Welcome to Litsy!

Another recently finished book. This one sits between a so-so and a pick for me. A difficult and challenging read, I suspect that I would glean more from it on a second read. Set in the present in a norther country, it is a story of historical injustices and the ways that communities avoid facing their past, and personal complicity in those injustices. Not a fun read, but I think there is something worth the difficulty here.

😳 I‘ve been bailing left & right on audiobooks, including the tagged novel, The Wren the Wren, two Toibin novels, among others.

I‘m in an audio drought. 🏜️🌵

An artist living on an isolated island off the coast of Brittany just before WWI is visited by an eminent art critic, who used to be his mentor and now wants his portrait painted.

A series of monologues from the artist to the sitter while he's painting explore what has brought them that point. Although the ending is fairly predictable early on it is only in the last 30 pages that we learn the motivation behind it. Something of a tour de force.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

#coffeeandabook

On the #Booker2023 longlist

I've been reading the longlists since 2019 and this was a really good year in that small window. I gave five stars to four different books. I really liked that there was a lot of value given to poetic prose, not purple, but poetic and rhythmic, often personal and always generating reflection. Many of the authors are also published poets, and it shows.

I finished last week. My personal rankings are in the comments

I enjoyed this curiosity, found it wonderfully done, found the writing, which focuses so much on the sound, always interesting and terrific, with its own rhythm and life. And I say this even I didn't really get it. (I missed a lot, as I discovered afterwards reading online reviews) This maybe should have won the Booker (and I loved the winner, Prophet Song)

#ShadowGiller2024 @Lindy

She‘s like, “yeah, right” 🙄 But it‘s my next read and I‘m looking forward to it. #booker2023