Literary fiction
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Could have been better, but was a lot of fun.
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I’m doing a writing course for the next nine months and the reading list is quite intimidating. There are nearly 100 books on it. It’s been less than two weeks and I’ve bought ten of them already. Obviously, I’ll buy more than I read and many will sit on the bookcase unread for years. But…
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You must read this book. This is the best book I’ve read in a very long time. The Power by Naomi Alderman explores the nature and dynamics of power. Women have evolved the power to deliver excruciating and fatal pain through their hands, and men have not. Using four different characters whose lives eventually intersect,…
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I read the first scene of The Dig by Cynan Jones in a workshop on the Arvon course I did in August. The exercise was to look at how the author sets up the story, word choice, rhythm, mood, that sort of thing. I was intrigued by the subject matter and attracted by the visceral…
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I love the title of Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin. It’s a short story collection and normally I would steer clear of short stories as I don’t find them as satisfying as novels. This book came to me as part of the collection from an emigrating friend and, while I didn’t connect…
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A little while ago I decided I didn’t want to write any more reviews of books I didn’t enjoy. There are two reasons for this. First, I don’t like doing it, the posts are hard to write, I don’t want to be negative, and I believe that if you can’t say something nice don’t say…
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How have I waited so long to read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood? It’s a classic, and has been televised, and is the kind of thing that sometimes you don’t read because you think you know all you need to about it. The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985 and I really should have…
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This is an odd book. It was buried on book mountain and I can’t remember what prompted me to buy it. Perhaps it was one of those sent to me by a book club that I never bothered to send back. Santa Evita by Tomás Eloy Martínez (trans. Helen Lane) is a story about what…
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I’m steadily working my way through Toni Morrison’s books. I’ve every intention of reading them all. Sula is about a part of a small town in the US in the interwar period. It’s not so much a story as a series of interconnected character illustrations that Morrison uses to illuminate some really big social issues.…
Boudica Marginalia 