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| 0735210764
| B07CLBXMSG
| 3.74
| 7,036
| Jan 08, 2019
| Jan 08, 2019
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really liked it
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Simply exquisite! Seriously -- go out and get this book! :) FOLLOW ME HERE: The Navi Review Blog | Twitter | Instagram Simply exquisite! Seriously -- go out and get this book! :) FOLLOW ME HERE: The Navi Review Blog | Twitter | Instagram ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 25, 2018
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Jan 02, 2019
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Dec 07, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| 0385543875
| 9780385543873
| 0385543875
| 3.25
| 26,518
| May 24, 2018
| Jan 08, 2019
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really liked it
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Sudden love, when gifted to a habitually unloved person, can induce nausea. It can become a thing you would claw and debase yourself for. It is necess
Sudden love, when gifted to a habitually unloved person, can induce nausea. It can become a thing you would claw and debase yourself for. It is necessary to wean yourself onto it, small portions. Sophie Mackintosh’s debut novel, The Water Cure, is the story of three sisters living an occult existence on an island off “the mainland” one fateful summer when they have their first experience with men other than their father. There are two aesthetic items that really stood out to me about this book: the title, which is perfectly harmonious with the content, and the beautiful imagery of the cover, which accurately ties it all together. Both of these are fantastic representations of the bedrock of this book. Admittedly, The Water Cure started out rough, and I was tempted to put it down. Part one is a series of vignettes—short, broken glimpses into their world that failed to satisfy. There was not enough to fully hold on to. I found the first part of this three-part the novel to be yet another example of a narrative full of frilly words and curlicue phrases that all amounted to nothing—exposition that skirted the truth of their reality, trying to veil it or twirl around it in a way that was annoyingly (and often confusingly) evasive. I wished—no YEARNED—for Mackintosh to write head on instead of in a mass of purple prose nothingness. Luckily, I was offered some reprieve in Part Two, where the narrative style switches up a bit, though it never wanders too far from its narrative foundation of swirly prose writing. ENTER JAMES, LLEW AND GWIL. James and Llew are brothers who wash up on shore with Llew’s young son, Gwil. They seek refuge until rescuers come to bring them home from the island, and they endure extreme measures on the part of the girls’ mother who has not been around men, other than her now-deceased husband, in years. Once she deems them safe enough to inhabit their land until they are rescued, this novel starts to unwind and make a little more sense. Part two centers around Lia, the middle daughter who cuts her thighs to feel something, the sister who has not been assigned love in one of their ritualistic ceremonies— ‘Hurt Grace, or Sky will have to…’ You know I have no choice…She showed no reaction at first, but by the end she was biting viciously through the cloth. I knew it was involuntary…She let out a high noise from between her teeth, a constant pitch, like a stinging insect. It was unbearable. —It is, in part, this lack of love that drives her into the arms of Llew. But Lia has no romantic experience with men. Imagine the playfulness, the flirtation, the mixed signals and the desire that we’ve all experienced in our youths; now imagine that happening in an occult setting where men are the enemy to a girl who is starved of love. You can see how this would be a recipe for insert any number of words here. James finds me crying in the garden, where I thought nobody would look. Somehow I am a child again and nobody wants to go near me, nobody can cope with how badly I want to be held, or touched, or listened to, and there is nothing I can ever do about it. Each chapter in part two starts with an excerpt, presumably from an entry in the Welcome Book left behind by a woman who has sought out their occult home in search of refuge from the destruction of men in the past. The thing is, without context—and with the author still clinging to the evasive narrative techniques of part one—a lot of the excerpts made little sense to me and failed to move the story forward in any meaningful way, not even by adding atmosphere. Also, this novel likely would have been better off written completely in 3rd person. Lia’s chapters bothered me, because she speaks in first person using words like “surreptitiously,” though there’s never a word written about these girls, living isolated from all other civilization aside from their five-person family and the occasional female traveler, ever going to school. They learned to read on their own from books lying around the house that were eventually taken away before the third sister could even learn to read, so that just came off as weird and inaccurate. The blurb praises The Water Cure as The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Virgin Suicides. Ummmm, The Handmaid’s Tale, not so much. The Virgin Suicides, maybeeeeee. Really, it reminded me of Gather the Daughters , a novel I THOROUGHLY enjoyed, meets Lord of the Flies. If that description appeals to you, you’ll definitely want to pick up Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure. (view spoiler)[I also didn't find this book to be "dystopic" since it's not really set post-end of the world. The family is just self-isolated. (hide spoiler)] While I was put off by the evasiveness of the first part of the novel, the narrative came together much better as the novel progressed. It was a quick read that I gobbled up in 24 hours, and it managed to put its own spin on a narrative that’s been done before. For that, I thought it fitting to give this book 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. **** FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 24, 2018
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Dec 25, 2018
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Nov 19, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 4.45
| 1,083,790
| Nov 13, 2018
| Nov 13, 2018
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it was amazing
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I just finished this PHENOMENAL book–seriously, probably THE best autobiography I’ve ever laid my hands on! It’s now in vogue–the coolest new trend–fo
I just finished this PHENOMENAL book–seriously, probably THE best autobiography I’ve ever laid my hands on! It’s now in vogue–the coolest new trend–for people to write a book about their lives, and I respect that trend for allowing us to read more TRUE, REAL stories about REAL people. BUT, Becoming is the first autobiography I’ve ever felt I’ve truly connected with, learned from and became a better person for having read it. Within these pages, I both saw myself and re-found myself within Michelle Obama’s narrative; I saw myself in her story and have truly learned a few life changing lessons from this 421-page journey she’s shared with us. It is a rare thing, indeed, for me to be able to say that about any book—that I identified with the words, felt the words in a heartfelt way and came away changed because of those series of words on a page that had been so thoughtfully and candidly laid out. [image] I had the honor of going to see Michelle Obama on her book tour at her Washington D.C. stop the Sunday after Thanksgiving. (In an ironic full circle of events in my experience with this book, I went to see her speak with a friend I met here on Goodreads who has become a very close friend of mine.) Michelle Obama was…everything. She was witty and frankly hilarious; she was open and forthright; she was graceful and dignified, a true orator and inspiration. [image] The tickets to this event sold out within hours--a completely filled arena, pictured above as it is starting to fill. Both in her book and in her talks, she speaks openly about what it was like to be a young black girl from the South Side of Chicago—during the time when whites were fleeing the area and poverty seemed to be creeping its way in—to becoming a young woman at Princeton, unsure of her footing in the new social climate but still clinging to her rigidly drawn-up plan and schedule for her life (of which becoming First Lady was never a part). I’d constructed my existence carefully, tucking and folding every loose and disorderly bit of it…I had labored over its creation. I was proud of how it looked. But it was delicate. If one corner came untucked, I might discover that I was restless. If another popped loose, it might reveal I was uncertain about the professional path I’d so deliberately put myself on, about all the things I told myself I wanted. She walks us through graduating from college and enduring the loss of one of her best friends to an aggressive cancer at the young age of 26 years old and how this changed her outlook on the world and her path through it. Within these pages you’ll learn how she first met Barack Obama, a man who would change her world and ours in so many ways—how he arrived at work late that first day she was to mentor him, wet from the rainy day outside but still sure of himself and confident in a way that spoke of humility. From IVF to being a senator’s wife to the horrible shock of how dirty and personal politics can turn, Michelle Obama gives us an insightful glimpse into her journey into and out of the White House, her personal trek into becoming the icon she is today—a label she still humbly finds bewildering but that she has learned to hone for the betterment of our nation and the society-focused programs she has championed. Throughout it all, Michelle Obama’s outlook is optimistic, her voice clear, witty, candid and insightful. How did she feel the first time she experienced life inside of the presidential motorcade? What fears did she have of exposing her daughters to the “maw” of public life? And how did she accommodate her outlook on politics – I’ve never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last ten years has done little to change that. I continue to be put off by the nastiness—the tribal segregation of red and blue, this idea that we’re supposed to choose one side and stick to it, unable to listen and compromise, or sometimes even to be civil. –and her negative experience within the whirlwind of it— A Fox news chyron referred to me as “Obama’s Baby Mama,” conjuring cliched notions of black-ghetto America, implying an otherness that put me outside even my own marriage. I was getting worn out, not physically, but emotionally. The punches hurt, even if I understood that they had little to do with who I really was as a person. It was as if there were some cartoon version of me out there wreaking havoc, a woman I kept hearing about but didn’t know—a too-tall, too-forceful, ready-to-emasculate Godzilla of a political wife named Michelle Obama. –to achieve what she has, and with such grace, for our nation, the Democratic party, for children and for people (girls and women especially) of color? Just as the discerning look at the viciousness of American politics will enrage you and make you question the leaders we’ve elected to power, so will Michelle Obama’s experience with the other side of her First Lady journey, the experience with the purity of spirit of