Imi
This abridged audiobook on BBC Radio 4 was an entertaining way to spend an hour or so, but I'm not going to be rushing out to read the book in full. This satisfied me enough. I like Jo Brand a lot and I enjoyed learning more about her life. This is more of memoir on “what my life has taught me” than a real “self-help” book. Nothing here, especially in terms of practical advice, is particularly original, but I enjoyed her mantra of “lower your expectations”; Jo is all about giving it go, living your life your way, and just seeing where it takes you.
The pattern I've noticed which each of the 3 books of this trilogy is that the beginnings and endings are remarkably strong, but the middles drag somewhat or go slightly awry. I was also disappointed yet again in May's characterisation of the women in protagonist Fin's life. Having said that, the trilogy is worth a read for its strengths; namely, the wonderful sense of place and atmosphere, and the relationships and understanding Fin shared with his male friends and family.
I did not find the central mystery as intriguing as in the first of the trilogy and I definitely don't think it was as strong a book overall, but I loved so much being returning to this part of the world, and all the wonderful atmospheric touches May adds to his descriptions of the land and its people. In fact, I enjoyed this part of the book so much that I think I'm going to start the final part of the trilogy immediately. It's a shame that there was little suspense in this book due to the flashbacks and the reader always being one step ahead of our “investigation”, Fin. I was also fairly frustrated by what I thought was a repeat from the first book; Spoilerthat is, the relationship between Johnny and Ceit as children felt like a complete copy of Fin and Marsailli's as childhood sweethearts. I think May needs to write both stronger female characters and stronger romantic relationships. This all felt more of the same.... Most of all, I hope the main mystery is stronger and more tense in the final book.
The beginning, with all its mystery and suspense, was spectacular, eerie, intense, and disquieting. I loved the mysterious Area X, a land so bizarre and imaginative, you couldn't help be carried away with it. Four women, a psychologist, a surveyor, an anthropologist, and our narrator, the biologist, are the twelfth expedition into this land and know surprisingly little on what they'll find there. Personally, I felt the novel fell apart somewhat towards the end. The plot disintegrated and drifted into the nonsensical. As this is only the first in a trilogy, I suppose that ending was designed to leave the reader with questions. I will most likely read the second book at some point, but I hope it is tighter than the second half of this one, and brings the reader closer to the centre of the story.
2.5 stars? For a dystopian novel, the premise really didn't seem that radical or far from our current state, and I can't say if that works in the book's favour or not. I was touched most by Ro's (the “biographer”) story in particular. I can sympathise with her self-doubt and desperate questions of her own motives and desires, while feeling unfulfilled and disillusioned by life. The rest of the novel, however, felt all over the place. Each of the female narrators are given, I think ironically, a name referring to their failed roles: The Biographer, The Wife, The Daughter, and The Mender. Unfortunately, I just felt that all 5 of these characters were lacking depth. The reveals of the coincidental connections between these characters also felt forced. The choppy writing style was jarring initially, but it did grow on me as the book went on, and I felt it gave the novel a good, urgent pace. All in all, this book felt more like a concept or experiment that didn't quite pay off for me, even if I liked some of the ideas.
Emptiness wasn't empty at all; it was a thick block of solid no sound, no-presence. An empty room was filled with all the things that weren't in it. A person could drown in silence.
Such a devastating read about a single day in the downward spiral of a middle-aged, alcoholic woman. My overriding thought is that if absolutely any of the inspiration for this book came from the author's own personal experience, I really hope she's in a better place now and writing this story helped her. The writing itself suffered from feeling slightly forced and stilted in places, but it felt like an honest, realistic portrayal of alcoholism and it hurts to think that so many people have been through such an experience.
A novel in stories, 21 of them, each narrated by a different resident of small Irish town amid the financial crisis of the late 2000s. It's remarkable that despite this giant number of perspectives, most of which use a similar dialect, Ryan has managed to make each voice distinct and its own. That really is a triumph, and I say that after starting the book with some reservations about this particular structure, and personally I do think 21 narrators is slightly too many for such a short book. There are characters that could have been the focus of whole books, and they made such an impression on me within just a few pages. In some ways I do think it's a shame that each characters' moment passes by so quickly. No narrator is repeated, even though many characters recur and reappear through another's perspective. Surprisingly, this isn't just a collection of experiences in one small town, but does have a cohesive storyline made from the communal and interlocking events and ideas. It's a bleak, sad and lonely story, and it can overwhelming and crushing at times, especially with how crude and depressing the outlooks of many of the characters are, so I have to say I am glad this wasn't much longer. That's saying something for such a short book, but I think Ryan had the idea by not allowing it to overstay it's welcome. What's here is marvelous and, as this is my first by Ryan, I am very much looking forward to reading more by him.
