Category: fiction
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Book Review: Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy
What a stunning read. I read this book right on the heels of Bri Lee’s Seed, and was struck by the similarities in subject matter (Antarctic or quasi-Antarctic seed vaults on the brink of abandonment; two narrators who believe it is immoral to bring children into the world; two incredibly lonely men who feel that…
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Book Review: Soft Serve, by George Kemp
Love a bit of Aussie climate fiction and this book had everything — down-to-earth setting, complex characters, a broader sense of unease and hopelessness that hangs over many Aussie towns today. I loved the idea of four broken characters, bound by tragedy, stuck in a McDonald’s while the world burns down. While it occasionally went…
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Book Review: All Fours, Miranda July
This book turned out to be as I had anticipated: overly sexual for my taste, overly existential for my current phase of life, and yet still incredibly compelling. (I knew it had to be just based on the number of times it had been recommended to me by other writers.) It was July’s incredible sentences…
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Book Review: The Satsuma Complex, by Bob Mortimer
A silly, lighthearted book that could have been cut down in a few places. Typical Bob Mortimer, good for days when life feels absurd.
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Book Review: The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley
After devouring Seed (Bri Lee) I was ready for more dystopian climate fiction. I’ve seen this one doing the rounds for at least a year now, so I finally went for it. This book was surprising in so many ways — the concepts, the language, the narrator’s own two-faced-ness — and, for the most part,…
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Book Review: Seed, by Bri Lee
I didn’t want to be another person just turning away from it. Another person keeping a dog but eating a lamb. Another person with a recycling bin and a brand-new car. Another person creating another person to look just like them when so many were already alive and starving. A quick review for a quick…
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Book Review: Vigil, by George Saunders
You know one thing you rarely heard about in the good old U.S.A. anymore? Monsieur Frog? A young fellow dying of appendicitis. At twenty-eight. Like Grandpa’s brother had. Because a road got washed out. And the horse-drawn cart couldn’t make it through. Imagine you go back in time and drop that young guy into the…
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The City and its Uncertain Walls, by Haruki Murakami
Ugh. Here we go. The main thing to say here is that this was my first Murakami, and will very likely be my last. I am not a fan. I’ll admit, I made the mistake of not doing any research into Murakami’s work (I had technically read his non-fiction book about running many years ago),…
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Book Review: Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Japanese fiction seems to be having a moment, so I figured I’d participate. I got what I was expecting: not a particularly deep or moving novel, but a quiet, ambient experience. What many Japanese authors do well is this idea of the place that never changes, the constant routine, the comfort it all brings. The…
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Book Review: A Place of Greater Safety, by Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel’s epic doorstopper brings the French Revolution to life — in intimate, violent, and inescapably human detail. In the 2020s, elections are won — it is said — on the price of eggs. In the 1780s and 90s, the French revolution ignites by the price of bread. And so it goes. A Place of…