genuinely good people—no matter their political affiliations, nationality or socio-economic status—move you. One day in San Antonio, Texas, I noticed a minor commotion in the hallway of the military hospital I was visiting. Nurses shuffled urgently in and out of the room I was about to enter. “He won’t stay in bed,” I heard someone whisper. Inside, I found a broad-shouldered young man from rural Texas who had multiple injuries and whose body had been severely burned. He was in clear agony, tearing off the bedsheets and trying to slide his feet to the floor. It took us all a minute to understand what he was doing. Despite his pain, he was trying to stand up and salute the wife of his commander in chief. As I read Becoming, I HAD to read it with a pen and highlighter in hand, hence why it took me so long to complete it. I had to savor every word, go back and re-read passages. Just today, as I was nearing the epilogue, a woman sitting next to me asked, “What are you studying?” I turned the book over and told her, “Michelle Obama’s Becoming.” I hope that gives you an idea of the intensity and connection with which I read this book. To say that I highly recommend this book to any and everyone—especially to American women, women of color and people who have felt persecuted or “othered” by their upbringings or the color of their skin—would be a clear understatement. There is so much truth and integrity and raw emotion to be pointed out in this autobiography, but to do so here would be to write a whole book about the marvels of this book. What I will say is that Becoming earned an easy 5 stars before I’d even finished the preface and continued in its discerning excellence thereafter. There is truly something within these pages for everyone because, as Michelle Obama so elegantly states: I’m an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey. In sharing my story, I hope to help create space for other stories and other voices, to widen the pathway for who belongs and why…It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become. FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 22, 2018
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Dec 21, 2018
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Nov 13, 2018
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0743298071
| 9780743298070
| 0743298071
| 3.95
| 92,758
| Dec 03, 2018
| Dec 04, 2018
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DNF @ 15% I had really high hopes for this book going in, because who doesn't love a good adult fairy tale, right? But, ultimately, I found that the wr DNF @ 15% I had really high hopes for this book going in, because who doesn't love a good adult fairy tale, right? But, ultimately, I found that the writing just didn't interest me. (view spoiler)[The big happening, upon which the entire novel is based, happens fairly early on in the novel, and it failed to wow me or even approach tickling my imagination. (hide spoiler)] There's nothing specific that I would critique about Diane Setterfield's writing; it just wasn't for me. I think it was a little too plain for me. This novel had the air of sitting at the knee of a 19th century British grandmother's knee as she she knits a scarf and tells the kiddies a story. While I'm sure many will love that style of writing and storytelling--that simple life, folksy feel--for me, it could barely keep my attention. For that reason, I will not rate this book. FOLLOW ME HERE: Art + Deco Agency Book Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Art + Deco Publishing Agency ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 04, 2018
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Dec 24, 2018
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Sep 11, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 4.19
| 4,769,705
| Jun 08, 1949
| Sep 03, 2013
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really liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 07, 2018
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Oct 13, 2018
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Sep 07, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| 0374167893
| 9780374167899
| 0374167893
| 3.46
| 167
| Nov 20, 2018
| Nov 20, 2018
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it was ok
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Laura Adamczyk’s Hardly Children is a collection of uncomfortable moments – stories that aim to disquiet and sometimes even hit the mark. Well, they a
Laura Adamczyk’s Hardly Children is a collection of uncomfortable moments – stories that aim to disquiet and sometimes even hit the mark. Well, they approach the mark, can see the mark, maybe even brush against the mark at their height, but never firmly hold the mark head on. You’ll feel the effects of these stories around the edges of your reader periphery. Some may love this disquieting quality in this short story collection, but I found it to be dry and evasive. I am not a believer that just because a work (or collection of works, in this case) is literary it can’t have soul as well. I firmly believe that the two can coexist, that they can complement and enhance each other. But Laura Adamczyk’s debut collection succeeded at “eerie” while never etching any significance and depth into the literary canon. There are moments here, but that’s it. “Wanted” and “Girls” get so close to the edge of a reader’s comfort level that they could have been thrilling. If. If Adamczyk had taken another step, colored the picture further out from the middle and closer to the boundary lines. If she’d really taken us there and completed the thought with gumption and confidence. “Girls” plays with the tricks our childhood memories can play on us – how we can never remember everything perfectly, especially if the event was traumatic, playing with the fact that we block out things that are too painful to remember head on. But, ultimately, this collection of stories always pulled back to what felt like nowhere before the big whammy could fully take hold. Admirably, the writing style in Hardly Children manages to be dry and vague, daring yet always just shy of spoken malice or descriptions that draw a full picture of said malice. These stories are told with innuendo, which is a great tactic, but I was never in love with this particular execution. In this collection, you’ll find a seemingly innocent hug between a child and a stranger, and you’ll detect a hint of malice around it. You’ll see three little girls who watch their father leave their mother and then have a shared experience that traumatizes them so much they can’t even agree, after the fact – years later – on what really happened that day. And you’ll find a city where children – well, “hardly children,” as the author describes, those that are too grown and “strutting” for their own good – get kidnapped, never to be seen again, and a man who suspends himself by hooks in his skin for artistic installations. The imagery in this collection brushes up against “beautiful” at times. There’s a straight-faced lyricism to it that does have its appeal, but the stories themselves are dry, empty shells of narration, often leading nowhere, making me feel nothing – worse than nothing: bored. It’s the kind of writing that has talent but no soul, ideas without the full range of narrative motion needed to execute them. That was disappointing, because the idea for this collection is intriguing. But, as we know, intrigue can only lead the horse to water; it can’t make it drink. ** I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Girroux, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. FOLLOW ME HERE: Art + Deco Agency Book Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Art + Deco Publishing Agency ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 04, 2018
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Nov 09, 2018
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Aug 27, 2018
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385544235
| 9780385544238
| 0385544235
| 3.66
| 305,896
| Jul 17, 2018
| Nov 20, 2018
|
liked it
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Femi makes three, you know. Three, and they label you a serial killer. In case you haven't noticed, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer Femi makes three, you know. Three, and they label you a serial killer. In case you haven't noticed, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer has been taking the social media scene by storm the past few weeks. And I get it; the cover art is (pardon my pun) killer and the title exudes a certain titillation that will make a reader quickly reach for the book on the shelf. For me, My Sister, the Serial Killer, was an easy, brisk read that I mostly read in one sitting. And I was additionally excited to read it when I realized that the author and I graduated from the same university in England and likely had the same creative writing instructors! The short chapters (some only a few sentences long) created the effect of breezing through the novel at record speed, which is a plus, but it also created a few issues for this narrative. Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel follows sisters Ayoola and Korede – Ayoola kills ‘em and Korede cleans ‘em up. But this isn’t just a novel about the boyfriends falling like flies; it’s a novel about the trials and bonds of sisterhood, an exploration of childhood abuse and a would-be love story all wrapped up tightly in the culture of Lagos, Nigeria. Now, that’s a lot to try to cram into 240 (not even full) pages, but it can be done; I’ve even seen it done well. Here, I wasn’t mind-blowingly impressed by the execution (again, couldn’t resist!) of My Sister, the Serial Killer. If you’re a reader who puts a lot of weight on pace, you might find that you’re in for a rather jerky ride with this novel. It flowed neither at a lyrically smooth pace nor at a heart-pounding thriller pace. It just sort of jerked from scene to scene with very little, if any, narrative connective tissue to sew the chapters seamlessly together. In short, while it a had a great plot and an ending that did manage to surprise me, it was not written with a lot of finesse. It read, to me, like a very first draft, not quite filled in enough to give us readers an entire picture. It was like a well-done sketch of artistry that hasn’t yet been filled in with color, like the structure of a building that has not yet been painted and offered windows and balconies. Now, ONWARD to the pros that you’ll find within these pages, because there are several of those. For one, it was a plus that this novel read so fast. While the plotting was jerky, the pace was quick, and that pulls you in to the story fast as you realize that you’re already so deep into it with so little time spent on it. And one of the real gems of My Sister was how Braithwaite interlaced the heart-pounding narrative of the killings themselves with the humor of said serial killer’s indifference and feigned naiveté: There is music blasting from Ayoola’s room. She is listening to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” It would be more appropriate to play Brymo or Lourde, something solemn or yearning, rather than the musical equivalent of a pack of M&Ms. This novel is fully current, with narrative tools and chapter titles like “Instagram.” Ayoola is addicted to SnapChat and Instagram, often being scolded by Korede for posting frivolous updates for her followers when she’s supposed to be mourning her missing boyfriend, whom she herself has killed. Ayoola has forgotten, just that quickly about the fallen men and goes on with her life in a way that baffles her sister – enter The Comedy. So, while I wished that My Sister, the Serial Killer was better built out as a narrative, there is merit to it as a quick, amusing little read. It all comes down to what you’re looking for on your TBR. If you’re interested in a narrative set in Nigeria, this may be a great pick for you. If you’re looking for lightness and humor, a read you can breeze through easily that still offers some suspense, then you’ve absolutely come to the right place. But, if you’re more in the market for a side of intellectual stimulation with your killer thriller, then you may want to side step this one; you want find a lot of that here. 3 stars. *** I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Doubleday, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. FOLLOW ME AT: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 14, 2018
