"Well, there’s so much to read, and I’m so far behind." Wallace Stegner
When I was five years old, we had a nanny. Not that we called her that. She was Mathilde, and if we tried to explain who she was to outsiders, she was the housekeeper. She cooked our meals, cleaned, took care of us during the day, and put us to bed. We Lived in Bondi … Continue reading We All Lived in Bondi Then | Georgia Blain
It is never easy to move to a new country, but in truth I was happy to be away from New York. That city had become disorientating to me, after my father's death and my mother's sudden retreat to Singapore. For the first time, I understood how much my parents had anchored me to this … Continue reading Intimacies | Katie Kitamura
They came slowly down the street, two boys on bicycles, riding side by side through the glare of a summer afternoon. She's on the curb, and the sun is so bright and hot it feels like her hair is on fire. Perhaps if I had paid attention to the acknowledgment at the beginning of this … Continue reading Cheri | Jo Ann Beard #NovNov2023
This was the summer before the world stopped. We thought it was pretty bad, though in retrospect there was joy to be found. I started The Hero of This Book with great expectations. The mother/daughter relationship, the novel acting as memoir all the while travelling to London to revisit old haunts all sounded very promising. … Continue reading The Hero of This Book | Elizabeth McCracken
On the afternoon that Esther Wilding drove homeward along the coast, a year after her sister had walked into the sea and disappeared, the light was painfully golden. I've spent a little bit of time mulling over why this book didn't work for me. I don't read a lot of popular fiction, but I do … Continue reading The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding | Holly Ringland #AWWfiction
Opening Line: Here she is, standing in the schoolyard. She is six years old, dressed in a crisp green uniform. Other children are on the swings and seesaw, but she has taken herself off to stand alone under the eucalyptus at the edge of the playground. Nothing Ever Happens Here: A Memoir of Loss and … Continue reading Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here | Heather Rose #AWWmemoir
No Document is an elegy for a friendship and artistic partnership cut short by death. The memory of this collaboration becomes a model for how we might relate to others in sympathy, solidarity and rebellion. At once intimate and expansive, Anwen Crawford’s book-length essay explores loss in many forms: disappeared artworks, effaced histories, abandoned futures. Written … Continue reading No Document | Anwen Crawford
The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. In an attempt to get back into blogging about individual books again, I have decided to revive the 'favourite' format I was using pre-pandemic. I'm not sure why I stopped as I found it … Continue reading H is For Hawk | Helen Macdonald
The abandoned hotel comes into view. Derelict, windswept. Who is Mette Jakobsen and how is it I have never heard of her before? In 2011 she wrote The Vanishing Act about a young girl growing up on a small snow covered island. In October of the same year, a brief story called The Island appeared … Continue reading The Wingmaker | Mette Jakobsen #AWW
My mother was blue, a pale blue mixed with the colour of ashes. I find myself drawn to memoirs that dive deep into difficult, complicated mother-daughter relationships. It's a dynamic fraught with push me/pull me tensions. Tensions that seem to only evolve with time. Is it possible to work them out? Come to terms with … Continue reading Nothing Holds Back the Night | Delphine de Vigan #FRAmemoir
The rave reviews are the hardest, aren't they? It took me a few chapters to fall into this story, but when I fell, I really fell! The Dutch House turned out to be one of those wonderful, rich reading experiences that you wish would never end. Part gothic fairy tale and part psychological study of two … Continue reading The Dutch House | Ann Patchett #20BooksofWinter
Oh, this was utterly delicious. Deliciously melancholy, if that's a thing. The Heather Blazing is the story of Judge Eamon Redmond, and the loss and grief that has defined his whole life. Tóibin writes these rather sad, introspective characters so well. Like Nora Webster, you're left wondering, if perhaps Eamon's first person story is missing … Continue reading The Heather Blazing | Colm Tóibin #Begorrathon
Sometimes you read a book, or discover an author, that opens up a new world to you. Or a world that you knew existed, but one that doesn't really intersect very often with your own every day, ordinary life. A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar was one such book and one such author. It's … Continue reading A Month in Siena | Hisham Matar #NonFiction
The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay was a tremendous read. Fascinating, absorbing and eye-opening. I say eye-opening, because even though I've read a lot of Indian literature over the years, I don't believe I've read many that cover the conflict in Kashmir. Vijay doesn't answer all the questions or provide all the answers, she doesn't … Continue reading The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay
If Cats Disappeared from the World is an odd little book. I say odd because I'm not quite sure how I'm going to review it best.Obviously, it has a cute cover designed to attract the attention of any cat lover (me) and a title that would greatly concern said cat lover. I'm also a fan … Continue reading If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura
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