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icedpinecones's reviews
210 reviews
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
An interesting, profound and profusely odd little novel!
For fans of "our wives under the sea", the alien movies, "wilder girls" and the vibes of nature reclaiming in a wild, malevolent and violent way!
Annihilation the book is nothing like the movie, similar only in setting. The book follows the journal entries of "biologist" (we never learn the names of characters, they're all only referred to by their profession) as she enters area X to try and seek answers as to what the hell is going on in here.
The book is winding, obscure at times, you'll not get the answers you seek if you want them but I honestly appreciate that we never know more than biologist, it adds to the unease of the setting. In some senses, the story is a love letter to someone she has lost & biology itself.
I think this book is well worth the read for it's wacky and winding prose alone, it's an oddity and I'm definitely interested in reading the rest of the trilogy. With it being so short, there's not too much I can say without spoilers, but I can say I devoured this book within the day of getting it and while it didn't live upto my preconceived notion of what it would be (having watched the film in 2018 and only recently finding out it was a book) it delivered it's own premise that I thoroughly enjoyed!
For fans of "our wives under the sea", the alien movies, "wilder girls" and the vibes of nature reclaiming in a wild, malevolent and violent way!
Annihilation the book is nothing like the movie, similar only in setting. The book follows the journal entries of "biologist" (we never learn the names of characters, they're all only referred to by their profession) as she enters area X to try and seek answers as to what the hell is going on in here.
The book is winding, obscure at times, you'll not get the answers you seek if you want them but I honestly appreciate that we never know more than biologist, it adds to the unease of the setting. In some senses, the story is a love letter to someone she has lost & biology itself.
I think this book is well worth the read for it's wacky and winding prose alone, it's an oddity and I'm definitely interested in reading the rest of the trilogy. With it being so short, there's not too much I can say without spoilers, but I can say I devoured this book within the day of getting it and while it didn't live upto my preconceived notion of what it would be (having watched the film in 2018 and only recently finding out it was a book) it delivered it's own premise that I thoroughly enjoyed!
A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen
2.0
Tldr: your favourite standard fantasy archetypes thrown into a loosely viking world to repeat the same plotline you've already read in the bridge kingdom
I've got to say first and foremost I'm not a viking girlie, so I wasn't super invested in the lore; but the book did nothing to aide that. You don't really get too entrenched in political intrigue, it's just "you're in this clan and you're fighting this clan" and that's about it. I'd say this book is much more focused on the characters over the world building which is an issue because,,, they're kinda basic?
The characters all fell under pretty standard archetypes, without any additional spice to them, so it made their arcs when playing out quite predictable. I found especially the plot twist at the end (as is often the case with duologies) easy to see coming from a mile off. I usually guess main twists, but there's a joy in how it's unravelled and the hints and perhaps some additional smaller twists I didn't see coming, unfortunately this story didn't add anything extra I wasn't already expecting and the twist was delivered quite passively right at the end in a very info-dump mannerism
I enjoyed the prose as usual, I breezed through this book, but it's very much the same as a lot of other books by Jensen and other romantasy authors but with a viking filter laid over it. I was really into this book at the start, especially with a particularly gory hallucination sequence of the FMC being split open from her ribs down and ripped in half, but the story loses itself in a focus on romance and witty banter to a point of where any action sequences felt like an afterthought and a statement of telling rather than showing.
I need to stop reading these romantasy books, or romantavikings in this case, as I'm just not enjoying them and finding them all indistinguishable from one and other in character archetypes, pacing, prose, plot points and any other prevalent aspect of making a book.
I've got to say first and foremost I'm not a viking girlie, so I wasn't super invested in the lore; but the book did nothing to aide that. You don't really get too entrenched in political intrigue, it's just "you're in this clan and you're fighting this clan" and that's about it. I'd say this book is much more focused on the characters over the world building which is an issue because,,, they're kinda basic?