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Nov 18, 2018
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Aug 22, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1552453723
| 9781552453728
| 1552453723
| 3.18
| 92
| unknown
| Oct 30, 2018
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it was ok
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The description of this novella only vaguely resembles how it actually reads. What really seems to be happening here is a narration style similar to s
The description of this novella only vaguely resembles how it actually reads. What really seems to be happening here is a narration style similar to stream of consciousness, where this budding teenage narrator learns first-hand about sex the summer that Barbra, an Ethiopian Jewish girl of 18, comes to stay with his family for the summer. There is a lot of crude language, which wouldn't have bothered me if it come from a more mature mind (the narrator, not the author) and had a meaningful purpose to the narrative. This wasn't a narrative vehicle I would have driven to deliver the message it intended, but I'm sure that that will be the appeal for some. However, for me, the dialogue seemed stilted and unnatural and the plot was smothered in descriptions. For such a short literary narrative, this book would have been better served with plot than with the often meaningless descriptions that take up, ultimately, pages and pages of space. If you're looking to jump inside the mind of a Jewish teenage boy (who uses words like tits and cock and "seriously?!" for over 100 pages, you've come to the right place. Other than that, I never really got into it and was grateful that Queen Solomon read so quickly. I wouldn't say that it was a bad book, just not one that's for me. Definitely more of a "niche" read. The cover art, though, is eye-catching and very striking; that I thought was well-done.** I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Coach House Books, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. FOLLOW ME HERE: Art + Deco Agency Book Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Art + Deco Publishing Agency ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 12, 2018
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Nov 13, 2018
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Aug 13, 2018
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Paperback
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| 1787330419
| 9781787330412
| 1787330419
| 3.63
| 437,992
| Jul 10, 2018
| Jul 12, 2018
|
really liked it
|
I was finally doing something that really mattered. Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the
I was finally doing something that really mattered. Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation. Whew! I had a surprising reaction to this novel. Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation managed to catch me off guard and by surprise. Probably because – funny story – ironically, this book is about a character who does what I always say I’d like to do: have the ability to put my life on pause for just a few days to rest, to think, to recharge. Then press a magic button and the world resumes spinning, without me having lost a single second of my life. Wouldn’t that be wonderful! Well, here’s that idea with a twist: Little Miss Nameless Protagonist here does this for an entire year (while strung out on a myriad of different high-level drugs, all while juggling her semi-unwanted friendship with her best friend and her feelings about the death of her parents and the reality of her shitty boyfriend – really, he’s not even that). Set in the year 2000, our narrator decides to hibernate through a year of her life in an attempt to be a new person on the other side of that time. So, with the help of a zany and negligible psychiatrist who’s first and only line of doctoring is to pull out her prescription pad, our narrator dives deeper and deeper into the world of prescription drugs—and the psychological effects of them—in her quest to sleep away a year of her life. My Ambien, my Rozerem, my Ativan, my Xanax, my trazodone, my lithium. Seroquel, Lunesta. Valium. I laughed. I teared up. Finally, my heart slowed. My hands started trembling a little, or maybe they’d been trembling all along. “Thank God,” I said aloud…I counted out three lithium, two Ativan, five Ambien. That sounded like a nice mélange, a luxurious free fall into velvet blackness. And a couple of trazodone because trazodone weighed down the Ambien, so if I dreamt, I’d dream low to the ground. That would be stabilizing, I thought. And maybe one more Ativan. Ativan to me felt like fresh air. A cool breeze, slightly effervescent. This was good, I thought. A serious rest. My mouth watered. Good strong American sleep. Jacques Louis David’s neoclassical painting has been used as the cover, a reference to our protagonist’s “culture,” of which she is so proud and self-important, and her Art History background in college and before she quit the workforce. It’s a nice touch, offering layers of other meanings to this book. Within these pages you’ll find a slew of wholly unlikeable characters – well, unlikeable by the arbitrary standards we tend to think of as what makes a “nice” or “good” person. You won’t find those people here. Instead you’ll find the nameless narrator who knows she’s gorgeous and privileged and secretly loves the fact that her (bulimic, needy, whiny, having an intra-office affair with a married guy) best friend, Reva, is jealous of her. You’ll find the WASP mother of the nameless protagonist who can’t be bothered to mother but instead calls in the nanny and drinks herself to death in the end. The artiste who made his claim to fame by ejaculating on a blank canvas in various colors. And we shan’t forget the “boyfriend” who uses our protagonist for quick sexual trysts that work out to only his benefit and then shuns her for weeks or months until he’s ready for another one. She has become semi-dependent on him and this cycle of abuse, even as she hopes that it will one day stop and that he’ll choose her. Their relationship is twisted and not at all the storybook love affair you’re used to: I called Trevor again. This time when he answered, I didn’t let him say a word. “If you’re not over here fucking me in the next forty-five minutes then you can call an ambulance because I’ll be here bleeding to death and I’m not gonna slit my wrists in the tub like a normal person. If you’re not here in forty-five minutes, I’m gonna slit my throat right here on the sofa. And in the meantime, I’m going to call my lawyer and tell him I’m leaving everything in the apartment to you, especially the sofa. So you can lean on Claudia or whoever when it comes time to deal with all that. She might know a good upholsterer. I hear Moshfegh is a fan of writing about these sorts of characters – characters who need a chaser or two before they’ll go down our throats smoothly. This was my first foray into her works, and I don’t mind that. In fact, that quality is what drew me deeper into this novel once I opened the first page. Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation doesn’t shy away from the murk and unpleasantness – really, downright offensiveness – inside of us all, that we’re all capable of. In fact, her characters here seem to revel in the way their ickiness makes them better than other people while simultaneously wallowing in it until it nearly drowns them. It’s a bold and scary line for an author to walk, and to see the characters on, but that’s what we love about writers who can pull it off. We all need that shiny mirror of our own spiny imperfections staring back at us from time to time, don’t we? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is dark and obnoxious, but I loved it. Because, isn’t life that way sometimes? I love characters with bite, maybe a pinch of cruelty in them – But did I care? I didn’t think so. If Reva’s body was hanging by the neck behind the bath curtain, I might have just gone home. --I appreciate the layers of characters who aren’t bow-tied in shiny pink ribbons of perfection, happy and grinning stupidly with their perfect teeth and empty heads. I like a character who is…shall I say, more like a real person, imperfections and all. Honestly, I felt like this book was WASPy done well – and I don’t think I’ve ever I wondered if I might be dead, and I felt no sorrow, only worry over the afterlife, if it was going to be just like this, just as boring. If I’m dead, I thought, let this be the end. The silliness. At some point I got up to guzzle water from the tap in the kitchen. When I stood upright afterward, I started to go blind. The fluorescent lights were on overhead. The edges of my vision turned black. Like a cloud, the darkness came and rested in front of my eyes. I could move my eyes up and down, but the black cloud stayed fixed. Then it grew, widening. I buckled down to the kitchen floor and splayed out on the cold tile. I was going to sleep now, I hoped. I tried to surrender. But I would not sleep. My body refused. My heart shuddered. My breath caught. Maybe now is the moment, I thought: I could drop dead right now. Or now. Now. But my heart kept up its dull bang bang, thudding against my chest… But this novel’s ending is what sealed the deal for me, culminating with 9/11 shortly after our protagonist wakes from her year of sleep. The towers come down, someone she knows dies, and maybe – just maybe – that last line of the novel shows that our protagonist has finally found her humanity. I highly recommend this book to readers who like their characters straight with no chaser--to readers who don't shy away from some of the darker hues of humanity. If you're uncomfortable with that notion, definitely stay away! I was glued to this novel from start to finish, and that resonating ending easily solidified the strong 4 stars I’m offering up. **** I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Penguin, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 22, 2018
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Aug 03, 2018
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Jul 22, 2018
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0440000785
| 9780440000785
| 0440000785
| 3.54
| 82,879
| Aug 21, 2018
| Aug 21, 2018
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liked it
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Somewhere along the line, what was known as the Bible Belt, that swath of Southern states where religion ruled, started expanding. It morphed from bel
