Welcome to Litsy!

The review backlog continues. The Echoes pulled at my heartstrings but didn‘t destroy me like I was prepared for..after reading reviews (and the blurb!) I was hesitant to pick it up for fear of being too sad, but I found plenty of moments of levity here. 3 timelines, 2 settings: different perspectives and locations. Max is still lingering after his death, watching Hannah in the London apartment they shared. Hannah remembers her past in Australia.

A gloriously dark tale of an English family. May has remarried the gruff retired colonel Herbert , using her money they buy a monstrous house as his daughter Alice and her 2 children, Elizabeth + Oliver, leave the home. The children's ill-fated love lives are explored with portraits of various characters being caustic + very funny. Men in this book are particularly ridiculous, but it is the ending that allows the writer to wallow in black humour.

I‘ve loved or really liked almost all of the other books I‘ve read by Cusk, but this didn‘t quite make it for me. Sadly. I felt kept at a distance, & that might have been intentional

At university Micheal is invited home to one of his friends, Adam, for the weekend. Adam‘s family seems so perfect. Years later, married & with a kid Micheal visits Adam‘s family again, to help with the lambing. Adam‘s family may not be as perfect as he once thought

Check me out, buying a book, and then reading it right away instead of letting it sit on my shelf for months/years first! The things I will do for Evie Wyld. I absolutely loved this, I think it might be her strongest yet.

Hannah is haunted; by the (literal) ghost of her boyfriend Max, by the life in Australia she moved to London to escape, by the unknown traumas her family carries... cont'd in comments 👇

I ADORE Evie Wyld and her beautifully messy, complex women. So last summer when I read she had a new book I immediately ordered it, even though I knew I'd have to wait awhile for its North American release. The day is finally here! I'm almost finished another book, but plan to start this one today. Buying a book and starting to read it in the same day?!?! THAT'S how much I love her.

This didn't really work for me, which is a bummer because I think there were 2 good ideas here that were combined and it caused neither of them to be as effective as they could have been alone.
I loved the idea of Max as a ghost watching as life moves on after he passed, though I disliked the glimpses we see of predeath Max, what an a'hole. I think the point was to show generational trauma being passed down but with all the time jumps 👇

A well-written literary novel about women, love, resilience and loss. Ruth, who was raised by a single mother and is one herself, feels like a failed mother to Eleanor who also becomes a single mother. Ruth ends up raising Eleanor's daughter Lily due to Eleanor's drug addiction. The title is clever in its double meaning.

The darkest of dark humour in this story introduces me to the mind of celia dale + early 1960's England as two villainous characters swindle old ladies out of their meagre assets. The seedy nature of their enterprise finds Maisie + Josh Evans taking elderly Flo into their home + quickly manipulating her into a grim life trapped in her bedroom. The image of Josh creating his scrapbook will stay with me for a while. Bleak but bizarrely I loved it.

#12Booksof2024

I read a lot in December due to time off work. Most of my favorites I‘ve already posted about for challenges. I want to highlight this title because I love Kunzru as an author. It didn‘t delve into the fantastical like others from him but it‘s still a crazy story. I appreciated Kunzru‘s intelligence and questioning of reality-why we value what we value. In large part, it‘s about art; what isn‘t art; how society commodifies art.

It was absolutely lovely to end off 2024 with this book, one of my favourites for the whole year. Ruth steps in and takes responsibility for her granddaughter Lily, as her daughter Eleanor is a drug addict. This is such a gentle story of a woman leading a hard life, who keeps going and offers the best of herself to her granddaughter. Beautiful and heartbreaking and a rare book that brought me to tears.