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lovesbun's reviews
32 reviews
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo
5.0
made me cry multiple times. 10/10 probably will not read again because it was incredibly harrowing but i did love it. the writing was fantastic; it was such a trip, haunts me, i'm convinced it's a psychological horror (if it is then i knew it; if not then it is now). many content warnings so read it when you are of strong mind and body.
Summer Lightning and Other Stories by Olive Senior
4.0
read a handful of stories and senior truly has a way. not just a way with words but a way with worlds. she crafts atmosphere so fluidly and sucks you into the world of the narrative long before you realise it. her range is incredibly impressive, especially when you compare "country of the one eye god" to "do angels wear brassieres?" the difference is astounding: one rips your heartstrings from your chest through your mouth, the other makes you chuckle and giggle like a child in the back of the classroom. regardless of the genre, senior never fails to capture both character and setting with a sombre, thrumming beauty.
The Haunted Tropics: Caribbean Ghost Stories by Martin Munro
5.0
love me a good ghost story. there were various kinds of hauntings in this collection and i must say every single one was unnerving. some lulled you into a false sense of security and before you knew it you were waist-deep in ghastly viscera while others immediately threw you into the deep end. i didn't love-love every single story but they were all interesting in different ways. psychological horror, body horror, plain spaghetti-esque horror; spectral or otherwise, this collection has it all.
Games at Twilight and Other Stories by Anita Desai
4.0
a slice-of-life-esque collection of stories that invite you to contemplate the nature of intra- and interpersonal relationships. despite the various subject matter in each story, a creeping, meditative sentiment links them together. desai's prose is beautiful throughout, particularly in "the accompanist", which i still find particularly haunting years later.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
4.0
writing this review at 5 a.m. because i want it out of my system already:
a bit of a slow start but it quickly picks up after setting the sociohistorical scene. a lot to discuss here, which i've mostly done in my own rudimentary way in multiple internal dialogues after my first read, but basically: damn. the way antoinette's demise was both a rebellion and a liberation—for herself and for (the unnamed) rochester.
rhys did a wonderful job of treating with the victorian 'mad woman in the attic' trope. rhys humanises bertha and gives her a voice—in a literal and figurative sense, as in the source text bertha has no dialogue/never speaks. this humanising is both refreshing and wonderfully powerful in speaking back to the racist drivel that was literally every single scene involving bertha, whether she was being spoken about, restrained, etc. (all scenes involving some sort of violence, how about that?) wide sargasso sea brings many dichotomies based in eurocentrism and power under the microscope, and this—though present and stark throughout the novel—is most apparent in the second part, narrated from rochester's perspective.
there are numerous beautiful descriptions and interesting exchanges throughout. i particularly enjoyed christophine confronting rochester; antoinette's entreaty to christophine for a love potion; and antoinette and rochester's (sort of) discussion about antoinette's mother—for completely different reasons, of course. (spice, drama, flavour, etc.) there were instances, however, where the narrative seems choppy or fragmented. one can argue it's because of antoinette's fragmented psyche due to the sheer volumes of stress and social rejections she endures, along with the later (potential dubiously consensual) drugging as she travels (physically, only) from dominica to england, but i digress.
all in all, a depressing book but, you know, that's how the cookie crumbles.
a bit of a slow start but it quickly picks up after setting the sociohistorical scene. a lot to discuss here, which i've mostly done in my own rudimentary way in multiple internal dialogues after my first read, but basically: damn. the way antoinette's demise was both a rebellion and a liberation—for herself and for (the unnamed) rochester.
rhys did a wonderful job of treating with the victorian 'mad woman in the attic' trope. rhys humanises bertha and gives her a voice—in a literal and figurative sense, as in the source text bertha has no dialogue/never speaks. this humanising is both refreshing and wonderfully powerful in speaking back to the racist drivel that was literally every single scene involving bertha, whether she was being spoken about, restrained, etc. (all scenes involving some sort of violence, how about that?) wide sargasso sea brings many dichotomies based in eurocentrism and power under the microscope, and this—though present and stark throughout the novel—is most apparent in the second part, narrated from rochester's perspective.
there are numerous beautiful descriptions and interesting exchanges throughout. i particularly enjoyed christophine confronting rochester; antoinette's entreaty to christophine for a love potion; and antoinette and rochester's (sort of) discussion about antoinette's mother—for completely different reasons, of course. (spice, drama, flavour, etc.) there were instances, however, where the narrative seems choppy or fragmented. one can argue it's because of antoinette's fragmented psyche due to the sheer volumes of stress and social rejections she endures, along with the later (potential dubiously consensual) drugging as she travels (physically, only) from dominica to england, but i digress.
all in all, a depressing book but, you know, that's how the cookie crumbles.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
so, outside of skimming, i got to around chapter 9. the writing was good, engaging with some very arresting descriptions that keep your attention despite the slow build of the beginning.
i just couldn't get into it after realising "bertha" was a white creole woman flattened down to a one-dimensional spectre for the sake of... whatever was going on with the male love interest. (i swear i know his name... mister what's-his-face who is obsessed enough with bertha to keep her locked up in his attic for whatever reason.)
might pick this back up again when i feel as though i can stomach the period-typical attitudes of both the characters and the writer, but it's not likely.
i just couldn't get into it after realising "bertha" was a white creole woman flattened down to a one-dimensional spectre for the sake of... whatever was going on with the male love interest. (i swear i know his name... mister what's-his-face who is obsessed enough with bertha to keep her locked up in his attic for whatever reason.)
might pick this back up again when i feel as though i can stomach the period-typical attitudes of both the characters and the writer, but it's not likely.
Nothing's Mat by Erna Brodber
4.0
this did something to my brain that i don't fully comprehend to this day