Somewhere along the line, what was known as the Bible Belt, that swath of Southern states where religion ruled, started expanding. It morphed from belt to corset, covering all but the country’s limbs—the democratic utopias of California, New England, the Pacific Northwest, DC, the southern jurisdictions of Texas and Florida—places so far on the blue end of the spectrum they seemed untouchable. But the corset turned into a full bodysuit, eventually reaching all the way to Hawaii. And we never saw it coming. Christina Dalcher’s Vox is an envisioning of what would transpire if right-wing radicals and fundamentalists were allowed to take over America. Hmmm, what a concept. I won’t point out the obvious climate in which this book was published At the beginning, a few people managed to get out. Some crossed the border into Canada; others left on boats for Cuba, Mexico, the islands. It didn’t take long for the authorities to set up checkpoints, and the wall separating Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas from Mexico itself had already been built, so the egress stopped fairly quickly. “We can’t have our citizens, our families, our mothers and fathers, fleeing,” the president said in one of his early addresses. The plot of Vox is simple. Dr. Jean McClellan is one of millions of American women who didn’t get out in time. Who are trapped in America stripped of their jobs, their personal finances and their words. Once at the forefront of her field and on the verge of finding a cure for disease of the brain, she is now reduced to being confined within the four walls of her home, counting her words for the day and making dinner. “Whose fault do you think it was?” he said. I stood in my kitchen, wanting to explain, careful not to, while he told me we’d marched one too many times, written one too many letters, screamed one too many words. “You women. You need to be taught a lesson.” What I will say is that when I picked up this book and read the blurb, I thought that an examination of these things told through the eyes of a “vox” would unfold, that the oppression experienced and the country’s direction described would be allowed to evolve and transport the reader to a new place of social scrutiny, even as the plot entertained and even elicited the occasional laugh. But that didn’t really happen in the way that I’d hoped; instead, Vox seemed rather like a bipolar haircut—like a mullet: literary imagery and plot setup in the front, full-on commercial melodrama in the back. It was as if Dalcher started out with a lofty idea but could not sustain it and, instead, resorted the love affairs and gorillas (yes, gorillas) to tell the story instead. It wasn’t, however, all dreadful. (Okay, maybe that’s a strong word. Lackluster is a more accurate one.) The premise was enticing, the title is arresting, and the cover art is just enough – minimalist in a way that highlights the words snatched from these women. Those things make Dalcher’s Vox a desirable read from the moment you hold it in your hot little hand. There was an unexpected plot twist surrounding one of Dr. Jean McClellan’s sons (view spoiler)[(though it, too, eventually melted into melodramatic prose and an unlikely “tah-dah” moment) (hide spoiler)]. What I appreciated most about this novel were those few moments where Dalcher snuck in the truly disturbing and uncomfortable, mostly through moments between Jean and her six-year-old daughter, Sonia. Little girls do have that ability to pull at our heartstrings while simultaneously being the vehicle for the truly sinister moments in social commentary in literature, don’t they? And our little Sonia lived up to that duty in several satisfying moments in Vox. The ending is a jumbled (hot) mess, a series of unlikely though convenient events. I hate quickly summed-up bow-tie endings that feel rushed, like a six-year-old hurrying to tell mommy all about their day. To me, they are the ultimate cop-out and proof pudding of lack of true skill and finesse as a writer. That must be the literary slant to my mind talking, but I’m okay with that. The Goodreads description of this book made me think Vox would take more time to explore and lay out the events around the breakdown of American society to the point that women become voxes. But it wasn’t that kind of read at all. For the most part, all of the deterioration of American society has already happened at the start of the book (though we do get snippy interior commentary on it from Jean), and we follow her around watching her days as she copes with it. Christina Dalcher’s Vox ended up being a far more commercial read than I thought it would be, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. But I just wasn’t impressed by the execution of the second half of this novel. Better luck next time. 3 stars *** **I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Berkley, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.** FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 18, 2018
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Aug 22, 2018
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Jun 14, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 045148911X
| 9780451489111
| 045148911X
| 3.69
| 39,723
| Apr 05, 2018
| Aug 07, 2018
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it was ok
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Oh my God, it’s been a long time since I’ve suffered through a book that made me want to just BE DONE WITH IT ALREADY! But this book, Our House, by Lo
Oh my God, it’s been a long time since I’ve suffered through a book that made me want to just BE DONE WITH IT ALREADY! But this book, Our House, by Louise Candlish, just seemed to just go on and ON. Seriously, there was NO reason for this book to be 400 pages. There were way too many asides throughout this novel, which slowed the pace greatly and contributed to the superfluous word count. Not to mention, those peanut gallery comments from the “viewers” of the crime podcast that Fiona Lawson is telling her story to (which allows for the author, Louise Candlish, to tell Fiona’s story under the guise of recounting her story to these podcast listeners) really burnt my biscuit! They were so annoying, ridiculous and distracting that I trained myself to skip them entirely whenever I encountered them. Though it is a genre I tend to enjoy for the most part (see my reviews of Ruth Ware and Fiona Barton) this novel was everything that I hate in British cozy thrillers: centered around a meek woman who’s “gullible” and made a victim as she tries to take back the power in the end. It also was not very well-written, quite honestly. Candlish has obviously never heard of Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory,” because, for this being a thriller, she certainly didn’t trust her reader to come to any conclusions on their own, which really took all of the bite and fun out of reading this book for me. I recently joined a Twitter discussion where a very outspoken literary agent was asserting that reviewers should NEVER tag an author with a bad review because it’s “rude” and because these authors have already had countless people critiquing them and “professional editors” editing them. (This, by the way, was rather self-righteously stated as though literary agents and editors know best and as though their stamp of approval a good book makes. As a writer, former lit agent and former publishing intern, and current book reviewer I can confidently assert in response that this is not necessarily the case.) Here, you’ll find a fantastic example of a book that needs further editing! Literally, my mind started wandering by page 60 as I started calculating how many paragraphs of text I’d just written that really could have been removed from my life altogether. All in all, the premise of Louise Candlish’s Our House is phenomenal, the execution is mediocre if not terrible in parts, and the aside bits nearly drove me mad. If you’re looking for a streamlined, heart-pounding thrill of a ride, don’t waste your time with this one. I really don't have much else to say about this book because I've already turned my mind to finding my next book, which will have to be GREAT to wash away the annoyance I've built up from pushing through this one. I have a friend who read my reviews and once told me it’d be SO hilarious if I just wrote the word “TRASH” as a book review for the next truly terrible book I encounter and then just dropped the mike. I won’t do that here, but there were parts where I was honestly tempted. 2 stars for premise and premise alone -- and maybe even because I fancy the cover; it's brilliant! ;) . ** **I received an advance-read physical copy of this book from the publisher, Berkley, in exchange for an honest review.** FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 04, 2018
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Aug 11, 2018
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Jun 11, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1524763551
| 9781524763558
| 1524763551
| 4.17
| 61,502
| Jun 12, 2018
| Jun 12, 2018
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really liked it
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How were they to know the moment that would define them? It will affect his personality for his whole life, someone is saying to her, and whose fault
How were they to know the moment that would define them? It will affect his personality for his whole life, someone is saying to her, and whose fault will it be then? Mine, a voice replies, and the voice is hers…What had she done to her brother, so that she could survive, so that she could be the one who thrived? Fatima Farheen Mirza's A Place for Us has been widely celebrated since its release in mid-June. Lauded for the brilliant display of writing found within these pages equally as much as it has been coveted as Sarah Jessica Parker’s first release from her own publishing imprint, SJP for Hogarth, putting on display her own eye for literary fiction. It was a read that built upon itself in a sort of snowball effect: slow and gently vibrating beneath the surface as the foundation was laid then tumbling still gently but faster down the slope. I found myself comparing it to Everything I Never Told You in its elegance of execution and vibrant, meaningful display of first-generation families trying to navigate the complexities of American life, of a culture so unlike their own. This story is told in metaphors and blood ties. It’s told in memories, regrets, hopes and fears. It’s told in a universal language embedded in one specific culture that any reader can see embodied in their own families. Novels like this one remind us that our families are not so strange or cruel or different at their cores. We all speak the same universal language. There were so many beautiful moments in Mirza’s debut novel—a book written in vignettes of this family’s life like they jumbled together then come back into focus like a stunning glimpse through a kaleidoscope. I won’t give a synopsis here because the one provided is so fiercely accurate, but I will say that there was so much more to the estrangement of the son and brother, Amar, than I had hoped for. At the start of the novel, with no chapter titles or markers for whose POV was coming next, I couldn’t seem to get my bearings enough to plant roots in the narrative and grow with it. But, eventually, I found my way and moved with the story faster and faster as it picked up speed. The vignettes were light as a gentle breeze softly lifting a lock of hair, like whispers in your ear. And that was lovely, sure. But, admittedly, there were times when I found myself looking for something more—a climax, any hint of tangible, startling tension. And