Read: Against Identity by Alexander Douglas ★★★ 📚
The Guardian describe this as a powerfully strange counterblast to identity fetishism and quote What we think of as our own special identity is just a suit of borrowed clothes but although I enjoyed parts the references & context in this philosopher’s book was a bit above my level.
Category Archives: Book
Read: Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur ★★★★★ 📚
A scientist as monster father. Adam’s ego and bi-polar comes to a head his family is exploding in various ways. Alternative chapters written in close third keep some sympathy for all the privileged Cap Cod cast as the family history is dug up. Lots of nature, funny & exciting, I really enjoyed this one.
Read Dance Moves by Wendy Erskine ★★★ 📚
Slightly off kilter stories about off kilter characters that keep you wondering. The author leaves you waiting until you start to grasp the main ideas. All with a Northern Ireland connection.
Read: TheWater Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates ★★★★ 📚
Slavery & the underground railway in the USA. Realistic, except for the hero’s developing ‘superpower’ which I guess was a metaphor. Not as horrific as other slavery novels I’ve read but spells out a lot powerfully.
Read: Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis ★★★ 📚
UN newbie gets caught up with isis bride. Interesting, engaging & very mixed up on several levels. The mix of humour & seriousness felt slightly off kilter to me. The authors credentials made this more surprising when I read them.
Read: There There by Tommy Orange ★★★★★ 📚
Cleverly told, almost thriller from multiple characters with different POVs. Life & life histories of urban Native Americans, all carrying the weight of the collective past.
The train emerges, rises out of the underground tube in the Fruitvale district, over by that Burger King and the terrible pho place, where East Twelfth and International almost merge, where the graffitied apartment walls and abandoned houses, warehouses, and auto body shops appear, loom in the train window, stubbornly resist like deadweight all of Oakland’s new development.
Read: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver ★★★★ 📚
You can see some of the roots of Demon Copperhead in this tail of a poor Kentucky girl. Published in 1988 the refugee sub story is still pertinent.
Read: Ripeness by Sarah Moss ★★★★ 📚
Edith in her 70s in 2023 and 17 in the 70s in alternative chapters, the echos of the holocaust, family, belonging to a place, refugees & friendship. Excursions into Irishness & ballet.
Mike’s friend Phineas in Dublin is a sound engineer, hears whole orchestras of weather, traffic, birds that for her are only ambient noise. Sound and signal, she thinks, meaning in every atom and cell if you remember to look and listen. And Dennis the chef, eyes half-closed as he attends to his tongue, names each herb and the provenance of the oil in a salad, and the perfumery up the hill here, every note in a scent, they say, music the metaphor for smell, all of everything, everywhere.
Read: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller
After The Land in Winter, this turned out to be quite different. Reminded me of Kidnapped! An atrocity in Spain, an English solider, running from another sent to kill him, heads for the Hebrides. Excitement & sympathy for all the characters.
Below them, the last of the drinkers had perfected himself and swum away into the summer night. One by one, the landlady’s breath put out the stars.
There were tears on his cheeks. He hoped the doorkeeper, this woman whose name he had failed to learn, might notice them
Read Golden Child by Claire Adam ★★★★★ 📚
Engrossing & troubling story. Set in Trinidad, with a strong flavour of place & family. Twins, one very bright, the other, Paul, “slightly retarded”. Told from several view points, Paul’s was particularly strong. Father Clyde values both children in different ways loving & being embarrassed by Paul.