Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A kiss might be blameless, so long as it was the other person doing the leaning. Was it your fault, really, if someone else kissed you?”

The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky

by 2 Comments

What if A.S. Byatt’s Possession popped up again in the internet age? The Portrait of a Mirror answers that question with a heaping helping of Greek mythology to boot. Diana, Wes, Dale, and Vivien are spoiled obsessives staring at themselves into eternity. They are slimy people, but you know what? I don’t care! I want them to be happy in their clandestine adventures, and I want them to be miserable in their public falling outs! Wes and Diana are married. Their relationship is a constant sparring match that […]

He had no idea who she might be.

Possession by AS Byatt

by Leave a Comment

This is one of those books that going into it, I knew would require a lot of careful reading, patience, and oddly, tapping into some old resentments to enjoy it. I spent a lot of years in and around English departments at multiple levels. I was never a professor, but I’ve seen plenty of drama, and this book is dramatic in some ways, but understated as well. The novel begins with Roland Michell reading a 150 year old copy of Vico’s The New Science. This […]

My Possession Obsession

by 2 Comments

Possession is a mesmerizing story, or two stories, steeped in mystery, secrecy and discovery. Set in both the modern world and the Victorian age, Possession tells the parallel stories of characters whose intellectual pursuits bring them together but also spark jealousies alongside great creativity. Byatt’s writing is genius. The detail and creativity, the imagination, she brings to her work is simply breathtaking. The novel begins in London, circa 1990. Roland is a scholar/academic, living with longtime girlfriend Val in rather dire straits. His field is […]

A Little Book On Demon Possession

by Leave a Comment

Whew! This little book was a ride. Clocking in at only 190 pages, our story follows Amanda, an architect with a happy, boring life that she loves. She’s a young, married professional with a nice loft and an aspiring future until little things start happening…..hearing noises, a sudden desire to start smoking, unexplained purchases, an intense need to steal….but things still easily explained away, or so Amanda thinks. Gran’s delightfully minimal style weaves us through the mind of a woman unraveling. Told in the first […]

I read this book in one sitting

by 3 Comments

But I’m not really sure why. But there must have been something I liked to read it all at once. So why the 3 star rating? Well friends, in this house we deduct major points for a book that spends all of its time queerbaiting its readers. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and as glaring as it is this isn’t my only problem with the book. So let’s start at the beginning. Our story opens with Abby Rivers, now a successful adult with a […]

A beautifully done maybe-possession story.

by 2 Comments

I don’t even know what to say about this book, but it has to be one of my top ten favorites. I absolutely could not put it down, except when I had to put it down to shake off the creepiness. This book is responsible for several nights of nightmares and one weird middle of the night episode where my toddler who never crawls was inexplicably crawling around my bedroom and in my bleary state I really really thought she was possessed. Marjorie is 14 […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo