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.
Tag: ★★★★★
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 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.
Read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett ★★★★★ 📚
Probably the cutest terrorists in fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed the mixture of emotion, love, fear and boredom. Gives a good account of the joy of opera too.
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.
Read The Unwilding by Mariana Kemp ★★★★★📚
An excellent artist as monster, but looking at the fallout for other characters more than the monster himself. Two main narrators, the possibility of some unreliability, time & location change make for a captivating read.
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.
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.
Read: Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth ★★★★★ 📚
In 2023 there were sixteen fatal dog attacks in the UK alone, not to mention the approximately 15,000 sheep killed by dogs off the leash each year.
In 2022 The author follows the 2012, 1200 mile journey of a radio collared wolf from Slovenia to Italy. The book covers a lot of ground too, climate change, human migration, politics & the natural history, conservation & controversy of wolves in Europe.
Read Highway Thirteen by Fiona Mcfarlane ★★★★★ 📚
A series of stories surrounding a serial killer’s crime that is never fully described. Instead the tangential echos and sources of the crime are explored.