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illustrated_librarian's reviews
401 reviews
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
Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival by Alice Vincent
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
The Bone Season: The Tenth Anniversary Special Edition by Samantha Shannon
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.25