I am falling more and more in love with these kind of novels on quiet, domestic life. The focus may be small, confined to the silence and unspoken secrets of a single elderly married couple, but the emotional impact is vast. Eva and Simon have lived a lifetime of decisions, both good and bad, and of words or silence, those important words that were left unsaid. Now, as Eva struggles to care for Simon as he falls into the further silence of dementia, she worries that they've left it too late to say what must be said. Both have their secrets, and I won't spoil what they are, as the readers' experience of the initial silence is so important to the development of the story. A beautiful and sad little story about loneliness even in a seemingly loving marriage.
The ending made this for me (Spoileryou are cruel, Sarah Waters, so cruel....I love it!), but that's not enough for me to change my opinion on the rest of the book; this is by far the weakest novel I've read from Sarah Waters so far. The major theme is the Victorian obsession with the supernatural: séances, mediums, and spirit guides... Personally, I've never really been that interested in this area as a theme, and that's perhaps the biggest reason for my ambivalence throughout. I also can't say I was that taken with either of the leading ladies; SpoilerSelina seemed sketchy throughout, that much was obvious, and Margaret...well, I can't say I'm that upset about her losing out on a happy ending! I really didn't like her that much as a character. No where near as much of pager turner as [b:Fingersmith 8913370 Fingersmith Sarah Waters https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348622459s/8913370.jpg 1014113], although you can tell it is the same writer who went on to write that masterpiece. They have the same DNA. It's a shame that Affinity left it right to the very last few pages to really do anything interesting with its premise, unlike the marvellous [b:The Little Stranger 7234875 The Little Stranger Sarah Waters https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407105269s/7234875.jpg 5769396] in which perfects the slow-burn, slow-drip of information storytelling and wonderfully plays with the paranormal element of the story throughout. In short, this is by no means a bad book, but it feels somewhat like a prototype to the later novels Waters goes on to write, that I really, truly love.
3.5 stars? This is a challenging read, for many, many reasons, and took me some time to start getting used to it and really be able to take it all in.
The ending is set in place from the beginning. This is the bitter, harsh reality of real life. The reader watches as the inevitable happens, horrified but unable to look away. Set in Portland in the US state of Oregon, Grace is an addict trying to remain sober, while her eldest son Champ becomes a dealer to make a living, feeling he has no other choice with the cards he's been dealt. The bond between these two is so strong and special, and that makes it all the more heartbreaking when things gradually full apart. Perhaps it was always the hardest to see how Grace could remain sober and get back her younger sons; the passages detailing what she is up against are harrowing:
It's like lightning, like love, like the cure. And if you haven't felt it you can't judge—or at least shouldn't. If you haven't felt it, how could you ever really know what us addicts, us experts, are up against in this life of programs and counselors and sponsors, what we face because of or in spite of our earned expertise?[...]They say and they say and it sounds so easy, as if living clean is no more than hitting the right switch, as if it takes something less than heroics to face history dead-on, to accept the life we've earned.
Say it first and believe it second; that's my psalm.
A mixed bag, which is a shame, because once Ball got to the core of his argument it was a good read. Mildy outdated already, of course, but that's just the nature of writing about current affairs, and I was sure it would be when starting the book. My main problem was that a large chunk of the book was yet another blow-by-blow account of both Trump's raise to power in the US and the triumph of the Leave campaign in the UK's Brexit referendum. I have two problems with this. Firstly, unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, you've already heard this a million times over, and, secondly, focusing on these examples I think gives the false impression that misinformation or “bullshit”, as Ball calls it, is unique to this time period in these two Western countries. I know this isn't what Ball is suggesting at all, as he says himself in the (better) later chapters, but then why put such a focus on these two examples? Why not compare and contrast different countries with different political systems at different time periods? This seemed like odd omission, and I think adding this would have given more depth to Ball's argument and would have got us closer to defining exactly what “bullshit” is and how it's come about. The strongest chapter, in my opinion, was chapter 9, called “Why we fall for it”, which goes into concepts like “confirmation bias”, the “backfire effect”, “conformity”, and other psychological and social reasons which go some way in explaining why groups and individuals are inclined to believe information from one source, while disregarding information from another. Fascinating stuff and an area I'd like to read more on in the future. Fortunately, Ball has provided a wonderful bibliography at the end of the book to get you started. So not a bad read overall, even if I skimmed some chapters.
