“I…dipped my finger into the saucer and wrote my initials in sugar-water on the windowsill. I waited to see my name spelled out for me in ants: a living legend.” Lady Oracle opens with the narrator Joan in Italy, after faking her own death back in Canada. The story then flashes back to the events leading up to this, including a difficult relationship with her mother, and relationships with three influential men: Paul, Arthur, and the self-fashioned Royal Porcupine. Joan has been writing historical romance […]
So awesome, so awesome
So this was an intriguing one. The two biggest YA superstars collaborate on a book, each writing alternate chapters, about two high school boys both named Will Grayson. John Green takes the straight Will, best friend to the biggest, gayest teen (ironically nicknamed Tiny, of course) while Levithan gives us the gay will, who is too cool to use capital letters at any point ever, but otherwise leads a tortured existence, prone to black moods and on medication to stabilise his moods. A freak turn […]
Nearly but not quite
Every year, there’s another attempt at writing The Great American Novel. And the latest instalment in that neverending series is David Gilbert’s latest novel, & Sons. Very early on, Gilbert sets out his stall with “Fathers start as gods and end as myths and in between whatever human form they take can be calamitous for their sons”. So we know what we’re dealing with. This is the story of A.N. Dyer, a Salinger-esque novelist, as reclusive as he is revered, and his three sons. The eldest is […]
Gone Again
After struggling to remember who Neil Patrick Harris is supposed to play in the movie, I decided I needed a reread of Gone Girl, so that I am properly prepared to see the movie with the appropriate mix of excitement and righteous indignation. Gone Girl opens on the day of Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Nick and Amy moved to Missouri two years ago after losing their jobs in New York City. In addition, most of Amy’s trust fund from her parents’ Amazing […]
Meh
This novel is not just a stream but rather a flood of consciousness, narrated by a woman who needs the help of mental health professionals. While I appreciate that the narrator reveals her state of mind to us with her endless, run-on rumination, as a reader, I just found it wearying after a while. And in the end, I’m not sure what to make of the odyssey of Elyria, a 28-year-old woman, writer for soap operas, unhappily married, trying to lose herself. Elyria has been […]
How Hannibal Became a Cannibal
Having never read Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris, when it was published in 2007, I thought I would go back and finish up the series, mostly to familiarize myself with the entire Hannibal cannon and potentially to help me have more information at hand as the television series continues in 2015. The reviews for the book when it came out, were not kind, and many thought Harris had crossed a line in the sand by establishing his imagined reasons for Hannibal Lecter’s childhood trauma and resulting descent […]
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