Kim
Awful, harmful advice.
Brain rewiring does NOT cure your physiological illness. There is a lot to like in the book (it's Miranda after all) but also many cure suggestions/reasons for recovery that have no scientific basis, that have been debunked, and that are more likely to cause (potentially significant) harm to people with ME or Long Covid.
Please don't buy into it.
Read the updated NICE guidelines on ME, reach out to ME charities and to the amazing online chronic illness community instead.
I listened to the audiobook version of this (not available to select as an edition on Goodreads for some reason), and it was a beautiful, evocative and interesting listen.
If you love horses, history and nature then this book is for you. The author takes us on a beautifully evocative hack through the British landscape and across different eras. From pit ponies to war horses, and poetry to conservation grazing.
The narration is exquisite but I knocked off a star for some seriously mispronounced words that I'm guessing the narrator was unfamiliar with (like livery) which unfortunately jarred what was otherwise a riveting listen.
So bad I returned it to Audible unfinished and got my credit back!
Addiction is an awful thing and he's clearly been through some tough times. But this comes across as a wealthy privileged man whining constantly about how hard done by he is, all whilst bragging about spending vast sums of money and all the women he's slept with.
Could I be any more disappointed?!
Exquisitely written and beautifully read on the audiobook. A vivid, insightful and heartfelt journey through growing up on a lakeland farm, the hardships farming entails and how modern farming needs to evolve to both feed everyone and restore nature - all whilst trying remain a sustainable and viable livelihood for the farmer.
A must-read for anyone who eats food!
Extraordinary book but extremely harrowing. Needs to come with a trigger warning for kidnap, rape and violent sexual assault.
I was not remotely prepared, but could not stop listening. I felt I had to endure, to bear witness, as my discomfort was nothing compared to that of the character.
And whilst a work of fiction, it does speak to the seemingly never-ending violence and sexual assault of women and girls that is still far too prevalent. It is not just happening in the dangerous places of the world, but to mothers, sisters, daughters and friends everywhere. It has to stop.
Trigger warnings for rape and violence, strong language and semi-spoilers ⚠️
I'm no prude but this book should have some form of warning on it.
The cover intrigued me, the blurb inside intrigued me and all of that was backed by the ringing endorsement from Neil Gaiman on the back. I had wanted to get it for months, I finally bought it on my birthday and couldn't wait to read it.
I have never been so disappointed in a book ever. Not because Marlon James isn't an extraordinary writer, he is and he paints an incredibly vivid world, but this book was so far from anything I expected. It is, in fact, utterly horrible. I've read dark fantasies before but this is in a whole other level....
I nearly gave up after the first page when a man fucks a goat. (It's not the only mention of beastiality - there's more)
I nearly gave up when every single female character (the number of which I can count on one hand) turned out to be either a witch or a whore.
I nearly gave up at the mention of fgm
I nearly gave up at the endless description of men and women as just a collection of holes to be fucked. It is all cocks and cum, like the very worst porn.
It is literally page after page after page of excessive, extreme and very graphic rape and violence.
I kept going because he won the Man Booker Prize and I felt he deserved to be heard, I kept going because I've never given up on a book yet. I kept going because behind the horror was a fascinating story that was so unfortunately drowned out by everything else.
I have never been so relieved to finish a book before! Unless this is very much your cup of tea, do yourself a favour and don't read this.
It could have been a 4, it could also have been a 2. 3 is my compromise and here's why.
It is exquistly written in places, particularly the parts set in the Australian outback. It has a clever engrossing story and a stunning depth of landscape. So, what is the problem?
The female characters. It could well just be me but I found them two dimensional, no depth, very little heart and virtually no personality. Every one of them is decribed solely by their looks - in relation to how attractive they are, and whether or not they are worthy of fucking. There is nothing to them, they are quite literally the series of the holes that several of the male characters describe them to be.
I'm so sick and tired of reading these stereotypical tropes. It's 2019 and I know I bought the book a few year ago now, but come on already. If it hadn't been such a constant theme I would have seen it as characterisation, but there are tones of it throughout the book.
In the acknowledgements the author talks about his wife in a way that makes me think much, much better of him than I did as I was reading the book.
Dear Mr Cargill, you thank your all-male reading team in your acknowledgements, please please include some women next time to offer a different perspective.
Read this based on the number of stars it had received. It is helpful but very short with a fair amount of repetition. I also found myself resenting the author's insistence that she knows what sort of person the reader was before they were diagnosed. “A go-getter who always went the extra mile and loved keeping fit”. What if you weren't? What if you'd not been particularly sporty?
Also the insistence that you only have ME if you are at the severe end of the spectrum. Does that mean the rest of us are suffering from the very psychiatric disorder that the book is attempting to disprove?
I went in to the book eager for answers and support but came away feeling “othered”. I'm sure that isn't the intent, and maybe it was just my perception of it, but just wanted to offer a slight word of caution to others newly diagnosed.
I so wanted to like this book but it's much too Mills & Boony for my taste. All corseted flouncy gowns and delicate, pretty girls, who are either good or naughty, or need rescuing by handsome chiselled young men.
The concept was good and elements of the story were enchanting, but there were so many cliched characters, it's such a shame. Yes her father was an evil bastard but even when the character described herself as damaged I just didn't believe it.
I guess I need more grit and less icing sugar from my romances!
Like a few reviews I've just read, for some reason this book didn't call out to me as much as some other feminist literature that had been suggested over the last year and a half. I don't know why, and it would seem others don't know either. Is it because we've been repeatedly told that shrill women are shrew-ish, have annoying voices or are aggressive? If so, it highlights how ingrained misogyny is into our lives and our beliefs.
Either way, if this book is what being shrill is really all about then we should all want to be more shrill. She takes on fat-shaming, rape jokes, internet trolls and not allowing society to keep pushing women back into the seen-but-not-heard box.
Fat or thin, shrill or otherwise, this really is a must-read. Hell it even got me writing this review! Not only that but it got me thinking about how I really need to change my attitude towards my own fat body away from one of loathing and disgust.
I have finished this book with mixed feelings. On the one hand it brought issues to life for me that had previously only touched the edges of my conscience and never before set seed. Having read this I can't not take up the cause of fighting for women's health and education and an end to violence against women and the abolishment of the sex slave trade.
However, I got frustrated with their appearance descriptions of the women whose stories they shared. Maybe it's a writing style I'm not used to, but I felt it unnecessary to tell me that so-and-so was stocky with a round face, or had waist length dirty blonde hair. It jarred, particularly against the experiences of these women and particularly as there were photos of each one so I could see for myself the real person, not the writers' view of their appearance.
More worrying for me was the call for male circumcision. Limited searches have shown that whilst there is some evidence that it can reduce the spread of HIV, UK scientists disagree with their American counterparts in the interpretation of the limited studies that have taken place. The NHS think this may be down to cultural bias, with circumcision being popular in the US.
I loved the idea of the microloans, so instantly searched GlobalGiving and Kiva, however what I found was a sense of mis-selling in the book. From a Kiva perspective you dont actually support a pancake seller in Kabul, their loans will already have been given before their pictures and stories ever reach the site. Does that create less reason to give? It shouldn't but the appeal was to support an actual individual rather than the cause. I cant afford any of the sponsorship schemes out there so had hoped the micro loan idea might be a suitable alternative.
Anyway, just my tuppence-worth. The book is still an absolute must-read if you want to educate yourself on the issues that women face across the globe.
