Tag: ★★★★★

Posted on
by

Read: Flashlight by Susan Choi ★★★★★ 📚

Louisa's parents were people for whom things went wrong. The car got lost in the lot, or the driving directions were bad, of the check to the gas company never arrived and the stove was turned off. They misplaced things, or forgot facts, or disagreed on the facts, with each other or with other people.

Louisa is walking with her father Serk on the beach at night. Next day she if found had ground and he has vanished. The book follows various family members across the generations. It took me a while to get started, then I could not put it down.

Posted on
by

Read: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood ★★★★★ 📚

Little waves are shouldering the cart’s tyres, spitting upwards at his face. The sea is patterned by the rain like honeycomb. He’s trying to make the best of it, but he can tell the horse is getting more reluctant.

A wonderful novella. A few days in the life of a young horse & cart shrimper working on a misty flat coast. Beautiful slow description of the daily grind in the cold & wet. The story unfolds slowly into drama, dreams & music.

Posted on
by

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.

Posted on
by

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.

Posted on
by

Read: Winter Ali Smith ★★★★★ 📚
Amazing book, floats between time and characters, dreams & hallucinations. Funny too.

Her sister Iris is making nothing of her life. Sophia thinks of their mother, when Iris worked at the filling station, telling anyone who asked how her daughters were doing that Iris had a good position in an oil company.

Posted on
by

Read: In Ascension by Martin MacInnes ★★★★★ 📚
My goodness what an interesting book, from biology to spaceflight with climate change & corporate greed hanging over everything. Plenty of mystery, some from my own lack of knowledge some written in (or out).
Turtles:

Lifting the bulk from below, tipping forward, using the momentum of the minor collapse as a motive force, a means of going on.

Posted on
by

Read: The Divorcees by Rowan Beaird ★★★★★
The fifties in a “divorce ranch” in Reno. I did not expect to love this, but I did. Felt a bit like a B&W movie. A feeling of things going awry builds. Great characters, interesting ‘history’ & some surprises.