Shafak’s novel has a simple premise, love. And it might seem like a cliche, but it just works for this beautiful story. Defne, a Turkish woman, and Kostas, a Greek man, fall in love at the peak of the conflict in Cyrpus in 1974. Their love is helped along by a beautiful mixed Turkish and Greek couple Yusuf and Yiorgos and a little tavern called “The Happy Fig”. Continue reading
Tag Archives: trauma
“Anxiety: the missing stage of Grief”: a review and personal exploration of Claire Bidwell-Smith’s grief self-help book
When my father died in 2011, my whole world was flipped on its head. I have spent most of my 20s coming to terms with death, loss, and grief, and this is also evidenced in the types of books I have read throughout this time. This can be seen in my reviews of fiction works … Continue reading
What the self-help book “The Courage to Be Disliked” gets right and wrong
I bought The Courage to Be Disliked because I was curious to learn more about what the book had to offer. There has been an explosion of self-help literature in the 21st Century, and it probably has something to do with our chronic feelings of loneliness, burnout, and fear of not fitting into society. Japanese … Continue reading
Why can’t we just believe women?: A review of Abby Norman’s “Ask Me About My Uterus”
Disclaimer: unapologetic discussions about periods and diarrhea ahead. As soon as I saw this book appear as a new release in Goodreads, I put it on my TBR straight away. As someone who identifies as a woman who also has a uterus, this book spoke to me. I’ve struggled with painful and irregular periods my … Continue reading
A Review of Shalom Auslander’s novel, “Hope: A Tragedy”
The book was first published in 2012, but I didn’t actually start reading it until recently. It was one of those books that sat on my bookshelf collecting dust. Even though I don’t believe in fate, I still think that somehow this book was waiting for the right moment to catch my attention. Eventually that … Continue reading