I first read this as a teenager, and remembered very few details of the plot or its characters before starting this re-read, other than the novel being about a devoutly religious, Nigerian family. I'm surprised I forgot just what a towering, domineering figure the father was in the family. This is a family drama or coming-of-age story, set against a backdrop of a deteriorating political climate. The book is brought to life by its incredible cast of characters, particularly the women Amaka, Aunty Ifeoma and even our protagonist Kambili, who is really brought out of her shell as the plot moves forward. Above all, I was impressed by how Adichie handled the relationship between Kambili, demonstrating how complex such a relationship can be, as Kambili both loves and fears a man who is neither only good or only bad. I was less comfortable with Kambili's relationship with Father Amadi, and didn't feel this really added anything to the book when the familial relationships were so strong. Finally, the ending took me by surprise (I know, I know, it really shouldn't have with this being a reread!), because it felt like something I imagined could happen, but never really expected to come about. Highly recommended for those who enjoy complex and well constructed coming-of-age novels.
Honestly, it's sad fact of (reading) life that in a series like this it's impossible to not compare a new addition to its predecessor(s). Force of Nature is the second book in Jane Harper's crime series, and for me, sadly, it did not reach the heights of [b:The Dry 27824826 The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1) Jane Harper https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1456113132s/27824826.jpg 47804789]. I love Harper's characters; Aaron Falk, the protagonist, is fantastic, as are lots of the secondary characters introduced in this and in The Dry, that may or may not reappear later series. I cannot wait to see how they will develop as characters as the series goes on. Unfortunately, I had a hard time accepting the reason for Falk's, and his colleague Carmen Cooper's, involvement in this missing person case. Falk just did not seem as necessary to the story as he was in The Dry. The book's structure was also problem for me, as the reader follows the missing person search in the present, then in alternate chapters flashbacks to the past to see what happened in the days, hours, and minutes before the disappearance. This meant the first half of the book was overly repetitive and also, I felt, diminishes the tension; we know already who survives, who gets out, who is injured... Having said that, the last quarter or third or so was fantastic, with the tension ramping right back up leading to the conclusion. I just think it's a shame the book felt like it was plodding along up to then. The Dry was so atmospheric, so tense, with such high stakes, that I can't help but be let down by this, but I'm still immensely excited to see how this series develops. Harper's characterisation remains impeccable, she just needed a tighter plot and structure to make this more than an average thriller. Here's hoping she achieves that in book #3!
People with no experience of God tend to think that leaving the faith would be a liberation, a flight from guilt, rules, but what I couldn't forget was the joy I'd known, loving Him.
Eerie and unsettling. I went into this debut novel knowing very little about it and I'm wary of saying too much in this review. I'm not going to discuss any definite spoilers, but in some ways reading any reviews before the book may change the reading experience.
The Incendiaries accounts the slow unraveling and descent of college student Phoebe from failed piano prodigy to a radicalised reglious extremist, mostly through the eyes of her boyfriend, Will. You know the result of Phoebe's descent within the first few pages, so this is one of those book's where the question isn't “what happens” but “why”. And even that question is never fully answered.
What is unusual about the book is how Kwon plays with narrative and perspective. Initially, it seems like the chapters are split between 3 different perspectives: Will, Phoebe and John Leal. In fact, Will is the only true narrator and it, and the other chapters are filtered through his perspective. These chapters are his imaginings of what he thinks the other characters are thinking or purely his second hand accounts. Will's narrow minded and increasingly obsessive nature mean his constructs of the other two characters cannot be trusted. By the end, the reader knows very little about either Phoebe or John Leal. The fact that at times the reader can never be too sure whether the “I” speaking is Will or not only adds to the confusion. Kwon also avoids using speech marks (a trend I usually dislike in contemporary fiction, but do think works here) making the reading experience all the more disorienting. In the chapters from “Phoebe”'s perspective, Kwon never lets you forget that this “Phoebe” is a construction of Will's imagination. It's unsettling and disturbing, and I wonder if Kwon meant to make use of this plot device as a way to imitate (and, consequently, bring attention to) the way that many males (writers or otherwise) distort and shadow the female perspective... Phoebe's lack of voice is troubling, but then again I think that was the point.