The characters all fell under pretty standard archetypes, without any additional spice to them, so it made their arcs when playing out quite predictable. I found especially the plot twist at the end (as is often the case with duologies) easy to see coming from a mile off. I usually guess main twists, but there's a joy in how it's unravelled and the hints and perhaps some additional smaller twists I didn't see coming, unfortunately this story didn't add anything extra I wasn't already expecting and the twist was delivered quite passively right at the end in a very info-dump mannerism
I enjoyed the prose as usual, I breezed through this book, but it's very much the same as a lot of other books by Jensen and other romantasy authors but with a viking filter laid over it. I was really into this book at the start, especially with a particularly gory hallucination sequence of the FMC being split open from her ribs down and ripped in half, but the story loses itself in a focus on romance and witty banter to a point of where any action sequences felt like an afterthought and a statement of telling rather than showing.
I need to stop reading these romantasy books, or romantavikings in this case, as I'm just not enjoying them and finding them all indistinguishable from one and other in character archetypes, pacing, prose, plot points and any other prevalent aspect of making a book.
Bunny by Mona Awad
3.0
What an odd little book. Bunny is a fever dream, with each part almost entirely different narratively from the other. The general premise is girl who is not like other girls™ is infatuated and infuriated by a group of four girls she's titled "the bunnies". The girls are weird, to say the least.
Our main character is invited out to hang out with them, and it gets a bit crazy from there. I found the second part to this book to be the weakest, but I enjoyed how it made the plot hard to follow in a you don't know what's coming next kind of way.
I do have to say that I felt this book was trying too hard at points, it almost felt like satire of the genre. An example is a teacher inviting the main character, who she looks down on in some regards, to her Christmas party. The main character remarks on how it's very clear they just want some trauma porn out of her, hungry for gratitude over offering her poor self a space in their home so she wouldn't be alone etc etc. I just feel like when it's so outwardly stated you lose the opportunity for nuance & the readers to think and come to their own conclusions.
I generally enjoyed this book though, it wasn't anything world changing but I'd say if you're tempted you should read it, it was a fun fever dream of insanity that had it's clever moments & kept me engaged throughout. While I found the central mystery to be a bit easy to 'solve' it was still a fun reveal.
Our main character is invited out to hang out with them, and it gets a bit crazy from there. I found the second part to this book to be the weakest, but I enjoyed how it made the plot hard to follow in a you don't know what's coming next kind of way.
I do have to say that I felt this book was trying too hard at points, it almost felt like satire of the genre. An example is a teacher inviting the main character, who she looks down on in some regards, to her Christmas party. The main character remarks on how it's very clear they just want some trauma porn out of her, hungry for gratitude over offering her poor self a space in their home so she wouldn't be alone etc etc. I just feel like when it's so outwardly stated you lose the opportunity for nuance & the readers to think and come to their own conclusions.
I generally enjoyed this book though, it wasn't anything world changing but I'd say if you're tempted you should read it, it was a fun fever dream of insanity that had it's clever moments & kept me engaged throughout. While I found the central mystery to be a bit easy to 'solve' it was still a fun reveal.
A Dawn with the Wolf Knight by Elise Kova
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.0
Tldr: Boring, no romance, too much horny and sillyness. You CANNOT convince me this was crafted with the same love that a duet with the siren duke was, or any previous installment of this anthology for that matter. DNF it, skip it, I don't reccomend this at all.
How dare the previous installment leave us with primordial gods, the end of the world, a devastatingly haunting ending and narrative thread only to lead into this hot pile of ass which I'm about as enthusiastic towards as I am four day old leftovers with a bit of fuzz on it.
I preface this review with a statement; I have enjoyed Elise Kovas books prior to this and I don't think this is a review to be taken as an assessment of all of her works. I firmly believe that her previous novel in this series, a duet with the siren duke, is beautiful and the ending haunting. She has written some wonderful romantasy novels and I have faith she will do plenty more. However, this was not one of them.
A dawn with the wolf knight was a taxing read, coming into this on the back of about five serious and heavy books dealing with some difficult topics I was ready for a break; and while the prose and pace at which this story kept did keep me in a mind enough to finish it I danced on the edge of a DNF the entire time.
