Read: Half of a Yellow Sun: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ★★★★★ 📚
First half about fairly privileged folk, second half how the horror of Biafran war played out.
Everything was moving so fast. He was not living his life; life was living him.
Tag: ★★★★★
Read: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel ★★★★★📚
A subtle & grownup take on the post apocalypse novel. I think I enjoyed everything about this. Flits between characters & time before & after the Georgian Flu which kills 99% of the population.
None of the older Symphony members knew much about science, which was frankly maddening given how much time these people had had to look things up on the Internet before the world ended.
Read: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett ★★★★★ 📚
A book around a famous (in the USA?) play I’ve never heard of. Compelling & mostly comfortable. Laugh out loud sometimes too.
Read: Cairn by Kathleen Jamie ★★★★★ 📚
The common curlew, as the old books have it,
Fragments, essays, poems & notes, following the natural world, and the mess we have made of it. Beautiful.
Read: West by Carys Davies ★★★★★ 📚
There is something endlessly pleasant about the quick flurries of bats in the trees at this time of day, and the soft crepitation of insects all around: a steady in-out susurration as if the earth itself is breathing.
Lovely book so brief & clear. A handful of characters, simply drawn. Cy, obsessed by possible monsters heads west into wild lands leaving his daughter in an awful situation.
Read: The Sun Walks Down by Fiona Mcfarlane ★★★★★ 📚
A lost boy in the Australian outback at the end of the 19th century. The many searchers & their tangled involvement with each other, the land & the landscape weave in & out of the story. Great detail about each without losing momentum.
This was the time of day when the sun touched the red hill and the gods came creeping out of it—out of the sun. They parted the branches of the cypress tree and stepped with care over the rocks at the top of the hill. They ran like water down the hill, and their footsteps were like water around the corners of the house.
Read: Long Island by Colm Tóibín ★★★★★ 📚
Quiet, subtle and thrilling. Characters fail to communicate, wait too long for the right moment and miss and hit opportunities.
Read: Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín ★★★★★ 📚
A re-read in prep for Long Island. This is a beautiful quiet read that lingers a long time. Really enjoyed reading it again.
Read: Clear by Carys Davies ★★★★★ 📚
I loved this short tale, 1840, 3 characters, the split in the Kirk & the clearances.
There was a word in Ivar’s language for the moment before something happens; for the state of being on the brink of something.
Read: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray ★★★★★ 📚
A great read, multiple pov, full of surprises. Inside each character’s head indecision jerks chains. The stories shift between characters, each enough for a novel of its own. At first I felt some were left hanging, but it all weaves together.