when I did find it, I couldn’t hold on to it long enough to feel fully satisfied. Perhaps that was the point of the read--Mirza's parting message to us, among others--but it left me unfulfilled. (view spoiler)[Then I realized what it was: I wanted to know what had happened to Amar, in many ways the most complex character in the novel. I wanted to know where he’d landed, if he was strung out, if he was now the head of a family of his own and how he would react if he ever called back and got the message from his father through little Abbas. Rafiq’s chapters shed so much light on a multi-faceted story, BUT how I longed for his insight to have been shorter and for revelations about Abbas to finally come to light—where did he go and what became of him when he walked away that final time? (hide spoiler)] Yet, I felt like I got an honest glimpse at a culture I’m unfamiliar with, like I was sitting at their dinner table with them. At the start I didn’t feel fully embedded in the story. But toward the end, I knew I couldn’t get up from that dinner table and walk away. All of the characters, especially the siblings at the forefront of the narrative--Hadia, Huda and Amar--are so beautifully and delicately rendered and allowed to unfold. They are complete characters--their parents Rafiq and Layla included--set in their ways and flaws and hopes and dreams in a way that grabs our hearts because we understand them; we root for them and believe we know what their next moves would be, what their truest fears are. A Place for Us is a character-driven piece with such fully imagined characters who quietly take up the page. It tied loose ends together with stunning clarity (view spoiler)[yet the most important threads of all it left unraveled, flapping in the breeze (hide spoiler)]. I truly loved how embedded in the Hyderabadi culture this novel was. I knew nothing of the culture and traditions—had never even heard the word “Hyderabadi” before—and yet I could feel the resolution with which this family lived in their faith, the effect it had on them, the generations upon generations of history that each of them carried—both in their routines handed down and in their hearts. If his father had just hit him back, cursed at him, said to Mumma look how despicable our son is, how batamiz, anything—then maybe he could have gone home again. A punishment was a mercy. It marked the end of a sentence. Without one, he could not imagine recovering from his shame. Nor could he forgive himself for giving action to the hatred he had felt for his father, wanting to hurt him the way he had been hurt by him. There were moments here where Mirza truly brought these characters into focus even from a Western standpoint, painting them at the time of 9/11—their reaction to it and the fear they carried with them not at all unlike our own. The racism they endured; the ignorance others harbored about them. Those moments stung the way they were intended to; they spoke loudly as they needed to. I will say I'm not a huge fan of the book title or the cover, but this was certainly a brilliant debut from both Fatima Farheen Mirza and this new imprint--both of which I’ll be sure to keep a lookout for in the future! 4 stars **** FOLLOW ME AT: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 11, 2018
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Jul 2018
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Jun 07, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1250185343
| 9781250185341
| 1250185343
| 3.21
| 4,583
| Jul 10, 2018
| Jul 10, 2018
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liked it
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Everything started going wrong after the Second Wave…They’d had the lifespan tests and predictive treatments for decades…but this was something differ
Everything started going wrong after the Second Wave…They’d had the lifespan tests and predictive treatments for decades…but this was something different. The Second Wave, it was dubbed, when a whole raft of new Medtech measures were approved for mass distribution: first-generation SmartBloodTM, an early prototype of what would later become DiamondSkinTM, the first truly functional replacements. And with the new technologies, a whole host of new Directives, aimed at keeping the Ministry’s biggest investments—lifers—safe and healthy. The Second Wave. There would be immortals by the Third. Rachel Heng’s Suicide Club reimagines a near-future America as a place where medical advancements have made immortality possible and where class lines are now redrawn by a new form of classism and ageism: the estimated length of your lifespan. Here, people are separated into groups, “lifers” and “sub-100s,” those who have the potential to live forever and those who do not. It’s a fresh and unique way to envision a new version of a system that we’re already so familiar with and to see it play out in a futurist narrative, but this novel fell flat for me in more ways than one. Lea Kirino is a “lifer” who lives life by the rules. She maintains an ultra-healthy lifestyle to upkeep her biological upgrades, has a job she’s doing well at (trading organs on a new version of Wall Street), and has the perfect lifer fiancé. But, when she sees her father, who disappeared nearly ninety years before, her entire world is turned upside down, as he unwittingly leads her to the Suicide Club—a group of individuals intent on living and dying by their own rules. The problem with this storyline, I must first point out, is that (view spoiler)[the Suicide Club doesn’t even make an appearance until around the halfway mark of this novel, not to mention Lea doesn’t get “entangled” with them until nearly three-fourths of the way through! Really, this narrative is not centered around her “involvement” with the Suicide Club until after you wade through a couple hundred pages of fluffy writing that goes nowhere and describes nothing and her own internal struggle about her situation (troubles at work, being placed on the observation list when the government thinks she’s at risk for trying to kill herself and deciding if she really wants to be with that perfect lifer fiancé of 20 years). (hide spoiler)] Heng’s Suicide Club offers up beautiful imagery, but it failed to move the story along. There are few things worse to a reader than pointless narrative that takes up space on the page simply for the sake of being pretty. I don’t know about you, but I like my narratives like I like my stilettos: pretty but still functional. But here the purple prose brimmed the pages, fluffed up like 80s hair, describing nothing that resonated or left a lasting impact. All the space of written nothingness could’ve been used to progress the actual plot. Such a wasted opportunity on the part of the author is such a source of ennui for me. I also found all the characters in Suicide Club to be un **I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Henry Holt and Co., via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.** FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 13, 2018
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Aug 18, 2018
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Jun 06, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1408889560
| 3.81
| 403,703
| Feb 08, 2018
| Feb 08, 2018
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it was amazing
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4.5 stars! Whew, what a ride! Stuart Turton’s debut novel is the kind of debut we all yearn for: explosive, energetic, engaging and truly something fre 4.5 stars! Whew, what a ride! Stuart Turton’s debut novel is the kind of debut we all yearn for: explosive, energetic, engaging and truly something fresh and new on the scene. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a brilliant, high-concept murder mystery that had the cogs in my mind turning from the very start (imagine waking up in the forest with no memory of who you are and immediately seeing a young woman murdered!). This, in fact, was the first mystery narrative in a very long time that has made me feel like I was part of the story—immersed in the environment—and the first that pulled me in to such a degree that I felt compelled to actively try to unravel the whodunnit mystery right along with the characters. Whodunnit and why! Turton’s atmospheric world is so moody and immersive you’ll feel you should be smoking a pipe with a monocle as you devour it. It was so deliciously wrapped in a sort of British noir, complete with the “party at a country estate” of so many classic murder mysteries. Described by its publisher as “Gosford Park meets Inception by way of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express,” this book lived up to the hype and description in a big way! Aiden Bishop is destined to relive the same day over and over again, in eight different bodies, until he can solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. If he does not succeed at the end of that time, the loop restarts and he loses all of his memories of the previous loop, forcing him to start over from scratch with even the basics – who am I? What am I doing here? He realizes that he is both the hunted and the hunter, an innocent and a deceiver, in this highbrow whodunnit. Until now, I’d only witnessed my fellow guests in their handfuls, their spite spread thin across the house. To be ensnared among them all, as I am now, is something else entirely, and the further I descend into the uproar, the thicker their malice seems to become. Most of the men look to have spent the afternoon soaking in their cups and are staggering instead of dancing, snarling and starting, their conduct savage. Young women throw their heads back and laugh, their makeup running and hair coming loose as they’re passed from body to body, goading a small group of wives who’ve grouped together for safety, wary of these panting, wild-eyed creatures. Nothing like a mask to reveal somebody’s true nature…All of this is wrong. The celebration is too desperate. This is the last party before Gomorrah fell… The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was both intelligent and intellectual, well-paced and deserving of all 500 pages it took up. In a lot of ways, The Seven Deaths was unlike any novel I’ve read before. Skillfully woven together, it was the ultimate literary puzzle. The plot was complex in a baroque but fascinating sort of way, and all the threads Turton spun came together in the end—no stone left unturned, no end left loose. With so many plots converging at once, that was quite the high feat to pull off, but you’ll find it done here superbly in this debut novel. Stuart Turton offers veritable craft in the intricacy of his plotting, a kind of craft that I rarely see anymore. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a mind-bender complete with time leaps and multiple murders seen from multiple angles all on this same day that keeps repeating itself over and over again. The prose was lyrical—honestly, leaning toward flowery—but it is the intricacy of the plot and the atmosphere surrounding these characters that Turton allows to really shine here. Yes, there were moments when this novel graced the line between intricacy and confusion, but it all unraveled splendidly in the end. It was a puzzle of a read; there were moments when the pieces wouldn’t fit and you’d have to scrap it all and start over. For some, that may present as a frustrating experience, but this novel is a real treat to those who love mindbenders, murder mysteries, puzzles and logic games. If that’s you, I highly recommend this novel! Also, if the “Gosford Park/Inception/Agatha Christie" description got your heart racing, then this is the read for you! The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle grabbed me and held me from the very start, probably the most veritable page turner I’ve encountered so far this year, and that’s no easy feat. For such high praise and phenomenal plotting, I give Turton’s debut novel a very strong 4.5 stars. **** *I received an advance-read copy of the book from the publisher, Sourcebooks Landmark, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 24, 2018
