Reviewing novels, short stories, plays and non fiction.
An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro, is a beautiful, hazy portrait of life in post war Japan. It explores generational tension, changing social mores, guilt and atonement. It is also another excellent example of the unreliable narrator, a trope of Ishiguro’s work.
Continue reading “An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguru”
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a tale of beauty, race and social ostracism. It takes place in Lorain, Ohio and centres on the destruction of a vulnerable little girl who believes herself to be ugly.
Ragle Gumm is an ordinary man lives with his sister’s family in a sleepy suburban 1950s town. He makes a living by winning a newspaper contest over and over again. He dallies with his neighbour and plots where the Little Green Man will be Next, but starts to realise all is not well. This is how Time out of Joint, by Philip K Dick, begins.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a beautiful, haunting tale exploring the death and tragedy surrounding the Finch family.
Edith has returned to her family’s abandoned home off the coast of the state of Washington following her mother’s death. The tale shows Edith discovering their history through exploration of sealed bedrooms / shrines, all with voyeuristic peepholes.
Continue reading “What Remains of Edith Finch, by Ian Dallas”
An interweaving tale of two entrapped women; a suicidal noblewoman with no purpose and an imprisoned spiritualist claiming innocence. Reality, voice and oppression – not to mention manipulation – are the key themes in this stunning lesbian Victorian ghost story. A rich, beautiful, haunting novel by an excellent author, set in the late 19th century.
Spoilers ahead.
Unusually, I got the Kindle version of Tin Can Cook. I tend to have my phone handy when cooking so I figured it would be appropriate. So far, it’s introduced me to the joys of tinned potatoes (9/10 most of a fresh bag will end up in the compost before we use it).
FYI, if you want to start composting, this site does cheap, subsidised bins – https://getcomposting.com
I have a real soft spot for Jack Monroe, for a very practical reason. The recipes on the Cooking on a Bootstrap website helped me when I was seriously struggling financially. Put it this way; I wasn’t visiting a food bank, but maybe I should have been.
Suddenly, Last Summer was a 1958 one act play written by Tennesse Williams. The wealthy poet Sebastian Venable has been killed, and the family are gathering to hear his cousin, Catharine Holly, describe his scandalous death. Sebastian’s mother doesn’t believe her niece and has had Catharine committed; an attending doctor, known for performing lobotomies, injects her with a truth serum to get to the bottom of things.
“Suddenly Last Summer” was, perhaps,the most poetic I’ve done. – Tennessee Williams, Interview with Studs Terkel.¹
Continue reading “Suddenly Last Summer, By Tennessee Williams”
This non-fiction book follows Louis Theroux as he travels America ten years after his Weird Weekends series, and catches up with a select group of former interviewees. It tackles the voyeurism, affection and exploitation at the heart of Louis Theroux’s documentary style.
Continue reading “The Husband Stitch, by Carmen Maria Machado”
I just finished reading A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro. As usual with his work, the book has stayed with me for over a day now. Etsuko is a Japanese woman, living in rural England in the 1970s. Her younger daughter Niki visits, and their conversation triggers a series of dreams and memories. She recalls a strange friendship she had with another woman called Sachiko in post-war Japan. Based in the still rebuilding city of Nagasaki, sweltering and devastated by the atomic bomb.
There will be spoilers in this review.
