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illustrated_librarian's reviews
395 reviews
Flowers From the Void by Gianni Washington
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
3.75
Thank you so much to Serpent's Tail for sending me a finished copy of this book.
In this debut collection, Washington probes the limits of empathy and intimacy with a series of macabre tales that have the flavour of nightmares. A girl with no shadow befriends one without a person, a schoolboy enters into a pact that will cost him more than he could have known, and a reaper prepares for her next gruesome assignment. These stories range from gothic fantasy to the borderlands of science fiction, each fiercely imaginative and unsettling.
The parade of grisly goings-on and fantastical characters remain at their core about very human issues, and Washington is piercingly insightful on matters of love, loss, and loneliness. I loved Take it From Me, in which spurned lovers wear the upset physically as their bodies disassemble, but healing and self-acceptance are shown physically too. When I Cry It's Someone Else's Blood was a strangely tender tale of an eye-stealing creature fascinated by the way that humans use pain to connect, desperate to join this bond, and is touching despite the gore.
Lots of these are longer than your average short stories, and some so richly imagined they're like novels in miniature, tiny worlds you can slip into for a flurry of pages. In Go, It Is the Sending, a bereaved African witch readies herself to petition for entry into a traditional all-white Salem coven. It's a story of remembering your roots against the tug of erasure, and felt like it had the creative force to power a whole novel.
Sometimes the imaginative leaps didn't quite stick their landing for me. There were times I'd have liked to spend more time in the realm of the unexplained or else had a little more coherently fleshed out. Nevertheless, I'd love to see where this writer goes next. Hers is such a breadth and depth of imagination, I'm sure whatever else Washington writes will be as surprising and touching (and hopefully weird) as these stories.
In this debut collection, Washington probes the limits of empathy and intimacy with a series of macabre tales that have the flavour of nightmares. A girl with no shadow befriends one without a person, a schoolboy enters into a pact that will cost him more than he could have known, and a reaper prepares for her next gruesome assignment. These stories range from gothic fantasy to the borderlands of science fiction, each fiercely imaginative and unsettling.
The parade of grisly goings-on and fantastical characters remain at their core about very human issues, and Washington is piercingly insightful on matters of love, loss, and loneliness. I loved Take it From Me, in which spurned lovers wear the upset physically as their bodies disassemble, but healing and self-acceptance are shown physically too. When I Cry It's Someone Else's Blood was a strangely tender tale of an eye-stealing creature fascinated by the way that humans use pain to connect, desperate to join this bond, and is touching despite the gore.
Lots of these are longer than your average short stories, and some so richly imagined they're like novels in miniature, tiny worlds you can slip into for a flurry of pages. In Go, It Is the Sending, a bereaved African witch readies herself to petition for entry into a traditional all-white Salem coven. It's a story of remembering your roots against the tug of erasure, and felt like it had the creative force to power a whole novel.
Sometimes the imaginative leaps didn't quite stick their landing for me. There were times I'd have liked to spend more time in the realm of the unexplained or else had a little more coherently fleshed out. Nevertheless, I'd love to see where this writer goes next. Hers is such a breadth and depth of imagination, I'm sure whatever else Washington writes will be as surprising and touching (and hopefully weird) as these stories.
Kala by Colin Walsh
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
The Time of Cherries by Montserrat Roig
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Natàlia Miralpeix is returning home to Barcelona and her family after twelve years abroad. It's 1974, almost the end of Franco's dictatorship, and change is in the air. The youth talk of a freer future, but the older generation still carry hidden wounds from the civil war. In the heady, vibrant city past and present collide as the citizens try to find their places in this new world.
Focussing on two families, the Clarets and the Miralpeixs, their secrets, joys, and scars, Montserrat Roig pulls off a novel of ambitious temporal scope but without the chronological plod. Here, 'backstory' isn't a thing; past and present have equal weight in creating the future and Roig moves freely between them.
Natàlia is our bridge into the world of upper-middle class Catalan families of Barcelona, and through the prism of her return we see, in a non-liner way, the events that shaped her. And not only her; the roving third-person narration flits between characters illuminating their histories and hopes, creating a rich stream of consciousness where punctuation and paragraph breaks are very much optional. The result is complex, textured, and beautifully done - a testament to Julia Sanches's nimble translation
Roig is particularly concerned with giving voice to women and the elderly, weilding her pen like a sword to strike back against the Franco years and all the voices silenced under his regime. She evokes the small concerns of daily life against the backdrop of a time of huge change in Spain perfectly. The women are both trapped in domesticity and striking out against it, the youth are full of fire and apathetic, the elderly are fatigued yet vital. Everything is changing in Barcelona, and nothing is.
This novel is complex, it's meandering and frenetic and can be hard to follow. I'm sure plenty of people will find it frustrating. As someone with a deep affection for Barcelona and ties to this history, though, I found something precious in these pages: a history boldly told, eschewing making fables of war and oppression for gritty immersion in the mundanity of their fallout.