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Sep 03, 2018
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Apr 01, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0571268943
| 9780571268948
| 0571268943
| 3.78
| 3,828
| Jan 07, 2017
| Jan 07, 2017
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really liked it
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Prayer was all the recommendation he heard for Nigeria these days. For every crisis, eyes were shut, knees engaged, heads pointed to Mecca and backs t
Prayer was all the recommendation he heard for Nigeria these days. For every crisis, eyes were shut, knees engaged, heads pointed to Mecca and backs turned to the matter at hand. Chibundu Onuzo’s sophomore novel, Welcome to Lagos, is a novel deeply embedded in the heart and soul of Lagos, Nigeria. This is book is not meant to be a tourist's guide to the city. It is neither positive propaganda nor demonstratively negative toward the culture or the state; it is simply a snapshot in Nigerian truth. Matter of fact but witty, emotional but not melodramatic. It is a balance that any reader can enjoy. The prose drips with the Lagosian culture and the atmosphere around the characters within these pages is busy with a sense of urgency and the fervency of life that is often overlooked in comforts of first-world life. Skillfully weaving multiple storylines together, Lagos laces together a tale where the powerful meet the poor head on, where Robin Hood-like morals still exist and where the cultures of London and Lagos blend and clash as colorfully as the gorgeous cover art that wraps this. I opened these pages not knowing what to expect as someone unfamiliar with the culture but, as I’d hoped, this novel took me by the hand and showed me the way, navigating me through the gates of wealth and under the bridges of poverty with both grace and heart. Welcome to Lagos features a cast of unlikely companions who are bound together by circumstance but wield their circumstances into the bonds of a true family. When Chike and Yemi desert the Nigerian army—a capital offense—they know that they must escape down roads less traveled until they can get as far away from the Niger Delta as possible. Along the way, they meet Fineboy, a mischievous youngster with a carefully crafted American accent who dreams of becoming a radio presenter and whose scrappy street smarts they come to depend on; Isoken, a beautiful adolescent separated from her family in the fighting who’s still traumatized and guarded from an attempted rape she suspects Fineboy of being a part of; and Oma who is fleeing from the damaging fists of her abusive husband who knows the next time he hits her could kill her. This unlikely band of characters just trying to survive finds themselves brushing up against the law in more ways than one and changing the course of history when an unlikely intruder to their home comes a-knocking. This novel is so full of the soul and ethos of Nigeria. The dialogue drips with authenticity right down to the colorful pidgin dialogue that Onuzo skillfully weaves in, authentically portraying a culture while navigating readers who are unfamiliar with such dialogue. There are several references and language switches you may not immediately grasp unless you intimately understand this world yourself, but that makes it all the more realistic and immersive in setting. The best literature isn’t watered down for the masses. Sometimes, we have to go it. Short chapters made for a quick and jaunty pace. There’s very little, if any, fat to be trimmed on this story—just enough to create a trim and attractive figure, not bloated with unnecessary prose that should have been shaved away instead of sitting like a pot belly at the center of the narrative. Welcome to Lagos links the narratives of each character together, even introducing new characters with their own POV chapters late in the novel. It creates the effect of effortlessly swinging from vine to vine, each one a new chapter with voices that overlap then recede into the distance, reappear then recede again as another voice takes over. There’s something in this novel for everyone, whether you are familiar with the culture or not. This is a novel that addresses real issues head on while avoiding soapboxing and proselytizing. Rape, domestic abuse, war, corruption, poverty, class relations, family, and duty all play major parts in this narrative production in a way that is as poetic as it is gritty. “Say it out loud so it doesn’t have power over you again. My husband used to beat me. I only married him because I was afraid of being a spinster for the rest of my life. Say it.” The sense of place and scenery here is alive. You can feel the dust in the air and the boli on your tongue. Welcome to Lagos offers up beautiful prose and thoughtful innuendos while never shying away from real matters, hard glimpses in the mirror for both the characters and their country. “In your country, the descendants of the biggest thieves, are they not the ones making the decisions? Your House of Lords. Who made them so? Was it not by oppressing the poor, by swallowing all the land? Today, we are calling them ‘my Lord,’ calling them ‘Honorable.’ Your banks built on the slave trade, Lloyds, have they returned any compensation?” The characters here are vivid with voices that raise loudly above the noise of the city, their storylines woven together with care and utter believability. Many of the chapters are marked with newspaper excerpts, both tying together the storylines and highlighting the state of Nigeria, functioning as a back drop for the novel’s unfolding. That was a clever choice. It allowed Onuzo to fill in the circumstances of Lagos, the state of the country and its people, without having to pound it home ad nauseum in the narrative, allowing room for social commentary at its finest—biting and poetic. And for that Welcome to Lagos earned 4 stars and a high recommendation from me that you add it to your shelves! **** FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me **Thank you so much to the publicity department at Catapult/Counterpoint Press for reaching out to me and sending me copies of this lovely book!** P.S. If you've never been to a Chibundu Onuzo signing, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you go to one. She's hilarious and engaging, down to earth and extremely, extremely intelligent and thoughtful when she speaks. Check out my interview with her on my Instagram, and it will soon be added to my blog as well! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 2018
|
May 08, 2018
|
Mar 31, 2018
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0316556343
| 9780316556347
| 0316556343
| 4.23
| 1,126,108
| Apr 10, 2018
| Apr 10, 2018
|
liked it
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3.5 stars
Madeline Miller’s Circe is an epic that’s sweeping the nation today. Everywhere you turn, you see that magnificent cover (honestly, that 3.5 stars Madeline Miller’s Circe is an epic that’s sweeping the nation today. Everywhere you turn, you see that magnificent cover (honestly, that cover work is DIVINE and I’ve had the MOST fun photographing it for the Bookstagram). Twitter and Instagram are as we speak packed with Circe references and Miller interviews and, within all of that, Circe has found itself wrapped in all of the fluff and buildup and publicity of a typical ultra-hyped, big-named publisher release. Let’s be serious—most of us LOVE these kinds of releases and all the hysteria involved, even if we shy away from actually reading the hyped release itself. It can be a book lover’s dream--a book with all the fanfare of a blockbuster, silver screen release. I, too, was swept up in the craze, yet another smash hit from the publisher who brought us fan favorites like Twilight and whom I once interned for in London. But, in the end, I couldn’t ride the Circe wave all the way through. Let’s get one thing clear from the very start: Madeline Miller’s follow up to The Song of Achilles is an epic in the years spanned but not necessarily in the execution. To me, it read far more like a long story than an “epic.” When I think of that four-lettered word, I think of a novel that’s monumental and moving. I think of The Odyssey and sweeping sagas like A Song of Ice and Fire, even novels that are gripping and complex, long and treacherous as a Hajj like A Little Life. But Circe did not touch me in that way. In fact, there were moments—those times when the novel resorted to recounting the tales of the mythology we all know so well rather than Circe’s life is a true saga, and Miller’s research and background in the Classics shines through in this novel and serves her well. But, there are gaps between the breadth and notoriety of the mythology she incorporated here and the skill with which the novel was actually written. There is only so far that building a modern-day epic on the backs of known names and legends could go; Miller needed to take us the rest of the way to make Circe a contemporary wonder, to make this a saga all her own. This novel didn’t quite make it across that bridge for me. Circe offered up a world full of color, a world of eternal life and leviathans, of clashing gods and witchcraft, all while tying in mythological tales that’ve been handed down for ages. Perhaps it’s only fitting, in that case, that it was overwrought with linguistic hyperbole—The sound was a piercing chaos, like a thousand dogs howling at once…She beat the cliff-side, howling her frustration. This novel was full of both drama and melodrama, only one of which is necessary for a sweeping epic. Yet, I had to appreciate the scale of story Miller told and the breadth of her knowledge in the Classics. Circe was a great story for sure, but I was never fully moved by how it was told. 3.5 stars.*** FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 12, 2018
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Apr 21, 2018
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Mar 23, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0735218722
| 9780735218727
| 0735218722
| 3.97
| 46,501
| 2017
| May 15, 2018
|
really liked it
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There’s something about first love, isn’t there? she said. It’s untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it’s the measure of all that follow
