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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
HOLY FU*K.
So many books are called genre benders and just don’t live up to it. This one, however, does. Thank you.
So many books are called genre benders and just don’t live up to it. This one, however, does. Thank you.
Didn't really understand the objective of this book, didn't lead anywhere astonishing. Writing style could be hard to understand at times and could be more descriptive. Overall it was ok. Hopefully will understand it better once studying it.
A deeply personal and difficult story told openly and elegantly.
I do wonder what happened to the parents house. Not the exact point of this book I know. It's very good. I loved the sense humour used.
Despite the fact that their parents have disinherited them, Vicki Laveau-Harvie and her sister travel to rural Canada to care for their father, when their mother breaks her hip. This is a true story of a complicated family; the far-reaching, and long-lasting havoc wreaked by a woman with an undiagnosed mental illness, the wild Canadian landscape, and two, very different sisters trying to navigate new and rocky territory. The author reads it herself, and while, at first, I wasn't sure she had the best 'audiobook voice', I think she did a brilliant job. For such dark subject matter, the book is very funny, disturbing, tense, and utterly fascinating.
Cathartic, insightful, beautifully written.
The description of the family dynamics was wonderful and I particularly loved the relationship and differences between the sisters (as described from one sister's point of view) as they dealt with their family history and difficult parents. Even if it felt like a bit of a cop-out that neither money nor time ever seemed to present any real obstacles.
The problem was I kept waiting for the gripping and unbelievable story that the description and the atmosphere created by the writing led me to think was coming, but it never arrived. I finished the book thinking I must have missed something.
The problem was I kept waiting for the gripping and unbelievable story that the description and the atmosphere created by the writing led me to think was coming, but it never arrived. I finished the book thinking I must have missed something.
Vicki Laveau-Harvie is a retired academic and translator whose memoir The Erratics won the 2018 Finch Memoir Prize. Last month the book was longlisted for the 2019 Stella Prize.
It’s a compelling account of dealing with elderly parents — one of whom is trying to kill the other — from afar.
To read my review in full, please visit my blog.
It’s a compelling account of dealing with elderly parents — one of whom is trying to kill the other — from afar.
To read my review in full, please visit my blog.
I loved this book and can see why it won the Stella. Wonderful writing, a gut-wrenching story and very skillful weaving of past and present that never felt jerky or slow. Highly recommended.