So I can see what Kwon was aiming to do with the perspective, and while I did find it very effective, I also still had my reservations with it. Personally, I don't think the chapters from “John Leal”'s perspective were necessary and they did disrupt the reading flow, in my opinion. The fact that most of them were so short only added to my feeling that they were superfluous.
Will's obsession with Phoebe is what really terrified me, and this must have been related to the book's key question on gaining and losing one's faith and religious beliefs. While Will is tormented by his recent loss of faith and, perhaps, finds his obsession for Phoebe as some kind of replacement for religion, Phoebe finds herself moving from faithlessness (or disinterest? or ambivalence?) to an increasingly radicalised religious view, perhaps as a coping mechanism, perhaps as a replacement to the structured life of practice for a young, promising musician. The sense of loss Will feels, the void in his life where religion once was, is made all the more painful as he observes Phoebe's transformation. This complex emotional struggle, and the contradictions and ironies surrounding it, are at the core of The Incendiaries.
In sum, an incredibly powerful and emotive debut, disturbing in more ways than one, and I am most definitely going to be looking out to whatever Kwon does next.
...and so by making the promise he demanded she make she was in a sense killing him, but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.Wow, I'm having a good run of books recently! This one was achingly beautiful.
For a book about so many big issues (love, war, migration, homelessness, and civil unrest) it's surprisingly short and simple. I love that Exit West is a book of the moment, clearly about the state of our world currently, but it demonstrates this through the lense of one couple, Nadia and Saeed. Mostly, anyway. It's a strange combination of the very intimate and the distant. The situation is clearly meant to be seen as universal, and Hamid shows this through use of an omniscient narrator and, now and again, by moving focus to another citizen of the globe, outside of the lives of our two protagonists. Sometimes this worked for me, sometimes it didn't. Personally, I feel the emotional impact was at its strongest when the focus was the most intimate.
Hamid makes use of very, very subtle magical realism. So subtle in fact that I barely noticed it was there in the first half of the book. This was a bit of shame to me, personally, because it almost felt like it needn't have been there in the first place. But then, at least it will not be distracting to those who aren't fans of magical realism (I am, so I think this comes down to personal taste).
What really elevates this book to another level is Hamid's undeniably gorgeous prose. Oh my word. I highlighted so many passages, so much that was brimming with bitter truth, such as this description of grief:
...wept only when he was alone in his room, silently, without tears, his body seized as though by a stutter, or a shiver, that would not let go, for his sense of loss was boundless, and his sense of the benevolence of the universe was shaken...
She was uncertain what to do to disarm the cycles of annoyance they seemed to be entering into with one another, since once begun such cycles are difficult to break, in fact the opposite, as if each makes the threshold for irritation next time a bit lower, as is the case with certain allergies.
The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.
Exit West
I very rarely borrow books from friends. For some reason, I have a highly irrational fear that I'll never give them their book back, plus I own so many unread books already, it doesn't make much sense to add to the ever growing tbr list. But when a friend brought up having just finished this book, and I blurted out a rushed request to borrow the book and got ready to beg for it if necessary. I had to read this book, immediately.
I don't even know where to start this review. In many ways, it's an utterly terrifying read. You've heard it (and ignored it) a million times before; proper sleep is the best thing you can do for your health. But Matthew Walker, a neurologist and sleep researcher, sets out to explain exactly why. So much of this book just makes so much sense. Scarily so. I have lived this. You have lived this. We all have. Even if “lack of sleep” isn't recorded as the cause of death on your death certificate, it's highly likely it contributed to whatever is. It's incredible we have ignored how damaging sleep deprivation is to both individuals and society as a whole. I don't know how anyone could argue with any of Walker's conclusions he has made here in this highly detailed but accessible exploration of all aspects of sleep.
A lot of the insights into sleep hygiene were not news to me. I have a fatigue and sleep related chronic illness, and I am well versed in proper sleep hygiene, because it is one of the only methods I've been able to find that makes a genuine difference to my quality of life. I've always believed this is not unique to me, and that we could all vastly improve our quality of lives if we paid more attention to our sleep. It's just if I get it wrong and let stop paying enough attention, the consequences are a little more....obvious. And immediate. But really the consequences are there for everybody and Walker does a fantastic job in explaining the long term and deadly consequences of cheating yourself from proper sleep. If you are the kind of person who boasts about not needing sleep and sleep being a waste of time, then read this book! Yes, you may be able to just about function in the short term, but it really isn't worth it.