There’s something about first love, isn’t there? she said. It’s untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it’s the measure of all that follows… Tin Man is a nostalgic and melancholy read filled with bitter memories and finding oneself at middle age—at any age. More so than plot, this novel offers a meandering of tender memories that all coalesce like rivers in a delta, pooling into one larger story. Quite honestly, Tin Man offers more by way of poetic descriptions of landscape and emotion than it does of actual plot at times, but that’s the beauty in this story I suppose. The simplicity of narrative—of intent—couples with the deepest and most complex emotions one can feel: love, regret, loneliness, disappointment, heartbreak (so beautifully described as the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth). Tin Man is the story of Ellis and Michael. The tale of two twelve-year-old boys who meet at an intersection in their lives where they are both motherless and running from fathers who don’t understand them, who want them to punch away their anger and to harden against the natural softness in their souls. It is the story of the years of their lives they spent together—and those they achingly spent apart. It is a story of compassion and fear, of young lives withered away and stolen by the AIDS epidemic. A story that crosses from England to France and back again. So when my father went off to his football matches, I went to Mrs. Deakin’s to read, or to make cakes with her for the church fayre. But I wanted to shout, I like football too! and I want to be with you. I want to be around men and their laughter and their ways! But in four years, I was never invited. And I retreated further into the background until I could barely be seen against the wallpaper and curtains, until I eventually disappeared, erased by the notion of what a boy with a handbag should be like. Sarah Winman managed to squeeze a lot into such a short novel, small and delicate in your hands in its pocket-sized hardback version. I had a strange relationship with Winman’s writing style. It was quiet, like a whisper, and I always felt more moved by the story than I did by her writing. That sounds strange, since one would think these two were one in the same; in many ways they are. But I always felt that it was the story pulling me back in again and again more so than the language she used to tell it. And that’s okay. Because there were moments of absolute brilliance, moments when the narrative glinted and shone like a small mirror turned toward the sun-- And Ellis remembered thinking he would never meet anyone like him again, and in that acknowledgment, he knew, was love. He could see his mother concentrating on Michael’s words, how enraptured she was…she bent down and kissed him on the head and said, Thank you. Because everything she held on to and everything she believed in came together in that unexpected moment. The simple belief that men and boys were capable of beautiful things. --and those moments were special. It was still a world of shyness and fear, and those shared moments were everything: my loneliness masquerading as sexual desire. But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that’s all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere. Tin Man broke my heart in so many little ways, and it was never quite put back together again. That I appreciated, actually. I was never drawn to Ellis the way I was drawn to Michael, and I will always remember Michael’s compassion, his heart, his life. 4 very strong stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ **Thank you to the publicity team at G.P. Putnam's Sons who reached out to me and sent 2 lovely copies of this beautiful book!** FOLLOW ME AT: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 14, 2018
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May 21, 2018
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Mar 22, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1501172328
| 9781501172328
| 1501172328
| 3.42
| 300
| unknown
| May 29, 2018
|
liked it
|
See my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author HERE! Malcolm Hansen Chats With Me About His Debut Novel Malcolm Hansen’s debut novel They Come in All Colo See my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author HERE! Malcolm Hansen Chats With Me About His Debut Novel Malcolm Hansen’s debut novel They Come in All Colors is a satirical narrative worthy of Paul Beatty’s stamp of approval. By that I mean it’s obvious that this book was either inspired or nurtured in some way by the Man Booker Prize-winning Beatty, if not both, and his style is so evident here that there were times this novel could have been written by the same hand. (He is even thanked in Color’s acknowledgements.) For those of you who follow my reviews, you’ll recall that I couldn’t stand Beatty’s award-winning The Sellout and marked it DNF, but just because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree doesn’t mean it may not taste different. They Come in All Colors is the story of one boy’s realization that the color of his skin does make a difference one long summer when the Freedom Riders come to his small town and the status quo around him is thrown into upheaval. Meet Huey, the smart-mouthed eight-year-old son of a white peanut farmer and a “mulatto’’ woman. Because of his Caucasian features and his close relationship with his father, Huey has always been allowed to pass as white, but when racial tensions erupt, resulting in protests, sit-ins, riots and the violent death of someone close to his family, the facts of life are very quickly called into question between this couple who cannot legally wed in the South and their son who finds himself banned from the “white” swimming pool and called n*gger for the first time. One of the more effective devices used within these pages is satire. In fact, really, the entire premise of the novel is satirical, but I appreciated Hansen’s wielding of it here and found it to be far more useful and self-evident than Beatty displayed in The Sellout. Here, that humorous device had more meaning and thus resonated louder and longer for me. Case in point, Huey encounters the most ridiculous conversations with his parents as they both try to explain to him why he isn’t colored though his mother is black. They tell him he’s white with a tan – an ironic notion in and of itself in 1960s South Georgia: Huey, listen to me. Your mother’s what’s known in the scientific community as a phenotypic anomaly. Okay? Someone of unknown morphology. A racial enigma—something so new they don’t have a name for it yet. You watch Wild Kingdom, right? Well, it’s like a newly discovered animal that they haven’t figured out where to put it in the classification system yet. Okay? So it’s pointless to even bother asking. Because—well—the truth is that if people can’t agree, we might never know... At the end of the day, you’re just going to have to accept that even if she is what you think she might be—which she isn’t—her being one wouldn’t make you one. Okay? You’re just going to have to accept that you’re different. That’s all there is to it. (view spoiler)[They also lie to him about the tragic death of their family friend and field hand, whose family has worked for the Fairchilds for three generations, when he is violently beaten to death for his part in being a leading figure in the riots when the Freedom Riders come to town. His parents both insist that he simply fell from a ladder by accident though Huey questions this rendition of events several times. (hide spoiler)] Though the start of this book was far too similar in tone to The Sellout, which means it too almost got DNFd, I pushed through a bit further and found that Hansen showed real dexterity with the metaphors and analogies that abound in this narrative. The imagery of the South is realistic and comes off nearly as oppressive within these pages as it did in real life. One of the better metaphors comes when Huey tries to set his pet cat free after the violence in his town starts to come to a head; he makes a very clear parallel, though he himself does not know or understand it, between the release from the bondage of slavery just a few short generations before and his releasing of his pet into the wild: Having surrendered Snowflake to the bitter wild, I decided that I wanted her back. I knew in my heart that she wasn’t ready to be set free but I’d done it anyway. I could see that she wasn’t sure what to do with all that freedom, that it was too much for her little brain to comprehend. All that freedom being dumped on her all at once like that. I should probably have tested it out by giving her teaspoon-sized doses of freedom first. Perhaps let her run free in the den to start. What had I been thinking? Then, of course, there are the lovely and impactful nuggets of truth as Huey’s self-realization of his and his family’s status in the world around them continues snowballing – as he realizes that schools are segregated and that he is the “last person in town to discover the truth” about who he is. They come faster and harder in the second half of the novel as pretenses begin to be stripped away and the threshold for denial becomes shallower and shallower: When I asked Mom who in his right mind would choose to be the descendant of a slave if given a choice, she gave me a contemptuous look. You don’t have a choice. Don’t be silly. Of course I do. We all have choices. Everything is a choice. She called me, of all things, a disgrace to my race. I asked what she was referring to, precisely. Only the week before, she was peddling the idea of the whole concept of race as a sham concocted by a few eighteenth-century white men with powdered hair to more conveniently consolidate power, and now here I was, not having even had time to shit out the food I’d been eating at the time, come to find out that I was betraying it. While we’re on the topic of the second half of They Come in All Colors, now’s as good a time as any to say that the latter fourth or so of the novel offered too many holes in the narrative for me to forgive and inspired more questions for me than satisfying answers. AND while we’re on the topic of my pet peeves with this book, now’s also as good a time as any to point out the added GLARING problem that there were no quotation marks used in this novel whatsoever. Normally, this narrative tool wouldn’t be a problem, but combined with the ramblingly verbose chunks of dialogue and the use of long chapters and thick, hulking narrative blocks on every page, traditional formatting of dialogue would have been a welcome reprieve to break up the pages and make this novel seem like a faster read. By the time I got to the middle of They Come in All Colors I was honestly halfway exhausted from wading through the waters of prose and checking the page count to see how close I was to the end. (spoiler: To my dismay, I was nowhere close to it.) Yet, this novel did more good for me than it did harm. It called into question not only the lies we tell ourselves to cope but the lies adults tell children and parents tell their offspring to maintain their innocence. What good is the façade - what’s the point of holding onto a false innocence just a few weeks or months or short years longer - if the inevitable realization only hits harder and is more damaging than having understood it from the start? Because then a child must also cope with the fact that not only has their existence been a lie in some shape, form or fashion but that the adults around them are imperfect beings – who lie and cannot always be trusted to tell the truth. In Western civilization, we raise our kids with lies as a fundamental part of their upbringing – tooth fairies and Santa Clauses and excuses for the way the world is. I’ve never thought that was a productive or practical tool of parenting, and Hansen definitely manages to expose the detriment of shielding and coddling kids from what the real world holds. For that, I applauded him. While the ending of the novel was too abrupt for me to find a ton of fulfillment in it, I did appreciate the nuggets of truth that Huey grows aware enough to impart on the reader - I was being mocked and maligned on a daily basis for having the gall to use the color of my skin to gain advantage where it concerned getting into Claremont, and here people like Zuk pulled shit like that all the time and weren’t even aware of it, much less feeling pangs of guilt about it. - and that his mother, Peola, finally finds the strength to impart on him after nearly a decade of insisting to him that he was white: I’m going to tell you this once, sweetheart, and then I’m never going to tell it to you again. So listen well. Any person you know who has not had a family member enslaved is at a two-hundred-fifty-year advantage over you. Okay? Not the other way around. You must understand that one simple fact. You have ancestors—blood relatives, real people, connected to you by blood and history—who were enslaved, who had their families, language, labor, freedom, possessions, and identity taken from them by force and used to the advantage of everyone you see around you right here, right now. That is, everyone but us. So do not ever let anyone talk to you like you’re some goddamned drain on society. Ever! That would be like scorning the man who has built your house for not owning one himself. That’s just wrong. The only thing you oughta be worried about asking any of them is what the hell they have to show for the last two hundred fifty years of their advantage. And I don’t care if for those two hundred fifty years their ancestors were in Europe or Asia or Russia or on Mars or wherever, because I can guarantee you that they were not in chains. For these dazzling moments of truth and forthrightness, I forgave many of the novel’s other sins. I recommend this novel to lovers of Paul Beatty’s work. You can think of Hansen as Paul Beatty lite. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 04, 2018
