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I fully expected to dislike this, despite having admired A Woman’s Story, and the opening did make me roll me eyes a bit. Woman obsessed with man, can’t even function in her day-to-day life because she’s so obsessed with him. Yawn. I bemusedly thought: what a torment it would probably be to date Annie Ernaux!ContinueContinue reading “Simple Passion, Annie Ernaux, tr. Tanya Leslie”

Just some quick thoughts (with no real spoilers) — my last post, the list of books I wish I had had time to read this year but am looking forward to next year, included Emma Donoghue’s Haven, but I’m having doubts… So, listen. I will watch Florence Pugh in anything. I uncritically adore her. Yes,ContinueContinue reading “The Wonder”

Here it is, my Top 10 List of 2022 Books that likely would have been on my Top 10 List of 2022 Books Except I Didn’t Have Time to Read them; aka, my Top 10 List of Books I’m Really Hoping to Read in 2023: When We Were Sisters, Fatima AsgharLet There Be Light, LianaContinueContinue reading “Top 10 Books of 2022…that I haven’t read yet”

I read my 5yr old goodnight stories every night, and some months ago I realized that 5 might be the right age to start reading longer things. I tried Winnie the Pooh, but the chapters were a touch too long. I tried Captain Underpants, but he just…wasn’t into it. It was Halloween season, and he’dContinueContinue reading “The Little Witch, Otfried Preußler, tr. Anthea Bell”

The first thing that I read by Elena Poniatowska was The Heart of the Artichoke, a collection of her short stories, and I loved them. I immediately set out to find more of her writing, and quickly discovered that my entry point was not particularly representative of her work: most of it is in aContinueContinue reading “Leonora, by Elena Poniatowska, tr. Amanda Hopkinson”

It’s something of a truism that the Irish are masters of the short story, so no real surprise that this collection is fantastic. The first story sets you up beautifully for the rest: it’s about an artist whose sculpture of the Virgin Mary is smashed when it is learned that a woman posed nude forContinueContinue reading “The Untilled Field, George Moore”

I happened to go see The Banshees of Inisherin two days after I finished reading The Bell, and was struck by the thought that it succeeded in doing all the things that Murdoch had tried, but failed, to do in the novel. Both are works that combine an interest in realism, especially in character psychologyContinueContinue reading “The Banshees of Inisherin and The Bell, by Iris Murdoch”

I am told that there are quite a few novels that portray the pandemic, and the experience of lockdown, but I hadn’t read one yet (aside from the fleeting references in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet), so it was a new experience for me. Way back in 2008, I was enthralled at how the movie CloverfieldContinueContinue reading “The Sentence, Louise Erdrich”

Reviews of Glory inevitably discuss it in relation to Orwell’s Animal Farm, eagerly engaging with the question of how the novel functions as a political allegory of Mugabe’s downfall. Predictably, I am far more interested in the various other formal experiments that Bulawayo engages in, many of which continue the kinds of things she doesContinueContinue reading “Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo”

I spied this book on a display at J. Michaels Books in Eugene, Oregon, and this is the thing about a really excellent indie bookstore: their overall stock was so well curated, and the displays so thoughtfully put together, that I wanted to buy everything, because I knew that humans with excellent taste had consciouslyContinueContinue reading “The Verifiers, Jane Pek”