Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Every time you leave someone’s life you risk being the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, or the last thing to ever happen to them.”

Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. This had so much promise, and it started off so well for me. I was delighted by the bitchy plant narrator (plus some others) that was obsessed with this woman, Neve, who runs a flower shop in an aging mall that is about to be closed and bulldozed to the ground. Our MC Shell was a good way in to the dynamic between Neve and the plant, whose […]

Same as it ever was

The Colony by Audrey Magee

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Ireland, 1979. Painter Lloyd gingerly takes a dinghy to a remote island off the Irish Coast, where he can lock himself in with the natives and paint for the summer. The natives eye him with wariness; they are happy to take his money and, in exchange, feed him, but they mistrust his motives. Not long after, French linguist JP also arrives on the island. JP is writing a dissertation about the Irish language spoken on the island; a language which is on the decline as […]

“It was in my nature to absorb large volumes of information during times of distress, like I could master the distress through intellectual dominance.”

Mr Salary by Sally Rooney

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Oof. Sally Rooney can do more with 22 pages than others can do with 200. Sukie and Nathan are set to collide. They have been tangled up in each other’s lives since she was an infant and he attended her christening. Sukie’s mother is dead, her father is dying, and she has been living on-and-off with Nathan since she was 19. He’s older, wiser, and much wealthier. She’s been in Boston, and he picks her up from the airport. They are charged from the get […]

“On her First Holy Communion, Majella could remember sitting in the chapel for a long time, with Jesus stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her trying to peel him off with her tongue. Somehow she knew picking him off with her finger was all wrong.”

Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen

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Majella is the queen of coping; she has developed a system of avoiding eye contact, she gladly relies on years-long joke exchanges orchestrated by her customers and coworkers, and she is clear about people explaining idioms and small-town customs to her as a needed relief. She is also coping with the world around her; her uncle “died for the cause”, her IRA-adjacent father disappeared years ago, her mother is lost in a haze of whiskey, and her beloved grandmother has recently been beaten to death. […]

Quiet but Devestating

Academy Street by Mary Costello

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Academy Street is deceivingly short, clocking in at 145 pages. Mary Costello fits an entire lifetime into this space, and while my original thought was that there was no possible way to fit a lifetime in such a short space properly, with all the deep meaning and detail, I was so very, very wrong. Tess Lohan is the quiet character, and in many books she’d be the one-lined, barely named side character. Her life is nothing short of ordinary, at least as far as story plotting […]

I’ve read this story before, and so have you (but it’s still pretty great)

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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For years, being a (now recovering) literary fiction snob with a preference for British Commonwealth authors, I’ve followed the Man Booker Prize long- and shortlists as a way to find new books, and since I still need a regular fix of literary fiction even as I explore new genres, I’ve started to look to other prizes to expand my library. With Sally Rooney’s Normal People appearing on the Booker longlist and winning the Costa Novel Award, it was an obvious choice, especially as I continue […]



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