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Jun 09, 2018
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Feb 27, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.06
| 111,269
| Mar 20, 2018
| Mar 20, 2018
|
really liked it
|
Idlewild was the boarding school of last resort, where parents stashed their embarrassments, their failures, and their recalcitrant girls. Hidden in t
Idlewild was the boarding school of last resort, where parents stashed their embarrassments, their failures, and their recalcitrant girls. Hidden in the backwoods of Vermont, it had only 120 students: illegitimate daughters, first wives’ daughters, servants’ daughters, immigrant girls, girls who misbehaved… The Broken Girls proved to be a breezy and exciting read in all of the best ways. The hooks were there, pulling me further and further into the story until I became one with it. Until the hours and pages flew by alike and I realized I’d finished it all in one sitting. Who isn’t intrigued by the thought of “throw away” girls from a time long ago? Simone St. James makes her own literary footsteps in shoes she fills well, for The Broken Girls is most definitely Ruth Ware meets Fiona Barton with an American Northeast twist. If that line wasn’t enough to tell you exactly what to expect here, I’ll elaborate. This novel reminded me of an equal cross between and The Widow and The Lying Game from the very start. The writing style is very similar—fluid and paced so that the read flies by breezily, tinged with intrigue. Even the theme of camaraderie among boarding school girls—their mischief, their backstories, their own haunting pasts—investigated in present-day scenes by a character who also has skin in the game, is the same. Here, you can even cozy up to the same scenery: wide open fields ringed with thickets of trees and old dirt gravel roads of the past. These novels were all cut from the same cloth, though they all told their stories in a way of their own. While so many thrillers suffer from too many ideas in the plot, The Broken Girls weaves together a handful of story lines with just the right recipe. A chase here, a haunt there—a thrilling journey to the end—all brought to a boil and served up heartily leaving me full and satisfied in the end. None of the story lines felt overpowering or underdeveloped; they all fit together hand in hand, seamlessly drawing me back and forth between two periods of time over sixty years apart. Because of this skillful flow, St. James’ Girls read at a quick pace, allowing me to immerse myself in the story without interruption. That’s half the battle with a thriller, right? I was most impressed with the handling of the ghost story here in this novel. It was brilliantly done, haunting me as it haunted those four girls—never overdone or melodramatic, relying on parlor tricks like flashing lights and other theatrics; this ghost was a leading lady all her own and deserving of the space she occupied with those pages. As is sometimes a danger with thrillers, I will say that there were a few areas that were obviously formulaic, plucked straight out of the “thriller-with-a-villain” motif and those couple of sections in the novel made me cringe enough to warrant shaving off a star. BUT, the rest of St. James’ The Broken Girls was deftly handled and intricately woven in a way that made me want to come back for more. I highly recommend this novel for anyone in need of a cozy thriller and for absolutely anyone who has read and loved Ruth Ware or Fiona Barton, because these Broken Girls served up more twists than I’d expected and more intrigue than so many novels of the same genre, scoring an easy and strong 4 stars. **** **Thanks to the publicity department at Berkley / Penguin Random House for reaching out to me to review this book!** FOLLOW ME HERE: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Get a Copy of My Book | Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 2018
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Apr 02, 2018
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Feb 23, 2018
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||||
| 3.93
| 89,465
| Dec 31, 1961
| Feb 01, 2001
|
it was amazing
|
Rightfully a classic and will forever be one of my favorites. Damn, that's good writing! The Navi Review | Twitter | Bookstagram Rightfully a classic and will forever be one of my favorites. Damn, that's good writing! The Navi Review | Twitter | Bookstagram ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 20, 2018
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Mar 24, 2018
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Feb 20, 2018
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Paperback
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.74
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really liked it
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Jan 02, 2019
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Dec 07, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.25
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really liked it
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Dec 25, 2018
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Nov 19, 2018
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|||||
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| 4.45
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it was amazing
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Dec 21, 2018
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Nov 13, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.95
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Dec 24, 2018
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Sep 11, 2018
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||||||
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| 4.19
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really liked it
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Oct 13, 2018
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Sep 07, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.46
|
it was ok
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Nov 09, 2018
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Aug 27, 2018
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| 3.66
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liked it
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Nov 18, 2018
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Aug 22, 2018
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| 3.18
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it was ok
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Nov 13, 2018
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Aug 13, 2018
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| 3.63
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really liked it
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Aug 03, 2018
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Jul 22, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.54
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liked it
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Aug 22, 2018
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Jun 14, 2018
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| 3.69
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it was ok
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Aug 11, 2018
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Jun 11, 2018
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| 4.17
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really liked it
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Jul 2018
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Jun 07, 2018
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| 3.21
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liked it
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Aug 18, 2018
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Jun 06, 2018
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| 3.81
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it was amazing
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Sep 03, 2018
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Apr 01, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.78
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really liked it
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May 08, 2018
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Mar 31, 2018
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|||||
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| 4.23
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liked it
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Apr 21, 2018
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Mar 23, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.97
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really liked it
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May 21, 2018
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Mar 22, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.42
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liked it
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Jun 09, 2018
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Feb 27, 2018
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|||||
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| 4.06
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really liked it
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Apr 02, 2018
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Feb 23, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.93
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it was amazing
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Mar 24, 2018
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Feb 20, 2018
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