Focussing on two families, the Clarets and the Miralpeixs, their secrets, joys, and scars, Montserrat Roig pulls off a novel of ambitious temporal scope but without the chronological plod. Here, 'backstory' isn't a thing; past and present have equal weight in creating the future and Roig moves freely between them.
Natàlia is our bridge into the world of upper-middle class Catalan families of Barcelona, and through the prism of her return we see, in a non-liner way, the events that shaped her. And not only her; the roving third-person narration flits between characters illuminating their histories and hopes, creating a rich stream of consciousness where punctuation and paragraph breaks are very much optional. The result is complex, textured, and beautifully done - a testament to Julia Sanches's nimble translation
Roig is particularly concerned with giving voice to women and the elderly, weilding her pen like a sword to strike back against the Franco years and all the voices silenced under his regime. She evokes the small concerns of daily life against the backdrop of a time of huge change in Spain perfectly. The women are both trapped in domesticity and striking out against it, the youth are full of fire and apathetic, the elderly are fatigued yet vital. Everything is changing in Barcelona, and nothing is.
This novel is complex, it's meandering and frenetic and can be hard to follow. I'm sure plenty of people will find it frustrating. As someone with a deep affection for Barcelona and ties to this history, though, I found something precious in these pages: a history boldly told, eschewing making fables of war and oppression for gritty immersion in the mundanity of their fallout.
Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman
reflective
medium-paced
2.0
Listen, you can tell this is MFA fiction and that's all I'll say.
Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
4.5
Aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, Aliocha, a desperate Russian conscript, hopes a chance encounter with a French woman will offer him a way to flee. Heléne, too, is on the run - absconding from the home she shares in Western Siberia with her Russian lover to return to the familiarity she craves in France.
Eastbound is a breathless, hurtling novella. I usually associate novels set in liminal spaces with a dreamlike languiness but instead de Kerangal cranks up the tension. Tight prose and run-on sentances interspersed with short, stacato lines perfectly evoke the rhythm of the train's movement across the landscape and Heléne and Aliocha's shifting, dangerous alliance.
The train sits almost outside of time and yet there's a hyper-awareness of its incessant and inevitable passage. The timing of stops, the time until the end of the line, and the time left until someone realises Aliocha is missing all jangle constantly in the characters' minds as they scramble to avoid discovery of their plan. Amid the desperation, time seems to stretch and slip when they observe the beautiful landscape they travel through, framed by the train windows. There's a moment of collective awe as they pass Lake Baikal and the entire train pauses to witness a beloved national landmark, and time almost physically slips away as Aliocha watches the snowy taiga briefly illuminated by the train's rear lights before it slides from view forever.
Inside the train, barriers of class, age, and social convention collapse. Suddenly, a first-class passenger like Heléne and a conscript crammed into third class can meet and understand, across social and language barriers, that each wishes to escape their current circumstances. Their story forms a thrilling examination of the essence of language and identity, and the marvel of human connection across boundaries.
Eastbound is a breathless, hurtling novella. I usually associate novels set in liminal spaces with a dreamlike languiness but instead de Kerangal cranks up the tension. Tight prose and run-on sentances interspersed with short, stacato lines perfectly evoke the rhythm of the train's movement across the landscape and Heléne and Aliocha's shifting, dangerous alliance.
The train sits almost outside of time and yet there's a hyper-awareness of its incessant and inevitable passage. The timing of stops, the time until the end of the line, and the time left until someone realises Aliocha is missing all jangle constantly in the characters' minds as they scramble to avoid discovery of their plan. Amid the desperation, time seems to stretch and slip when they observe the beautiful landscape they travel through, framed by the train windows. There's a moment of collective awe as they pass Lake Baikal and the entire train pauses to witness a beloved national landmark, and time almost physically slips away as Aliocha watches the snowy taiga briefly illuminated by the train's rear lights before it slides from view forever.
Inside the train, barriers of class, age, and social convention collapse. Suddenly, a first-class passenger like Heléne and a conscript crammed into third class can meet and understand, across social and language barriers, that each wishes to escape their current circumstances. Their story forms a thrilling examination of the essence of language and identity, and the marvel of human connection across boundaries.
Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Violette Toussaint is the caretaker of a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Mourners and her colleagues - gravediggers, groundskeepers, and a priest - visit her to share their hilarious and touching confidences with her over cups of tea, or something a little stronger. Her routine is disrupted by the arrival of Julien Seul, following his mother's last wish to have her ashes deposited on the grave of a total stranger. The unfolding story of clandestine love cracks Violette's carefully built defences and excavates the losses of her past.
Valérie Perrin has done it again. She has such a knack for making it easy to care deeply for every character from the very beginning, they're written so humanely and intimitely they simply stroll off the page. Violette especially was fantastic and has become a new favourite heroine of mine; despite every hardship thrown at her, her determination, empathy, and capacity for joy run so deep.
This book is all about finding the poetic and beautiful in the everyday, how the small things can hold and heal you through the unimaginable. There is plenty of tragedy as the characters experience their fair share of heartbreak and grief, suffusing the book with a soft melancholy that is nonetheless not suffocating. Instead, quiet joys like friendship, food, and gardening are at the forefront of the story, with Perrin filling these comfortingly ordinary slice-of-life scenes with meticulous detail and warmth.