In fact, the one credit I will give to this book is that Kova's prose holds true and kept my attention fully, the near 470 page number flew past me despite my displeasure at much of this novel. That is about it though for all the positives I have to say, so I'm going to just get right into it. Spoilers ahead from this point.
This book was a mess, I will start with the plot; Faelyn tried to save the moon spirit but gets whisked away into the world of the wolves where shes forced into a marriage with the king who is a nasty little fucker. The king has a magical power that makes him irresistible specifically to human women according to page 120 but don't worry about it too much because in page 208 it works on literally everyone?? Just happens to make human women horny I guess. It's inconsistent, why not just have a general thrall ability? Anyways; Faelyn is advised to wank her way into safety from the magical horny thrall and she ends up wanking consistently in the titular knights tent. She finds herself safe from the thrall if she thinks about the knight, then they bone, then they go on a fun little boning excursion, have revelations about how they're soulmates and destined for eachother and love eachother so so much and try to escape with the moon spirit. That goes wrong, but don't worry it's solved like thirty pages later anyways and then the book is over.
This book feels like a fever dream despite me having literally only just finished it. The magic system, which in previous books I've found to be both simple but fleshed out and sensical, follows arbitrary rules and doesn't seem to carry much weight. Outside of the flip flopping on what abilities the wolf king does or doesn't have, the spirits themselves which are supposedly central to the plot do pretty much nothing, they're like Pokémon but shit. The FMC refuses to call upon the spirits as she wishes not to take advantage of them, but calls upon one to hide her sex stink (if you need the magical powers of a spirit to hide the stench you make dear god see an apothecary) and then immediately after calls upon a further more powerful spirit who specifically asked her not to do that to hide the fact she irresponsibly boned and put the lives of everyone in the escape plan at risk. The spirits, when they're not being irresponsibly used despite the whole 'they'll expend their energy and I can't call upon them' hang up that never really seems to impact anything, do about nothing. Instead of sensical uses of their powers and abilities when push comes to shove they do pretty much nothing which just kind of removed the entire benefit of them to the story in the first place.
The romance was awfully done, it's very much insta-love, there's no development of this romance other than damn I can't stop thinking about him when I wank and then damn I can't stop fucking him! Wow we're in love and it turns out you're my soulmate anyways, I'd die for you honey ❤️❤️ like you're serious?? Despite my dislike for a dance with the Fae prince, every single book in this series has carried the romance aspect remarkably well but this one fell so so short of the mark.
Moving into the characters too, the FMC is the silliest heroine to date, utterly naïve and gullible without the ability to make any sensical plans on her own; despite her whole not taking advantage of spirits M.O all she does is summon them unnecessarily so they can do their equally unnecessary magical powers that help just about nobody.
The ending portion felt rushed and unnecessary, because what should've been a final showdown and then a journey through the elf lands to the siren lands to add some nice continuity ended up not happening, only to have a different showdown occur about ten pages later. The way the plot functions is done poorly, you could've shuffled things about and cut nearly 100 pages, because for a close to 500 page novel this remarkably managed to leave no impact on me at all.
Lifeless, romanceless, listless and full of potholes and conveniences, the final installment to the married to magic anthology is about as good as game of thrones ending was, all to say incredibly dissapointing with the quality the previous novels had presented. I wouldn't recommend this book in the slightest, I'd say all previous four entries are better & if this would be the quality moving forward I'm glad it's been put to bed. I understand maybe the author signed on to do five novels in this series and maybe ran out of steam, maybe she had other ideas for a much darker story that was turned down by publishers, I truly don't know what happened here but the end result is as inspiring as a void.
How dare the previous installment leave us with primordial gods, the end of the world, a devastatingly haunting ending and narrative thread only to lead into this hot pile of ass which I'm about as enthusiastic towards as I am four day old leftovers with a bit of fuzz on it.
I preface this review with a statement; I have enjoyed Elise Kovas books prior to this and I don't think this is a review to be taken as an assessment of all of her works. I firmly believe that her previous novel in this series, a duet with the siren duke, is beautiful and the ending haunting. She has written some wonderful romantasy novels and I have faith she will do plenty more. However, this was not one of them.