Perhaps the scariest part of the book for me, personally, was how much of sleep is still a mystery and how little science has progressed in this area over the years. One possible explanation for this, as Walker demonstrates, is that the Big Pharma industry just doesn't consider sleep science to be a profitable endeavour and, therefore, has no interest it. The money and consequently the faster paced research is more likely to be directed into more profitable areas. This lack of interest in the medical research community has real-world consequences for many, but especially those who are left to deal with a poorly understood sleeping disorder. Walker underlines this by using the case of narcolepsy as an example:
Overall, the treatment outlook for narcoleptic patients is bleak at present, and there is no cure in sight. Much of the treatment fate of narcolepsy sufferers and their families resides in the slower-progressing hands of academic research, rather than the more rapid progression of big pharmaceutical companies. For now, patients simply must try to manage life with the disorder, living as best they can.
Thoughts immediately after finishing:I am utterly destroyed. I hope to write a full review soon of this remarkable book. I hope I can do it justice. It's an entirely different beast to [b:Fingersmith 8913370 Fingersmith Sarah Waters https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348622459s/8913370.jpg 1014113], but brilliant in its own way. I can see why it's divided opinion, but I'm sad I let that put me off picking it up for so long. Although, having said that, I do really understand why some felt so negatively about it. It is such a dark, miserable, soul-sucking book. But, for some reason, I couldn't get enough of reading it and was transfixed. Wow. I don't think I've been so affected by a book for a long, long time. Sarah Waters, you are a marvel.Full review:(I wrote this full review way quicker than expected, because I've been thinking about this book all damn day, but I may to have to add to it later with more thoughts, because I have so many feelings and my thoughts are a mess, and I don't think I'm anywhere near narrowing down on what one earth was going on here?!)Brilliant, subtle, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling... Do not go into this book expecting a straight haunted house/ghost story, even if that's what it seems like at the outset, and do not expect to come out knowing all the answers. The Little Stranger is a slow burn, remarkably different to the equally marvellous Fingersmith with all its drama, twists and turns. I beg you to give The Little Stranger a chance, open-minded and with your expectations kept in check, because if you can do that, the reward is just as thrilling.Waters remains a master of creating an exquisite sense of time and place; Hundreds Hall in The Little Stranger is a dream setting and a worthy new entry on my “settings as characters” shelf. The hall is a crumbling, overly extravagant, staggering relic of a bygone era, so at odds with the changing world around it in late 1940s Warwickshire. Certainly, there is no better place for a good, gothic ghost story, right? And it's exactly this expectation in the reader that Waters plays with...I think Waters' stroke of genius was to use the narrator Dr Faraday as the readers' glimpse into this lost world. Born to working class parents and having built his medical career from the ground up, Faraday seems unaware at just how bitter he has become, or even obsessed, with the upper classes, thanks to a generations long class system that was still in full force during his younger years. At the same time, he is clearly spellbound by the Hall's long lost promise of glamour and wealth. Even in the dying days of the British class system, Faraday seems obsessed with possibility that he could move into the ranks of the higher class... This conflict is played beautifully against other markers of change, such as the construction of a council estate in the Hall's former grand parks, and, most importantly, the impending birth of the National Health Service, a change that will undoubtedly impact a doctor such as Faraday, while blurring the lines between the classes even further.The Ayres family, Mrs Ayres and her grown up children Caroline and Roderick, have been left with the burden and expectation from their former generations, a dwindling fortune, as well as the gigantic responsibility of Hundreds Hall. The family appear broken, defeated by past tragedies and falling apart at the seams, just like the house itself. The reader is lulled into a false sense of security, both pitying and admiring the family, but believing that other than that they seem nothing more remarkable than an old family unable to adapt. But slowly, very slowly, it becomes clear that something is dreadfully wrong. But is it the house or the family? Faraday tries his best to remain rational and reasonable, as events unravel before them, becoming more horrifying and unexplainable than ever...To sum up:1. If you want a happy read, then this is not your book.2. If you want a ghost story, then maybe this is not your book.3. If you want a page turner, then it's very likely that this is not your book. It became a page turner for me as the tension ramped up, but it takes it time to get there. Allow yourself to revel in the quiet, creepy atmosphere, and you will find your patience is rewarded.Now, it's time for THEORIES and other spoilery thoughts! Sarah Waters leaves so many options open for interpretation that I must discuss theories! But, do not, I repeat, do not read on until you are entirely finished with the novel...SpoilerI personally think it's very clear at the end of the book that Faraday is the culprit behind all of this tragedy. The question