This is a quiet, ethereal little book written as a novel, but by a poet. And like a lot of novels written by poets, impression, effect, language, atmosphere, are privileged over plot. So at just over 100 pages (maybe less if I can remember which exact page it started on), this book is small in stature and impression. I think this book would have been a love it or leave it kind of thing, love it or hate it, but the story is so in […]
Ess Pee Queue Arr
Ultimately I have to take this book at its word(s) because I have such an otherwise facile understanding of Roman history that I am a stuck/kept audience member. I found the sweep and scope of this book both manageable and readable. The research seemed quite sound, and the theorizing that does happen (which is relatively little) is mostly sidebar commentary and joking more than interpreting. This is a history of the beginnings of Rome. There’s a debate that was and maybe still is happening in […]
It’s probably good it doesn’t rely on the mythic parts
I think this novel is quite strong. It’s about a young girl and her dad returning to her mother’s hometown, long after her death. It involves a seemingly rapacious grandmother, odd events, small town quirks, and lots of gun violence. Yeah, oddly it does have that last one. The novel itself is broken into several present-time/progressive-time chapters about the girl, Loo, and her father, the titular Samuel Hawley growing accustomed to a stationary life after years of travelling. In addition, there’s the background story being […]
What more can I say? What more can I do? I gave this up to you. I know this much is true.
I am completing and re-reading a lot of Jane Austen this year. I already read her “Juvenalia” as they call a young writer’s materials and odds and ends. I read Sense and Sensibility for the first time earlier. Now I return to Pride and Prejudice for one more go. So what more can I say? One, do you think Jay-Z has read this book? I can’t think of why not. Two, my roommate last year got a super fat kitten and named him Fitz, after Darcy. Three, for […]
Agoraphobia: A study
If you told me this was required reading for Australian middle schoolers, I would believe it. It has that quality of an obvious kind of black and white ethical framework, the story of young people, the story of oppression, and then fortitude of a hard journey all within a small package. I think it’s a pretty good book. But the book itself lends itself well to young readers because it’s really good at creating a clear sense of the context of the events. In this […]
Claustrophobia: A Study
This book is an ok book. The story itself is about a woman who comes from an abusive past meeting back up with her mother and her family for the first time in a long time on a French estate. There’s quiet drama and unspoken things etc etc. For me, one of the things this book is truly about is claustrophobia. Here we have this giant French estate and these intermixed families coming from all over the world, but the book itself is so narrowly […]
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