A dawn with the wolf knight was a taxing read, coming into this on the back of about five serious and heavy books dealing with some difficult topics I was ready for a break; and while the prose and pace at which this story kept did keep me in a mind enough to finish it I danced on the edge of a DNF the entire time.
In fact, the one credit I will give to this book is that Kova's prose holds true and kept my attention fully, the near 470 page number flew past me despite my displeasure at much of this novel. That is about it though for all the positives I have to say, so I'm going to just get right into it. Spoilers ahead from this point.
This book was a mess, I will start with the plot; Faelyn tried to save the moon spirit but gets whisked away into the world of the wolves where shes forced into a marriage with the king who is a nasty little fucker. The king has a magical power that makes him irresistible specifically to human women according to page 120 but don't worry about it too much because in page 208 it works on literally everyone?? Just happens to make human women horny I guess. It's inconsistent, why not just have a general thrall ability? Anyways; Faelyn is advised to wank her way into safety from the magical horny thrall and she ends up wanking consistently in the titular knights tent. She finds herself safe from the thrall if she thinks about the knight, then they bone, then they go on a fun little boning excursion, have revelations about how they're soulmates and destined for eachother and love eachother so so much and try to escape with the moon spirit. That goes wrong, but don't worry it's solved like thirty pages later anyways and then the book is over.
This book feels like a fever dream despite me having literally only just finished it. The magic system, which in previous books I've found to be both simple but fleshed out and sensical, follows arbitrary rules and doesn't seem to carry much weight. Outside of the flip flopping on what abilities the wolf king does or doesn't have, the spirits themselves which are supposedly central to the plot do pretty much nothing, they're like Pokémon but shit. The FMC refuses to call upon the spirits as she wishes not to take advantage of them, but calls upon one to hide her sex stink (if you need the magical powers of a spirit to hide the stench you make dear god see an apothecary) and then immediately after calls upon a further more powerful spirit who specifically asked her not to do that to hide the fact she irresponsibly boned and put the lives of everyone in the escape plan at risk. The spirits, when they're not being irresponsibly used despite the whole 'they'll expend their energy and I can't call upon them' hang up that never really seems to impact anything, do about nothing. Instead of sensical uses of their powers and abilities when push comes to shove they do pretty much nothing which just kind of removed the entire benefit of them to the story in the first place.
The romance was awfully done, it's very much insta-love, there's no development of this romance other than damn I can't stop thinking about him when I wank and then damn I can't stop fucking him! Wow we're in love and it turns out you're my soulmate anyways, I'd die for you honey ❤️❤️ like you're serious?? Despite my dislike for a dance with the Fae prince, every single book in this series has carried the romance aspect remarkably well but this one fell so so short of the mark.
Moving into the characters too, the FMC is the silliest heroine to date, utterly naïve and gullible without the ability to make any sensical plans on her own; despite her whole not taking advantage of spirits M.O all she does is summon them unnecessarily so they can do their equally unnecessary magical powers that help just about nobody.
The ending portion felt rushed and unnecessary, because what should've been a final showdown and then a journey through the elf lands to the siren lands to add some nice continuity ended up not happening, only to have a different showdown occur about ten pages later. The way the plot functions is done poorly, you could've shuffled things about and cut nearly 100 pages, because for a close to 500 page novel this remarkably managed to leave no impact on me at all.
Lifeless, romanceless, listless and full of potholes and conveniences, the final installment to the married to magic anthology is about as good as game of thrones ending was, all to say incredibly dissapointing with the quality the previous novels had presented. I wouldn't recommend this book in the slightest, I'd say all previous four entries are better & if this would be the quality moving forward I'm glad it's been put to bed. I understand maybe the author signed on to do five novels in this series and maybe ran out of steam, maybe she had other ideas for a much darker story that was turned down by publishers, I truly don't know what happened here but the end result is as inspiring as a void.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The girls that get it? Get it. And the girls that don't? Don't.