for me is more whether the guilty party was a supernatural force triggered by Faraday (ala, Seeley's poltergeist theory; Faraday first suspects Caroline to be the source, but I think it's clearly Faraday, whether he knows it himself or not), or the physical man himself (a doctor could have clearly tampered with medication to cause delusions, and furthermore, like happens all too frequently, it is only the doctor's word against the supposedly mentally ill patient that they are delusions). I may need to re-read the book to make sure this works right from the start of events, so bear with me, but I'm sure that Waters was hinting at Faraday being the root cause. Further, Faraday may be a very, very unreliable narrator and it's hard to bring that all together on first read... And I love that this was such a subtle, ambiguous ending, because I'm certainly going to be thinking about these theories for a long time to come!Either way, supernatural theory or physical man theory, I see Faraday as an abuser, one who slowly isolates and alienates his victim (Caroline) from her relatives and friends one by one to gain power and what he wants (ultimately, the house). His reaction to Caroline calling off the wedding was utterly terrifying, and then, in the final chapter, his letting himself into the empty house with the keys he still carries was just as creepy and unsettling.I also think this theory would fit with the title, “The Little Stranger”. Faraday is clearly the stranger that forces himself into the life of the family, and “little” could rather to his lower class roots, perhaps? Of course, “The Little Stranger” could also mean the supernatural force/ghost, but I think, even in possible ghost form, Susan, the dead daughter, was much less a “stranger” than Faraday. The ending with Faraday looking at his own reflection cemented this theory for me; he is the stranger haunting the house.The thing that kills me the most is that all 3 members of the Ayres family brought up needing to leave the house behind. They clearly saw the danger, and whether the cause of their downfalls was supernatural or not, they knew they weren't safe there. Shame Faraday was there the whole time to tell they were just crazy, right?
I'm relatively new to reading contemporary poetry, and am still learning what works for me personally, and what doesn't. I spent a long time reading and re-reading the poems from this collection, hoping it would eventually click, but something about it felt removed, closed off, and I can't say it resonated with me much overall. There are a lot of different and interesting themes and topics, but I couldn't help feeling I'd prefer to read them in a different form. The few poems that I liked more were ‘Deadly' (on Creation and destruction), ‘Ash' (a personified haunted house), and the few domestic poems towards the end, such as ‘4½' (about being woken by your child in the early morning) and ‘The Everlasting Self' (about a dog shaking water from itself). The historical poems, mainly on the aftermath of the American civil war, make up the bulk of the collection, and although I was interested in the topic itself, the poems themselves seemed to smother the subject. I wanted those stories to be told in another way. All in all, Smith's style was clearly not a good fit for me, but I'm glad I took the chance to try something new.
3.5 stars. This wasn't a book I fell in love with straight away, but it grew on me and the ending was so beautiful that I had to knock it up a star (or a half, if we could). A frustrating read at times. This is due, firstly, to the pure stubbornness of many of the characters, which leads to predictable, inevitable scenarios that the reader can see coming from a mile off. It also, I felt, made the plot feel fairly repetitive. The other reason I found this book frustrating is that it seemed Coster was trying to cover so many issues at once (gentrification, dysfunctional family relationships, classism, loss, the importance of “home”, generational shifts....), which while all very interesting and worthy of exploration made it difficult for the reader become swept away in the overarching story. Perhaps, this debut novel was overly long and needed some trimming, because having said all that what is here was fantastic. Coster has crafted characters with a multitude of flaws that are still possible to understand and feel sympathy towards. Not a perfect book by any means, and I wasn't on board the whole way through, but there was a lot I loved and I've certainly taken a lot from it. Really intrigued to see how Coster develops as an author and what she writes next!
Someone asked me once if, side by side, I could have a perfect version of my violin or the version that I have, which one would I choose? It's hard to say I wouldn't choose the perfect one, because I've never heard it, never held it, never taken it out of its case, but its imperfections were what made my violin my violin, what made it almost human. I needed those imperfections, needed to coax out the brilliance that lay within its damaged frame. I loved my violin, but I also had compassion for it. It had been through hard times, lived a lot. It was safe now, and my duty was to let it grow in confidence play it as it should be played.
Kym has a gift. She became a child prodigy when she started to play the violin as a child and the violin has shaped her life ever since. Sadly, she's not quite as gifted at writing. This memoir is written in a way that feels clunky, stilted, and disorganised. In one of the very last chapters, Kym herself admits she skipped over something of vital significance when telling her story:
It's still hard to talk about, which is why it comes now, and isn't running through the story. I'd put it away, like I put away so many things.