Each part of this many-stranded narrative was a joy to read, such that the almost 500 page length flew by. Every character copes with the hand they've been dealt a different way, ultimately choosing whether to be consumed by their difficulties or to find joy regardless. Being with these characters as they live alongside the hard things and let light in anyway struck a chord so powerfully I find it hard to put into words.
It's a gentle but moving journey through grief, acceptance, hope, and love. Ordinary and unhurried? Yes. But inconsequential? Not at all.
Valérie Perrin has done it again. She has such a knack for making it easy to care deeply for every character from the very beginning, they're written so humanely and intimitely they simply stroll off the page. Violette especially was fantastic and has become a new favourite heroine of mine; despite every hardship thrown at her, her determination, empathy, and capacity for joy run so deep.
This book is all about finding the poetic and beautiful in the everyday, how the small things can hold and heal you through the unimaginable. There is plenty of tragedy as the characters experience their fair share of heartbreak and grief, suffusing the book with a soft melancholy that is nonetheless not suffocating. Instead, quiet joys like friendship, food, and gardening are at the forefront of the story, with Perrin filling these comfortingly ordinary slice-of-life scenes with meticulous detail and warmth.
Each part of this many-stranded narrative was a joy to read, such that the almost 500 page length flew by. Every character copes with the hand they've been dealt a different way, ultimately choosing whether to be consumed by their difficulties or to find joy regardless. Being with these characters as they live alongside the hard things and let light in anyway struck a chord so powerfully I find it hard to put into words.
It's a gentle but moving journey through grief, acceptance, hope, and love. Ordinary and unhurried? Yes. But inconsequential? Not at all.
Enchanted Islands by Laura Coffey
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Thank you so much to @summersdalebooks and @l_j_coffey for sending me a copy of this!
'Tell me about a complicated man' demands the Poet of the Muse in the opening to Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, drawing the ire of Twitter classics bros. And in this personal Odyssey, moving nimbly between escapist travelogue, memoir, and myth, Coffey does just that.
A chance encounter with Wilson's translation, a painful breakup, and a pandemic lead Coffey on a six-month Odyssey of her own, searching out the islands where myth and reality collide. She intertwines her travels with stories from Greek mythology, seeing parallels between people she meets on the way and figures of legend, giving an enchanted air to her journey. But what begins as a quest to find the shape of herself again amidst loneliness and uncertainty becomes increasingly overshadowed by the deepening illness of her father.
A mercurial and beloved man, he faces down a terminal cancer diagnosis, slippery timescales and ever-changing treatments alongside the forced isolation of the pandemic. Throughout Coffey's journey her frequent calls with her father map their complex relationship against the backdrop of his worsening health, until it becomes clear she must return home and face what she fled.
Coffey's prose is immediate and sensory, rendering the delights of the lush isles she visits and the harrowing slow fading of her father with the same vividness. The pages are full of passion and honesty - she refuses to make her father a saint in his suffering and their relationship is all the more poignant for it, every fractious conversation and moment of sincere love building a human portrait of this towering figure in her life.
This moving meditation on love and loss braids the fraying strands that make up a life spinning apart back together again to create something stronger. It's a celebration of the redemption found in nature, in human connections and kindness in times of struggle, but most of all of finding a sense of home when the ground beneath you has been shaken.
'Tell me about a complicated man' demands the Poet of the Muse in the opening to Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, drawing the ire of Twitter classics bros. And in this personal Odyssey, moving nimbly between escapist travelogue, memoir, and myth, Coffey does just that.
A chance encounter with Wilson's translation, a painful breakup, and a pandemic lead Coffey on a six-month Odyssey of her own, searching out the islands where myth and reality collide. She intertwines her travels with stories from Greek mythology, seeing parallels between people she meets on the way and figures of legend, giving an enchanted air to her journey. But what begins as a quest to find the shape of herself again amidst loneliness and uncertainty becomes increasingly overshadowed by the deepening illness of her father.
A mercurial and beloved man, he faces down a terminal cancer diagnosis, slippery timescales and ever-changing treatments alongside the forced isolation of the pandemic. Throughout Coffey's journey her frequent calls with her father map their complex relationship against the backdrop of his worsening health, until it becomes clear she must return home and face what she fled.
Coffey's prose is immediate and sensory, rendering the delights of the lush isles she visits and the harrowing slow fading of her father with the same vividness. The pages are full of passion and honesty - she refuses to make her father a saint in his suffering and their relationship is all the more poignant for it, every fractious conversation and moment of sincere love building a human portrait of this towering figure in her life.
This moving meditation on love and loss braids the fraying strands that make up a life spinning apart back together again to create something stronger. It's a celebration of the redemption found in nature, in human connections and kindness in times of struggle, but most of all of finding a sense of home when the ground beneath you has been shaken.
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell
funny
informative
reflective
4.5