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freagh's reviews
195 reviews
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
4.0
‘Between the lips and the voice something goes dying.
Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion.
The way nets cannot hold water.
My toy doll, only a few drops are left trembling.
Even so, something sings in these fugitive words.
Something sings, something climbs to my ravenous mouth.
Oh to be able to celebrate you with all the words of joy.
Sing, burn, flee, like a belfry at the hands of a madman.’
[from I Have Gone Marking (XIII)]
[from I Have Gone Marking (XIII)]
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
reflective
medium-paced
3.25
'You are here and you are not. You are on the balcony, you are on the hill, you are in sunshine, you are in darkness, you are in the open air, you are in the basement, you are in perpetual joy, you are eternally sad.'
'Tonight is different, but the same. Under what conditions does the uncontainable stay contained?'
'Still, as you parted ways, you wondered if you're wrong, if freedom isn't as full as you imagine – no, try again – if freedom is something one could always feel. Or if you are destined to feel it in small moments here and there.'
'Tonight is different, but the same. Under what conditions does the uncontainable stay contained?'
'Still, as you parted ways, you wondered if you're wrong, if freedom isn't as full as you imagine – no, try again – if freedom is something one could always feel. Or if you are destined to feel it in small moments here and there.'
Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski
medium-paced
4.0
‘I had been a coward, compared to them. I had hidden under window ledges, in kitchen closets, I had not been in the streets demanding my right to be heard. Now, I was an ocean away, wearing a new suit. I wondered about your role in all this, what kind of pact you’ve made with yourself. Because we all make one, even the best of us, and it’s rarely immaculate, no matter how hard we try.’
‘I thought of the photographer and his courage, imagining how the photo had made it out of the country, a roll of film smuggled into West Germany in a secret compartment or an empty tube of toothpaste. Anonymous figures trapped on the wrong side of history, compressed and rolled up inside a stranger’s pocket. No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it.’
‘I thought of the photographer and his courage, imagining how the photo had made it out of the country, a roll of film smuggled into West Germany in a secret compartment or an empty tube of toothpaste. Anonymous figures trapped on the wrong side of history, compressed and rolled up inside a stranger’s pocket. No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it.’
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
fast-paced
4.0
‘It is a natural instinct, Mr Barlow, to shrink from the unknown. [But] … Realize that death is not a private tragedy of your own but the general lot of man. As Hamlet so beautifully writes: “Know that death is common; all that live must die.”’
‘She was convenient; but Dennis came of an earlier civilization with sharper needs. He sought the intangible, the veiled face in the fog, the silhouette at the lighted doorway, the secret graces of a body which hid itself under formal velvet.’
‘She presented herself to the world dressed and scented in obedience to the advertisements; brain and body were scarcely distinguishable from the standard product, but the spirit – ah, the spirit was something apart; it had to be sought afar; not here in the musky orchards of the Hesperides, but in the mountain air of the dawn, in the eagle-haunted passes of Heilas. … As she grew up the only language she knew expressed fewer and fewer of her ripening needs; the facts which littered her memory grew less substantial; the figure she saw in the looking glass seemed less recognizably herself.’
From Penguin edition, reprinted 1952 [Orange cover], from pages 44, 45 and 105.
‘She was convenient; but Dennis came of an earlier civilization with sharper needs. He sought the intangible, the veiled face in the fog, the silhouette at the lighted doorway, the secret graces of a body which hid itself under formal velvet.’
‘She presented herself to the world dressed and scented in obedience to the advertisements; brain and body were scarcely distinguishable from the standard product, but the spirit – ah, the spirit was something apart; it had to be sought afar; not here in the musky orchards of the Hesperides, but in the mountain air of the dawn, in the eagle-haunted passes of Heilas. … As she grew up the only language she knew expressed fewer and fewer of her ripening needs; the facts which littered her memory grew less substantial; the figure she saw in the looking glass seemed less recognizably herself.’
From Penguin edition, reprinted 1952 [Orange cover], from pages 44, 45 and 105.
A View from the Bridge/All My Sons by Arthur Miller
fast-paced
4.0
‘Most of the time now we settle for half and I like it better. But the truth is holy, and even as I know how wrong he was, and his ———- useless, I tremble, for I confess something perversely pure calls to me from his memory—not purely good, but himself purely, for he allowed himself to be wholly known and for that I think I will love him more than all my sensible clients. And yet, it is better to settle for half, it must be! And so I mourn him—I admit it—with a certain. . . alarm.’
- A View from the Bridge
(redacted spoiler)
- A View from the Bridge
(redacted spoiler)
Indiana by George Sand
medium-paced
4.0
‘Man rarely tramples his conscience underfoot in cold blood. He turns it over, squeezes it, pulls it this way and that, distorts it, and when he has perverted it, enfeebled it, and worn it out, he carries it about with him as an indulgent and easy-going guardian, who gives in to his passions and his interest, but whom he always pretends to consult and to fear.’
/
‘Your need of me made my life something more than that of a wild animal.’
/
‘Poor provincial, who have left your fields, your expanse of sky, your green places, your home, and your family, to come and shut yourself up in this prison cell of the mind and the heart; look at Paris, the beautiful Paris that you had dreamed of as being so marvellous! Look at it stretched out there, black with mud and rain, noisy, foul, and swift as a torrent of mud!’
[ed. Oxford world’s classics, translated by Sylvia Raphael, quotes from pages 225, 249 and 235]
/
‘Your need of me made my life something more than that of a wild animal.’
/
‘Poor provincial, who have left your fields, your expanse of sky, your green places, your home, and your family, to come and shut yourself up in this prison cell of the mind and the heart; look at Paris, the beautiful Paris that you had dreamed of as being so marvellous! Look at it stretched out there, black with mud and rain, noisy, foul, and swift as a torrent of mud!’
[ed. Oxford world’s classics, translated by Sylvia Raphael, quotes from pages 225, 249 and 235]
A Short History of London: The Creation of a World Capital by Simon Jenkins
informative
lighthearted
reflective
2.75
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Mr Salary by Sally Rooney
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide, Death of parent