The virgin suicides is a novel set in the 70s in which a group of boys, now men, recount the lives and deaths of the Lisbon sisters; five girls who took their own lives.
The story isn't a mystery, a thriller, a fast paced tale of love and sex and betrayal. It's melancholy, a confusing recounting from multiple perspectives laid out in a stream of consciousness over 240 pages split into five chapters (two of which were near 100 pages).
The virgin suicides is a book that has sat on my shelf for more than a year now, and I put off reading it for fear of it fetishizing the girls or strong misogynistic themes, I'd heard mixed things and had a YouTube video crop up once that suggested the tale is like lolita with the opposite message (of fetishizing these girls). I'm glad I read it for myself, because I completely disagree with that take, and I definitely see the appeal in this novel.
The story is easy to follow, but waxing poetic at time filled to the brim with purple prose and plenty of fish flies, the chapters are excessively long (my brother in Christ I know there's five sisters and it's poetic to only have five chapters but it makes this a real slog to get through at times).
There were definitely a few scenes and sentiments I disagree with, but generally the vibe of the book is that the only people who could "know" what's going on is the sisters and you never get their perspective (similar to "the vegetarian by Han Kang) so you'll really never know. Some moments from the boys were gross and definitely had misogynistic undertones but never in a way that I felt the book was condoning, moreso just laying out what happened and when. Further to that point, the book had some really sweet moments of them too, it's a truly raw look at a situation without the fluff and airbrushing you'd maybe expect from a story that'd try and make this more poetic and romantic than it is.
Overall I really enjoyed this! It was giving English literature class, if you like that kind of thing. This is a book you could dissect page by page for hours on end; it was an enjoyable read and one I'm sure will sit in the forefront of my mind picking at me with it's unanswerable questions and tiny details.
Jessie (she/her)
[email protected]
www.instagram.com/icedpinecones
www.goodreads.com/icedpinecones
https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/icedpinecones
The virgin suicides is a novel set in the 70s in which a group of boys, now men, recount the lives and deaths of the Lisbon sisters; five girls who took their own lives.
The story isn't a mystery, a thriller, a fast paced tale of love and sex and betrayal. It's melancholy, a confusing recounting from multiple perspectives laid out in a stream of consciousness over 240 pages split into five chapters (two of which were near 100 pages).
The virgin suicides is a book that has sat on my shelf for more than a year now, and I put off reading it for fear of it fetishizing the girls or strong misogynistic themes, I'd heard mixed things and had a YouTube video crop up once that suggested the tale is like lolita with the opposite message (of fetishizing these girls). I'm glad I read it for myself, because I completely disagree with that take, and I definitely see the appeal in this novel.
The story is easy to follow, but waxing poetic at time filled to the brim with purple prose and plenty of fish flies, the chapters are excessively long (my brother in Christ I know there's five sisters and it's poetic to only have five chapters but it makes this a real slog to get through at times).
There were definitely a few scenes and sentiments I disagree with, but generally the vibe of the book is that the only people who could "know" what's going on is the sisters and you never get their perspective (similar to "the vegetarian by Han Kang) so you'll really never know. Some moments from the boys were gross and definitely had misogynistic undertones but never in a way that I felt the book was condoning, moreso just laying out what happened and when. Further to that point, the book had some really sweet moments of them too, it's a truly raw look at a situation without the fluff and airbrushing you'd maybe expect from a story that'd try and make this more poetic and romantic than it is.
Overall I really enjoyed this! It was giving English literature class, if you like that kind of thing. This is a book you could dissect page by page for hours on end; it was an enjoyable read and one I'm sure will sit in the forefront of my mind picking at me with it's unanswerable questions and tiny details.
Jessie (she/her)
[email protected]
www.instagram.com/icedpinecones
www.goodreads.com/icedpinecones
https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/icedpinecones
The New Seoul Park Jelly Massacre by Cho Yeeun
Jelly park massacre has put me into a bit of a slump because I'm just not into it so I'm soft DNFing
I'll come back to it later, I'll read the rest of the stories, but for now I'm just not invested and it's putting me off reading
I'll come back to it later, I'll read the rest of the stories, but for now I'm just not invested and it's putting me off reading
Braised Pork by An Yu
2.0
I don't really have much of note to say on this book. I can't say I feel angry or elated with it, it just existed and I read it and now I've finished it and that's that.
