alicechris's Reviews (202)


Wonderful! I particularly loved the writing style of this - the rapid patter of it really reminded me of what it's like to talk to people you know well and love.

A cli-fi masterpiece - almost certainly my book of the year.

Explained things about my life I didn't think could be explained. I am very angry. 

Finished this in one day which says everything you need to know

This is such a brilliant book - the character work is exceptional and I also really enjoyed the strong sense of place. The exploration of queer motherhood and parenthood really touched me and I'm sure will impact the ways I think about family for a long time. The way Peters simultaneously maintains a sense of hope but also an inevitability that things probably won't work out kept me gripped and I finished this book in a couple of days.

My one reservation is the extent to which characters are defined in this book through their sex lives. I wasn't expecting this book to be so sexy because I got this from my work library, so this is probably partly on me - and I suspect the conflicted feelings I'm having on this are an intentional part of the book. This being said - I would have liked to see the characters explored outside of their sex lives a little more, as it left me with a slightly incomplete sense of them as people.

I'm glad I read this, I think it's changed the way I move through the world and interact with the nature around me. I'm really interested in the overlap between environmentalism and spirituality also, and enjoyed the sense of connection the book does really well in building up. However, I can't say I've been talking to other people about what I've read - which for a book like this is quite surprising to me. It was also a shame to feel the chapters were written to a brief the contributors were given rather than them writing freely, which I think I would have enjoyed more. 

I loved Roig's writing - both expansive and intimate. It's about one family, and yet also Barcelona, Catalonia, all of Spain. The cross generational perspectives really worked for me, as did the jumping around between different times (although the huge variety of both elements here means you really need to pay attention, which is probably why this took me ages to read!). The writing style is really distinctive and the translator deserves a lot of credit for preserving how unique this book feels (although I couldn't tell you what the Catalan version is like).