Dead-end Memories | Banana Yoshimoto #JPNshortstories

Cover Design: Gingko leaves by Dana Li Five years ago I read Banana Yoshimoto's (1988) debut story Kitchen (which also contained the short story Moonlight Shadow). I enjoyed the two stories with some reservation about how deceptively simple they appeared. I think what I was trying to articulate back then is how it is possible for a … Continue reading Dead-end Memories | Banana Yoshimoto #JPNshortstories

The Swimmers | Julie Otsuka #USAnovella

Opening Lines: The pool is located deep underground, in a large cavernous chamber many feet beneath the streets of out town. Some of us come here becasue we are injured, and need to heal. We suffer from bad backs, fallen arches, shattered dreams, broken hearts, anxiety, melncholia, anhedonia, the usual aboveground afflictions. For about a … Continue reading The Swimmers | Julie Otsuka #USAnovella

Anything Is Possible | Elizabeth Strout #USAfiction

Tommy Guptill had once owned a dairy farm, which he'd inherited from his father, and which was about two miles from the town of Amgash, Illinois. Oh my, the good folk of Amgash, Illinois are an unhappy bunch. Thank goodness it is a fictional town! Poverty, illness, domestic abuse, divorce, PTSD, secrets and affairs are … Continue reading Anything Is Possible | Elizabeth Strout #USAfiction

Scary Monsters | Michelle de Kretser #AWWfiction

Three scary monsters - racism, misogyny and ageism - roam through this mesmerising novel. Its reversible format enacts the disorientation that migrants experience when changing countries changes the story of their lives. With this suspenseful, funny and profound book, Michelle de Kretser has made something thrilling and new.Which comes first, the future or the past?Back … Continue reading Scary Monsters | Michelle de Kretser #AWWfiction

Beautiful World, Where Are You | Sally Rooney #IRLfiction

A woman sat in a hotel bar, watching the door. Sally Rooney writes about the glorious and torturous intimacies that are a part of all the close relationships that we create for ourselves - best friends, lovers, siblings, colleagues. In Beautiful World, Where Are You Rooney continues this process, moving through the world of twenty-somethings … Continue reading Beautiful World, Where Are You | Sally Rooney #IRLfiction