For a book marketed so mysteriously, it felt miraculously hollow. I enjoyed it and then as it wrapped up I realised we got absolutely nowhere, nothing in this story seems to hold anything of note or supply any answers. Maybe I'm missing something, maybe I'm not reading between the lines enough or something got lost in translation but this book just didn't do it for me.
I feel completely impassive on this book, I'm a big fan of no plot just vibes novels (breasts and eggs by Mieko Kawakami is one of my all time favourites) but this book didnt have the vibes either which left us with nothing.
It just felt a bit hollow, loveless, and that makes me sad maybe, but I don't really care enough to feel sad about it.
This book exists, that's all I can really say.
For a book marketed so mysteriously, it felt miraculously hollow. I enjoyed it and then as it wrapped up I realised we got absolutely nowhere, nothing in this story seems to hold anything of note or supply any answers. Maybe I'm missing something, maybe I'm not reading between the lines enough or something got lost in translation but this book just didn't do it for me.
I feel completely impassive on this book, I'm a big fan of no plot just vibes novels (breasts and eggs by Mieko Kawakami is one of my all time favourites) but this book didnt have the vibes either which left us with nothing.
It just felt a bit hollow, loveless, and that makes me sad maybe, but I don't really care enough to feel sad about it.
This book exists, that's all I can really say.
Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I have had a very nice journey with this book. The front of my copy promises strange, melancholy and beautiful and I feel nearly all stories delivered on that. To rank them from my most to least favourite it'd be:
Dead-End Memories ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
House of Ghosts ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tomo-Chan's Happiness⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mama!⭐⭐⭐
Not warm at all⭐⭐
While the latter two on the list didn't wow me as much as the first three, for a short story collection I still get the overall vibe and message of the tale and am excited to read a full length novel by Yoshimoto. Her tales in this collection were eloquent, gentle, reassuring and yet weren't afraid to touch on the darker aspects of life and provide hope for the future. I think this story is the level of 'advice' you should be able to depart on your readers without it reading like a self help novel (take notes Matt Haig's the midnight library) and I may very well come back to read the stories of this novel from time to time.
[SPOILERS FROM HERE]
Dead-End Memories finishes off the book, and I think that's what pushed me into the five star territory; while I didn't enjoy so much not warm at all the philosophies of these stories overall and the message they carry is very touching. Dead end memories focuses on a woman whose just had a pretty devastating breakup (finding out her highschool sweetheart has made a new life for himself without her, while they were still engaged) and she works at her uncles bar to escape life for a bit. I found the philosophies and way of life she learns from her co-worker and friend Nishimiya to be incredibly touching.
House of ghosts follows a young couple as they fall in and out of place through life, starting as teenagers with a quick fling in an apartment where an elderly couple live on as ghosts. There's a very touching moment in this tale, that really got to me. I will remember that passage for a long time, I think it was beautiful.
Tomo-Chan's Happiness is a smaller story of the collection, but I found the ending again summising that she is still loved by many gods who watch over her through her worst times to be really reassuring, I often feel like Tomo-chan so I was happy to get that reassurance.
Mama! Was again a really strong story to the collection, we follow a woman after her near death experience at work picking up the pieces of her life; I found the family abuse narrative that was added in at the end to be done a tad too rushed, and it took away from the message of the other half of the story being her learning to appriciate life as it comes.
Not warm at all was my least favourite of the collection, because while again very touching I feel the shortness left a lot to be desired, I wasn't particularly emotionally affected like I was by the first three listed here, less so than mama too.
