Welcome to Litsy!

3 Stars • Alice, a pregnant Mohawk woman, navigates her fear of inheriting or passing on mental health issues linked to her Indigenous heritage. Her journey involves visions or hallucinations that blur the lines between cultural legacy and personal psyche. The novel explores themes of identity, trauma, and the weight of history on present-day Indigenous life, leading Alice towards a tentative reconciliation with her past and heritage.

5🌟/5🌟

When I started I was sure this would be a personal #womensprize favorite, but it isn‘t. I have very mixed feelings about it. I love how Alicia Elliott makes me feel (contrary to many others I liked Steve and I think he really loved Alice and she just didn‘t talk! He couldn‘t know half of the things she was thinking of and if they made sense. Does that make me naive or even racist? I certainly hope not but the author is messing with my mind!)⬇️

One of my top picks for the Women's Prize For Fiction 2024. I really enjoyed this. It gripped me right from the jump, and I sped through it, engrossed with Alice and her journey.
I don't normally gravitate to books about motherhood, but this is woven with cultural, and mental health topics and heavy on the magical realism. Alice is a sympathetic character (I didn't like the husband from the jump, it gave Yellow Wallpaper vibes)

This book stressed me out so much I had to take breaks to calm down. I teared up towards the end, and there were times throughout that scared me more than any other book outside the horror/thriller genre. Absolutely superb. Highly recommend.
A book about grief, identity, mental health, addiction, family, motherhood, indigenous heritage, racism, storytelling, choices, and so much more.
#WomensPrize #WomensPrize2024

#WeeklyForecast 18/24

I am trying to read one more longlisted book (the tagged one) before the #WomenPrize shortlist will be announced on Wednesday.
But first I‘ll finish The Last Thing to Burn which has had me hooked this weekend!
What‘s Left of me Is Yours is the third one I hope to get to.

From early in this book, when the Disney Pocahontas starts speaking directly to young Native woman Alice, I was hooked. I found the exploration of her struggles with early maternity and what we would term mental health difficulties seen differently through a Native lens completely fascinating. I‘m so glad the Women‘s Prize for fiction put this one on my radar.

I rather liked this #womensprize long lister to start with….but then the perspective changed to a second-person narrative, the chronology jumped (I think?) and it all got a bit magical-realism.

On reading GR reviews, this seemed to confuse other reviewers too, but then they all said it came together at the end. 🤔 Well, it didn‘t for me so please can someone who‘s read it let me know what on earth went on?! 🫤 (In spoilers below please!) 🙏

#WomensPrize #Longlist #52Bookclub24 #IndigenousCulture

I will be thinking about this for a bit today. Part Native Mohawk culture, part postpartum depression/mental illness, it made a chaotic story that was hard to latch on to.

@Kristy_K @LaraReads @KarenUK @Hooked_on_books @BarkingMadRead @brittanyreads @Magpiegem @BookBelle84 @Larkken @jenniferw88 @julesG @MidnightBookGirl @Librarybelle @triplem80 @Tove_Reads @gracious @Read4life @Bluebird

Alice never seemed to hear the microwave beeping—not even when she was three feet away from it, feet propped on the kitchen table as she painted her toenails neon green.

#FirstLineFridays

@ShyBookOwl

I think if this hadnt been a #WomensPrize #longlist I would have given up on this one. I find fiction around psychosis and post-partum depression very hard to read, and then add in magical realism that I often find tricky to navigate / make sense of. Glad I stuck with it though, as the resolution of the final section was hopeful as well as bleakly realist. Great to see another new author getting attention via the longlist.

How does he know the perfect time and way to leave conversations? Maybe that's what wealth affords. I imagine him learning all the perfect social cues in some private school classroom from a teacher with their PhD in psychology at the same time I was learning how to cook Hamburger Helper from the back of the box because Ma was pulling another double shift at the smoke shop.

"Excuse me. Gene Wilder is the only Willy Wonka we acknowledge in this family. He never lied about being an Indian so he could wear a goddamn dead crow on his head for a movie. And a shit movie at that. Tonto, my ass."

"Who's Gene Wilder?" Dana asks.

That was the first moment I really felt the difference between us and the worlds we inhabited. On Six Nations, we'd introduce ourselves by saying who we were related to, then spend the next five minutes trying to place how our relatives knew one another, or if we were relatives ourselves if you went far back enough. Each person a walking history book, a branch waiting to find more family trees to graft onto.

Ok down to last 2hrs (more or less) if audio and holy, narrator shift! That was jarring.
I'm really not sure how I feel about this besides highly confused as to what is happening. 😂
I'm sure on our walk anyone who was looking at my face as they passed was amused.

A soft pick. Loved the first half then it switched to 2nd person perspective and all the you youing did my head in! 🙄 but a really good ending (for a change!!) and I loved all the Mohawk stories and history. #womensprize

Picked up this beaut‘ with Barnes points today… paid $0.22 😁😁

It‘s uncomfortable to be in the head of young Mohawk woman struggling with psychosis and new motherhood off the rez, but oh, does this novel ever deliver! The excellent audiobook is read by two Indigenous narrators: Jenna Clause [Cayuga]and Cheri Maracle [Mohawk / Irish]. #CanadianAuthor

I was interested to learn that the Canadian cover art was commissioned from artist Jay Soule, who is Chippewa from the Thames First Nation in Ontario. Editor Kiara Kent writes: “We wanted an unforgettable image to seize the reader and capture the horror elements of the book.” Even so, I prefer the American cover. What do you think?

Recent Reads December 2: funny Canadians; mistrust; storytelling as a means of identity & connection

https://youtu.be/NqFN-yq_KdE

#CanLit #IndigenousLiterature #audiobooks #NonfictionNovember

Really complex and well written horror-ish novel about a new mother grappling with new parenthood, racism, generational trauma, mental health issues, and much much more. It was both very intense and very easy to #audiowalk to. At first I wasn‘t sure where the ending was going, but I loved it when we got there.

Hmmm, important read on indigenous women. The story took a lot of turns that I‘m still processing. I really enjoyed the story of Alice and was rooting for her the entire way. This story made me laugh and cry. I felt like the first 3/4 of the book was a slow, steady pace… and then things just quickly unraveled. I Feel like I need a little break before my next read 😮‍💨

I wasn‘t sure what to expect— my first experience with Elliott‘s writing. It‘s a genre mashup in some ways, & certainly pulls you into Alice‘s world, thoughts & doesn‘t let go. A new mother, while grieving the unexpected loss of her own mother, Alice has been living with her husband in Toronto but feeling cut off from the other family she has left— increasingly isolated, struggling to write the book of the Mohawk Creation Story. Fresh & absorbing!

Current weekend read: And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliot

Release Date: September 26, 2023

This book, my sister‘s dog, a pint of Mango Chamoy Sherbet, and the first three episodes of Harlan Coben‘s Shelter is what‘s kept me entertained this weekend.

What about you all?