This book has all the trappings of contemporary adult living from social media and phone obsessions including the ways in which life online complicates our relationships, especially female friendships. The characters are generally dreadful in their own special ways, but there was something about them that also made them real, accessible, and relatable. The novel … Continue reading
This post as been a long time coming and I am so glad to be able to finally review all three of Jonathan Coe’s novels from his accidental trilogy, The Rotters’ Club. When his novel Middle England was published in 2018 it received worldwide literary praise. Despite it popularity many readers didn’t know that it … Continue reading
Strange Magic by Syd Moore is a great escapist read if you are looking for something light in these overwhelming times. I picked up this copy in Zurich, and I was drawn to the cover and the prospect of a witchy tale. The plot centres on Rosie Strange who has just inherited her grandfather’s “Essex … Continue reading
I bought this book in the first few months after arriving in Switzerland at the giant English bookshop, that used to be located on the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. I was so intrigued by the idea of a dead person narrating a book. The dead couldn’t talk. I tried to read the first chapter of the … Continue reading
“It’s guilt: mass guilt, generational guilt. The olds feel they irretrievably fucked up the world, then allowed us to be born in it. You know what? It’s true. That’s exactly what they did. They know it, we know it. Everybody knows it” (55). Continue reading
The Cactus is the debut novel from Sarah Haywood which is about letting go of who people want you to be and who you have made yourself become because of your past experiences. It is about family conflict, death, grief, secrets, and forgiveness. It is not your typical contemporary fiction novel for all the right … Continue reading
NOTE: discussions about mental health and miscarriage Candice Carty-Williams’ novel Queenie is set in a London that is very different from other novels I have read set there. It is set in a London with racial tensions and diversity alongside gentrification and poverty. For me, Carty-Williams’ London is truer to the ‘real’ London I have … Continue reading
This book started off like a small rock slowing rolling down a snowy hill that eventually turns into an avalanche. What you are left with at the end of the novel is silence and white powder. John Lanchester’s novel borrows its title from the famous Karl Marx and his “Das Kapital”. Although, the book is … Continue reading
Reality T.V. seems to be a love/hate genre. There are those who think that it is completely beneath them and, then the idea of watching rich people fight and argue with each other on Semi-scripted sets ignites peoples passions. The general consensus about reality T.V. though, seems to be that it is vapid, soul-crushing, and … Continue reading
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