs about depression, and says “Even now I find the genre difficult to face. After encountering Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation in college and feeling affronted both by how like and how utterly unlike it was to my experience of adolescence, I whollyContinueContinue reading “Bibliophobia, Sarah Chihaya”

I knew almost nothing about this before listening to the audiobook (the narrator is perfect), which meant that I could fully experience the gradual build-up of horror. It’s a terrifying book, all too true to our historical moment. But it’s made bearable by Smith’s trademark delight in language, and by something that is not hopeContinueContinue reading “Gliff, Ali Smith”