As a Wellcome Book Prize winner, this was a bit of disappointment. This is less a book about transhumanism than it is about O'Connell's own “journey”, as a journalist and a sceptical, bewildered outsider looking in on the movement. He spends more time trying to describe how “odd” these personalities are, which he's not wrong about, seeing as how most of them are quasi-religious, cult-like, and highly irrational, but he spends very little time exploring in depth the many scientific, moral, and existential issues that surround our growing reliance on technology, and the possible future uses of technology to extend life and modify the human body. Yes, there may currently be very little scientific support for the beliefs of many of the people in this book, but that doesn't mean these questions and discussions should be dismissed as “sci-fi” or modern day forms of religion. Technology has dramatically changed our world over time, and will surely continue to do so in the future, even if it is not in the ways today's transhumanists want, so it was disappointing how insubstantial and surface-level this book felt in exploring these issues.
When I made starting to read contemporary poetry one of my ‘reading goals' for this year, this was exactly what I was hoping to find. Reading this collection was a tremendous experience from start to finish. I read it slowly, a poem at a time, taking the time to re-read lines over and over to get the full experience, and still I did not want it to end. I'll be coming back to these very soon, I believe.
Moore is a poet from my local area. Indeed, I discovered from recommendations from friends who have seen her live readings, including one who is a poet herself and is lucky enough to have Moore as a friend and mentor. The wonderful sense of place of many of Moore's poems blew me away. Is it possible to feel homesick for place I am currently living in right now and actually most of the time feel desperate to escape from? Somehow, Moore managed to bring up these emotions in me, particularly in the first of the three sections. The poems in this section touched on themes of family, growing up working class, and of the local area and its sense of home. Here are a few of my favourites from this first section:
- ‘A Psalm for the Scaffolders' is a wonderful celebration of the workers and scaffolders, like the speaker's father. I love the feeling of movement and space and height that the poem's form allows.
- I clearly remember the subject of ‘The Messiah, St. Bees Priory', the Cumbrian shootings of 2010. I honestly got chills at the moment, halfway through my first read of the poem, when I realised the poem's subject, remembering that time, “when villages, hardly talked about before / were the names on everybody's lips.“
- I loved the personification of a house in the poem ‘In Praise of Arguing', the chaos and again the movement that Moore seems to do so well.
- ‘Barrow to Sheffield' a poem recounting a train journey, the character of the land and this area.
The second section recounts an abusive relationship, nearly chronologically, from the earlier poems seemingly written in the moment, to later in the section where the speaker is reminiscing and trying to make sense of the past. I ended this section in tears; it was exceedingly powerful and emotionally overwhelming. Here is an example of just one moment that really shook me, of which there were many, from ‘Your Name' on p.41:
Because they tried to make me say your name, the shame and blame and frame of it, the dirty little game of it, the dark and distantheart of it, the cannot be a part of it, the bringing back the taste of it till I was changedinside the flame of it, the cut and slap and shutof it, the rut and fuck and muck of it,the not-forgotten hurt of it, the syllablestop-dead of it, the starting in the throat of it,the ending at the teeth of it.
For a long time I did not tell anyone I was writing a book about birds. Depending on my mood I referred to this book as "a project," "some bits of writing," and, finally, and probably most correctly: "a sketch book."
This quiet memoir is more a book about life and art (writing), than it is about birds. I went into it hoping for a gentle nature memoir, and although it was not quite what I was expecting, I felt it won me over pretty quickly, and for that reason I'd give it a 3.5 star rating.
Kyo Maclear is a Canadian mainly children's book author, who decides to take up a new hobby of bird watching in a difficult year; her father is aging and unwell, she feels her career is stalling, and she is raising two young sons who she cannot help but notice share a lot of her own insecurities about life. This is one of those “meta”-memoirs: writers talking about writing, artists talking about art...people who live talking about life? It is also, as Maclear states herself, more of a “sketch book”, or a selection of vignettes, rather than a cohesive, developing narrative. I find these kind of books can sometimes become wearisome, and feel overly self-indulgent and unfocused, like reading someone's rambling notes, rather than a clearly crafted “book”. And, yes, at times, I did feel this way about this memoir.
