‘She has come. She has come for me.’
Melmoth unravels as a brooding, morose, gothic tale of a wanderer, a woman, an ancient mythical monster that resides in the darkest corners and bears witness to all the evils that unfold just when you think no-one is watching. Sarah Perry does complete justice to the atmosphere and tone of the book, at times, legitimately, spine-chilling, tempting you to take a quick peek over your shoulder, just to make sure no-one is watching. Continue reading
I’m certainly not the first person to be recommending Tara Westover’s Educated to you. But if all the shooting star worth praise hasn’t convinced you yet, let me try and tell you why you should be reading this memoir.
It opens with a gorgeous description of rural Idaho, the Indian Princess mountain as it’s rugged backdrop, into the home of one family at odds with the rest of the world. Tara Westover was born in 1986 to survivalist Mormon parents without any trace of documentation to account for/or register her birth. Continue reading
As of July 1st, 2018, these were my favorite reads from the first half of the year. Continue reading
“There is this thing that distance does where it subtracts warmth and context and history and each find that they are arguing with a stranger.”
When I finished the last page, I wanted to turn back and start over, that’s just how brilliant this was.
What it Means When A Man Falls From the Sky by Leslie Nneka Arimah is an exquisitely conceived collection of realist and fantastical stories. Continue reading
It’s taken me a month and half to finish this mammoth of a book, the Middlemarch of medical non-fiction, The Emperor of All Maladies, A Biography of Cancer. It has been one of the most informative reads I’ve ever read. Mukherjee presents a very complex topic in an accessible and interesting way striking the perfect balance in being descriptive without being overbearing & clinical. Though this book is as accessible as a biography of Cancer can possibly get, it still is a very challenging read and certainly not a breeze to get through. So in that sense it feels like an achievement just to have finished it.
With this duology, I’m assured of Sarah Moss as a writer of incredible nuance, intelligence, observation, elegance and style. Signs for Lost Children picks up just where Bodies of Light left, so I’d really encourage one to start with Bodies of Light before they try this as the motivations of these characters, the backstories and context would all be lost by starting directly here.
Bodies of Light triumphs in its themes, but rushes through the years. Signs for Lost Children, on the other hand, is set across a single year following Ally’s marriage. Continue reading
This was my first brush with Barnes, and needless to say, I was quite floored by the brilliance of this mighty little book. The Sense of An Ending is an examination of memory and history, and the convergence of these grand themes from an unreliable, delusional narrator: Tony Webster, an old man looking back on particular events of his life. It’s an intricate portrayal of how unreliable memories can be, how we might edit things out and recreate histories of ourselves, how certain unpleasant memories can be repressed and modified into versions we ’d like to present instead. Continue reading
Review: Oh Sarah Moss! How wonderfully you write and how nice it feels to be wrapped up in your words like a blanket! Bodies of Light was an intriguing, wonderfully written, and complex story of female roles in the 19th century, of women fighting to find their place in professional and academic settings than being restricted to domestic roles, of a dysfunctional family, a domineering mother, of mental health and its stigma, of art and its appreciation, Continue reading
Between Bookends 