Lockwood is fantastic at capturing the fragmented, crushing feeling of being terminally online. I found the second half, in which a child she loves is extremely sick, hugely moving. But this book just wasn‘t for me, because I found the first half so exhausting- short, snappy paragraphs about the ‘portal‘ which didn‘t advance a plot, and at times felt like they were included just to be witty. I‘m sure this was the point, but I found it tough.

It‘s different for women, isn‘t it? They have no choice where they go. They grow up in a prison and then get married into one.

'pretentious though it may be, i remain convinced
that my interpretation, my translation, is a more
accurate reflection of her state of mind, far
exceeding that which she is able to articulate
independently, and while putting words in the
mouths of others may be my specialty, my naughty
narration is fast becoming a tired thing. i'm running
out of steam!‘

‘there was something evil and terrible inside her for wanting that contact, that crude embrace, and for wanting it to last forever‘.

my penpal recommended hurricane season. i read it in one sitting, sucked into the dense, overflowing prose. set in a gang-controlled, unnamed mexican town as hurricane season approaches, this book is unafraid to show the darkest parts of human experience (read with caution: it is extremely graphic). each chapter is a new stream of consciousness, building to reveal the crime, and characters build and deepen as we see them through different eyes.

i think anyone who‘s been young in a city could recognise dolly, a member of the damaged 20-something protagonists of fleabag, girls, or exciting times. some stories are unbelievable, like the ex who decorates his apartment with hand-drawn nudes of his exes, sleeps with married women, and works for his mother‘s friend. i found the recipe inserts annoying. but i loved the love dolly has for her friends, which drives the story.

‘they were all good stories, and that's what mattered. it was the raison d'être of my early twenties. i was a six-foot human metal detector for fragments of potential anecdotes.‘

‘they were all good stories, and that's what mattered. it was the raison d'être of my early twenties. i was a six-foot human metal detector for fragments of potential anecdotes.‘

Happy Sunday!

‘The watching women moved closer, gathering round her where she knelt on the filthy sand, joining their cries with hers - until they turned from women into wolves, the same terrible howl coming from a hundred throats. And I howled with them, horrified at the sounds I was making, but unable to stop. Hecamede howled, and Amina, all of us, for the loss of our homeland - for the loss of our fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, for everybody we‘d loved.‘

a sweeping epic following the lives of an african-american family through enslavement, the civil war, and into our modern times. ailey pearl inherits a complicated legacy of secrecy and absence, inherited from both sides of her family. as she grows up, she decides to seek out her family history, with devastating and profound results.

it's so good. it's so so good.

I love long, interconnected family sagas like this. The imagery is gorgeous: ‘He turned his face towards the sun, which was melting into the sea like a scoop of red ice cream‘. But this book didn‘t grab me, and I really wanted it to. I found the time jumps confusing, and they made it hard to keep track of characters, timelines, and narrative voices. I also didn‘t love any of the characters: none of them came to life for me.

‘I suddenly understood, in a joyful stupor, that the empty feeling in my heart, the mournful quality of my days, had but one cause: Andrée‘s absence. Life without her would be death.‘

about halfway through the silence of scheherazade - i have been wanting to read it for ages so i‘m so glad i found a copy. have you read it? what did you think?

you can never speak again. you can never be hugged, touched, looked at. you must ingest the darkest sins humanity can commit, cleansing them of evil and taking it into yourself. this was so dark, so heartbreaking, but may remains hopeful and curious after becoming a sin eater. even when she loses someone in devastating circumstances, she persists. i loved her.

I‘ve never read a mystery like this: so moody and atmospheric, with the looming feeling of dread and decay settling in. The women all seemed like ghosts, floating into each other‘s lives but trapped in their own loneliness. The mystery wasn‘t compelling for me, and the resolution felt convoluted and improbable, but I didn‘t mind because I was so captivated by the characters. Have you read any ‘puzzle mysteries‘?

The Wolf Den is beautifully realised, lush and rich with detail. It fits well alongside other Greek retellings, focusing on women at the bottom of society instead of princesses. But I‘m not sure I‘ll read the sequel - I think because I found Amara the least interesting character. None of her actions really had consequences, even the devastating ending, and I wanted to see her fail more often and show more flaws.

‘Consent - agreement to sex - should not be conflated with sexual desire, enjoyment or enthusiasm, not because we should be resigned to bad sex, but precisely because we should not be.‘

I loved this book, and I felt its loss as soon as I put it down. The gentle plot gradually escalates, walking closer to the dark horror without explaining or revealing it. More than anything, it was an elegy to loss and memories, and how we cling to each other as everything we know fades away.