But having said that, Maclear writes beautifully and it was easy to give in to the escapist, calming feeling of reading her words. Even though there are many digressions and unfocused detours, the moments of beauty and insight made this an entirely worthwhile read. As you may have seen from my updates, I found many chapters of the book wonderfully perspective and quotable. In particular, the chapter on appreciating “smallness”:
To some people, the desire to do small things and stay small may be perceived as a cop-out, a self-protective position or form of pathological timidity and constriction.Small is a safe harbour. The smaller your goals, the less likely you are to be deflated or “cut down to size.” In this sense, a bias towards the small could be a version of low expectations. Or a form of feminized compliance, as in “I don't want to be seen as loud, fat, assertive, or ambitious”;
I want for every overextended person in my life stretches of unclaimed time and solitude away from the tyranny of the clock, vast space to get bored and lost, waking dreams that take us beyond the calculative surface of things
like the insight that I see the world through a red eye where blood and heart mean more than black and white.
Agbabi writes using both traditional and slightly more unusual forms, but her themes are undeniably of its time and place in modern day London. Agbabi writes about a number of different themes including racism, abuse and crime, as well as the role of art in today's world, from poetry to popular music.
The collection is split into 5 sections and I found some of these sections worked better for me than others. Mainly I liked the very first section ‘Shots' and the very last ‘Vicious Circle', that both book end the slightly more muddling middle (imo).
‘Shots' is made up of several fairly short and snappy poems, my favourites of which were ‘Seeing Red' (quoted above), a poem that introduces an important idea for the whole collection about colour and its meanings, and ‘Foreign Exchange', which compares colour and race with the feeling of shame and anger encountered when missing a linguistic translation.
‘Vicious Circle', at the end of the collection, is a single, narrative poem in long form. The dark story itself, one of deception, betrayal and a murder plot, and certain lines gave me chills.
In the middle sections, ‘Problem Pages' was an amusing idea (famous historical literary figures send in their questions and problems to literary agony aunt Patience who offers her advice) but became fairly repetitive after the first couple.
I really liked the sharp and visceral energy from this collection as a whole, even though some poems did not hit their mark.
3.5 stars rounded up. This started so strongly that I was a little disappointed with the book's latter stages, but I still think it was a whole lot of fun overall. This is my first of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, retellings of his plays by contemporary authors. I've seen mixed responses to most of the entries released so far, but I love the concept of the series and knew I had to give this one a go; Atwood is one of my favourite writers, and the idea of her re-imagining [b:The Tempest 12985 The Tempest William Shakespeare https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327793692s/12985.jpg 1359590], which is, in my opinion, one of his better and most absorbing plays, was just too good to pass up on.Atwood does a fantastic job, in my opinion. The idea (I won't give anything away) is highly original and clever, and allows Atwood to dissect many of the ideas, themes and details from the play, without becoming overly heavy and still remaining a fun read with a modern feel. Most definitely make sure you have read The Tempest itself before reading this. You need the background knowledge. It's years since I read it personally, but as it was always one of my favourites, I could remember the plot and characters quite well, so didn't have a problem.On the whole, I was surprised how easy going and fun this was to read. Atwood managed to explore the depth of the play, and really delve into the details, without losing a certain lightheartedness. This is not the intense and heavy experience of reading, for example, [b:The Handmaid's Tale 38447 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498057733s/38447.jpg 1119185] or, my personal favourite, [b:The Blind Assassin 78433 The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451445426s/78433.jpg 3246409]. Indeed, I'd say this is the easiest to read of Atwood's work (that I've read so far). Although, that's probably only the case if you have good knowledge of the play.The book's beginning was terrific, starting with the professional demise of the lead character, theatrical director Felix Phillips. This triggers his burning desire and scheming for revenge. The idea is slightly ridiculous, but it works so well when paired with a wonderful behind the scenes view into the wacky world of theatre. Felix himself is a character worthy of any Shakespeare play: bitter, self-absorbed, revengeful and just a touch eccentric.Sadly, I felt the book was at its weakest at the end. In the final part (Part V), the plot itself is over and this is the only point where Atwood drifts into didactic, literary ponderings. It's as if Atwood still had more she wanted to say about the play, despite her own book having reached its natural conclusion. This is such a shame when, throughout the rest of book, she'd done such a good job at weaving her discussions and observations about Shakespeare into the book's independent plot. My only other complaint is some of the awkward dialogue (read: raps) of some of the “youth” characters. At points this really read like an old lady trying to “get with the times” and just was not necessary. There's enough magic, wittiness, and fun to the book already that I really don't think Atwood needed to go as far when trying to contemporise the story.Despite those minor issues, I really enjoyed reading this, and can easily recommend it, especially if you are a fan of the original play. Atwood really does it justice!