Dead-End Memories ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
House of Ghosts ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tomo-Chan's Happiness⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mama!⭐⭐⭐
Not warm at all⭐⭐
While the latter two on the list didn't wow me as much as the first three, for a short story collection I still get the overall vibe and message of the tale and am excited to read a full length novel by Yoshimoto. Her tales in this collection were eloquent, gentle, reassuring and yet weren't afraid to touch on the darker aspects of life and provide hope for the future. I think this story is the level of 'advice' you should be able to depart on your readers without it reading like a self help novel (take notes Matt Haig's the midnight library) and I may very well come back to read the stories of this novel from time to time.
[SPOILERS FROM HERE]
Dead-End Memories finishes off the book, and I think that's what pushed me into the five star territory; while I didn't enjoy so much not warm at all the philosophies of these stories overall and the message they carry is very touching. Dead end memories focuses on a woman whose just had a pretty devastating breakup (finding out her highschool sweetheart has made a new life for himself without her, while they were still engaged) and she works at her uncles bar to escape life for a bit. I found the philosophies and way of life she learns from her co-worker and friend Nishimiya to be incredibly touching.
House of ghosts follows a young couple as they fall in and out of place through life, starting as teenagers with a quick fling in an apartment where an elderly couple live on as ghosts. There's a very touching moment in this tale, that really got to me. I will remember that passage for a long time, I think it was beautiful.
Tomo-Chan's Happiness is a smaller story of the collection, but I found the ending again summising that she is still loved by many gods who watch over her through her worst times to be really reassuring, I often feel like Tomo-chan so I was happy to get that reassurance.
Mama! Was again a really strong story to the collection, we follow a woman after her near death experience at work picking up the pieces of her life; I found the family abuse narrative that was added in at the end to be done a tad too rushed, and it took away from the message of the other half of the story being her learning to appriciate life as it comes.
Not warm at all was my least favourite of the collection, because while again very touching I feel the shortness left a lot to be desired, I wasn't particularly emotionally affected like I was by the first three listed here, less so than mama too.
Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Diary of a void by Emi Yagi
I'm a big fan of translated fiction, I love Mieko Kawakami and Sayaka Murata. I purchased this book from my local indie bookstore a few months ago and finally got around to reading it, and I really enjoyed it.
Essentially the main character, Shibata, one day states she cannot do an additional task at work because she is pregnant. Throughout the entire book the lines blur between what is truly happening and what is a lie, I felt manipulated alongside Shibatas own perception of reality.
The book starts leaning more on the end of she's not really pregnant, with details such as stuffing her clothing & having to make up additional details to upkeep her lie. But as it goes on, she interacts with others who truly see and believe she is pregnant (friends feeling the kicks, doctors doing the ultrasound etc) and it is noted that she is no longer stuffing her clothes.
The ending is open, you never get that confirmation on what is real or false, but it was a very absorbing novel. I found the writing style really easy to get along with and the font in my copy is quite big which I felt added to the feeling of this being a quick read. I'd definitely reccomend this to friends wanting to try translated fiction but not wanting the wacky and wonderful of Sayaka Murata or the lengthy and more poetic prose of Mieko Kawakami.
I'm a big fan of translated fiction, I love Mieko Kawakami and Sayaka Murata. I purchased this book from my local indie bookstore a few months ago and finally got around to reading it, and I really enjoyed it.
Essentially the main character, Shibata, one day states she cannot do an additional task at work because she is pregnant. Throughout the entire book the lines blur between what is truly happening and what is a lie, I felt manipulated alongside Shibatas own perception of reality.
The book starts leaning more on the end of she's not really pregnant, with details such as stuffing her clothing & having to make up additional details to upkeep her lie. But as it goes on, she interacts with others who truly see and believe she is pregnant (friends feeling the kicks, doctors doing the ultrasound etc) and it is noted that she is no longer stuffing her clothes.
The ending is open, you never get that confirmation on what is real or false, but it was a very absorbing novel. I found the writing style really easy to get along with and the font in my copy is quite big which I felt added to the feeling of this being a quick read. I'd definitely reccomend this to friends wanting to try translated fiction but not wanting the wacky and wonderful of Sayaka Murata or the lengthy and more poetic prose of Mieko Kawakami.