I adored this book. It‘s bitesized, and like My Brilliant Friend, dissects the joys, complexities, and horrors of female friendships and adolescence. The tragic ending is inevitable, but it doesn‘t feel forced. Instead, it‘s an elegy to innocence lost too soon. Andrée, based upon de Beauvoir‘s childhood friend, is memorialised exactly as Sylvie hopes: she is made the hero of her story.

The writing is all about the vibe, jumping between paragraphs like a poem in prose. It did evoke troubling questions about motherhood, but it began to feel one-note, with the same ideas recurring over and over. There was no world building, and it was too interior and atmospheric. The questions posed about motherhood are important, and the writing was moving and often beautiful, but it wasn‘t enough to keep me engaged until the end.

‘“It's easy,” I said to Daan that evening. “We fly to Macassar, connect with a plane to Maumere, discover our Chinese friend's brother-in-law, hire a lorry, drive two hundred miles to the other end of Flores, find a canoe or something, cross the five-mile strait to Komodo and then all we have to do is to catch our dragon”.‘

My anxiety could never.

My weekend read! Finding it much slower than I expected. Should I stick with it?

Each time we did it I was afraid of missing the swell, hanging back, timing it wrong. John never was. You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that.

1999. Two high school boys drive a drunk girl home. The story they tell about what they did will change over time, dividing the school and destroying her life. Years later, one descends into alcoholism; Alice becomes a reclusive ghostwriter; and their intertwined stories play out as horror fiction, a thriller, a series of emails, and film scripts, culminating in a stunning twist. It‘s an extraordinary commentary on power and truth.

This novel is lush and symbolic, stuffed with decadent sounds and scents. We‘re immediately introduced to the central theme: that men and gods will trample on women, whose suffering serves as footnotes to their legends. There is a constant sense of destiny creeping, enveloping the characters within it and tugging us along. I knew the story of the Minotaur, but barely a third of the way through, this story is over.
(cont in comments)

The essays included are:

•The Anti-Social Family: a socialist critique and evaluation of the nuclear family
•Straight Sex: a manifesto arguing that heterosexual sex hurts women
•Woman‘s Consciousness, Man‘s World: considering the progression of feminist thought in a patriarchy
•Woman‘s Estate: a socialist-feminist statement outlining a new world vision

A set of loosely connected travel stories; a careful, devastating poet's voice; the permeating feeling of loneliness.
What did you think?

Ooooo it‘s good…

I‘m enjoying it, but not as much as I expected… thoughts?

A beautifully illustrated, densely researched history
of the oldest profession. It's an analysis of our historical biases and stigmas,
where they change and where they remain
consistent, from a writer who -unsurprisingly-
advocates for listening to the voices of the workers.
It is fairly Eurocentric, so bear that in mind. It's also
beautifully illustrated and photographed - I think I'Il
share some of my favourites over the next few
weeks.

This book has an extraordinary sense of place, the heat of Tokyo permeating every scene and elucidating moments of real emotional lucidity. It‘s really a book in two halves: a short story about sisterhood and family, and a longer exploration of the themes, set a decade later. As such, there is less a plot than a series of variations on themes, which at times form unexpected, delightful connections, and at times feel repetitive and forced.

rest + relaxation

I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn‘t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it‘s all you‘ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

‘Vain to consider that our love might be a real love, on a par with other great loves. That just because you are from Norwood and work as a ship‘s laundry man and I grew up in Stamford Hill and read a certain kind of novel, we are not capable of true emotions, of having feelings and experiences which matter‘.

Dawson‘s Edie is prone to long flights of fantasy, in which she imagines escaping with her lover and killing her abusive husband; these fantasies will later convict her. Yet despite the subject matter, I thought this book was a delight. Edie is captivating, charming, and complex, and Dawson captures her so well that I couldn‘t distinguish her fictional letters from the real ones she inserts.

In Buenos Aires, the dead don't stay dead.
They return throughout this collection of
stories, which depict struggling, ill,
impoverished protagonists drifting through
haunting, surreal worlds. This is perfect for reading in small chunks; the tone is so consistent that it feels like variations of a theme, rather than distinct
stories. The translation is also excellent,
engaging and visceral. If you're a fan of Angela
Carter, you will love these.

‘Circles are wondrous because they are endless. Anything endless is wondrous. But endlessness is torture, too. I knew the horizon could never be caught but still chased it. What I have done is foolish; I had no choice but to do it.‘

This was extraordinary: spanning continents and centuries, introducing distinctive, wonderful characters. I adored Marian and her twin Jamie, who are real, flawed, and who grow. Most of this novel is set in the past, so the film-making storyline is primarily to complement Marian‘s journey. This didn‘t bother me, as Marian was the character I cared about, but it could bother some. This is such a bold, sweeping novel and a careful character study.

‘Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are, in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect.‘