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lunabean's reviews
201 reviews
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I haven’t read this mesmerising a book in a while💔💔💔 A compulsive Bildungsroman from beginning till end, filled with a child’s painful, enduring longing. I love books about longing. What is life if not painful longing??? 🌫️
Through Astrid’s eyes from 12 to adolescence, we see how a daughter endures figurative imprisonment in exchange for a relationship with her mother: A traumatic loss first happens (as in every Bildungsroman) when her mother Ingrid whom she idolised, kills a scorned lover and gets a life sentence. As Astrid is forsaken, she goes through cruel ordeals from foster home to foster home whilst savouring every meagre letter her mother sends from prison. These events shape Astrid’s thoughts, behaviours; innocent beliefs about her mother evolving as she grows up and begins to understand the impact of her mother’s pivotal decision years ago.
I find books remarkable when
a) 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙢𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙞𝙨: this book has clear themes, Fitch draws a vivid picture of a daughter’s relationship with her mother; how an event can be formative; the pure, intense yearning of a child to be loved, seen and protected; the strength that comes from a need to survive.
b) 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙮𝙚𝙙 𝙨𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡𝙮, 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙣 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙩𝙤𝙡𝙙. Fitch captures the affection of the reader through Astrid’s fierce resolve and resilience, persuasive characterisation that allows us to understand their motives, and consistently draws connections between parts of the novel (consequently between parts of Astrid’s life) to establish parallels and a realistic world.
With prose that is fluid and moving, this book is raw, powerful and heartfelt. I will recommend this book to anyone who’s looking to know a character’s whole world intimately and who loves taking pauses when they read a good line (cuz you’re gonna take lots of pauses in this one)🤍
Through Astrid’s eyes from 12 to adolescence, we see how a daughter endures figurative imprisonment in exchange for a relationship with her mother: A traumatic loss first happens (as in every Bildungsroman) when her mother Ingrid whom she idolised, kills a scorned lover and gets a life sentence. As Astrid is forsaken, she goes through cruel ordeals from foster home to foster home whilst savouring every meagre letter her mother sends from prison. These events shape Astrid’s thoughts, behaviours; innocent beliefs about her mother evolving as she grows up and begins to understand the impact of her mother’s pivotal decision years ago.
I find books remarkable when
a) 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙢𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙞𝙨: this book has clear themes, Fitch draws a vivid picture of a daughter’s relationship with her mother; how an event can be formative; the pure, intense yearning of a child to be loved, seen and protected; the strength that comes from a need to survive.
b) 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙮𝙚𝙙 𝙨𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡𝙮, 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙣 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙩𝙤𝙡𝙙. Fitch captures the affection of the reader through Astrid’s fierce resolve and resilience, persuasive characterisation that allows us to understand their motives, and consistently draws connections between parts of the novel (consequently between parts of Astrid’s life) to establish parallels and a realistic world.
With prose that is fluid and moving, this book is raw, powerful and heartfelt. I will recommend this book to anyone who’s looking to know a character’s whole world intimately and who loves taking pauses when they read a good line (cuz you’re gonna take lots of pauses in this one)🤍
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
4.0
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
I picked this one up because I’ve been experiencing anticipatory grief and this huge fear of loss and knew Didion wrote this after her husband John died in late 2003. She also talks about her daughter Quintana’s hospitalisations. After the book’s publication, her daughter died in early 2005.
I’ve seen people call this book a cross between a memoir and investigative journalism. I found it to be more of a private journal entry (multiple entries) of Didion’s after John’s sudden cardiac arrest and through Quintana’s (at the time) near-death health crisis. Didion seems to write not for an audience but for her own thorough examination of the timeline of events leading up to, and after, John’s death. It felt intimate: her questions to herself about her own sanity, the guilt and betrayal she felt, her fears and thoughts, and rumination on the time she and John had together. During this time, Quintana was severely ill with what was initially flu, then pneumonia, then septic shock. Whilst grieving, Didion was also wrestling with her fear of losing Quintana.
Interspersed between her intimate accounts are citations from medical journals and publications about Quintana’s condition as Didion tries to attain some control of life - she believes that information is control - giving this book its reputation of investigative journalism. Running parallel with these citations are Didion’s own internal “investigations” of John’s death: At what time exactly did John die? Did he know he was going to die? What was the last book he read?
This book is short of 5 stars because I did not like her unconcerned, very frequent use of names of her (famous) friends (people have called it name-dropping); her use of street names in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Malibu, New York, as if she’d assumed everyone would know where she was referring to. The whole thing came off very “out of touch with the rest of the world”, unaware of how not relatable her privileged life was. (Not everyone lives in the US!)
I still think this book is incredible though. It dissected a marriage lived, death and illness, the intensity of memories, and the shallowness of sanity. Doesn’t really give practical advice or anything like that, but maybe it’ll make someone feel less alone.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
3 stars⚖️ Initially I was like, what in the male gaze am I reading???? Who thought it was a good idea to let a man write about the suicides of 5 sisters? And then toward the end I’m like……. OHHH. Although I still think the title is stupid.
This book is about the Lisbon sisters, but also not really. The youngest Lisbon, Cecilia, commits suicide first, commencing the obsession and indecorous speculation of the family from the neighbourhood. They watch the sisters at school or from the house across the street, consumed with their fantasies of what the girls were doing and who they were.
What is key to this entire book is the NARRATOR!! It was written by a collective narrator “We”: the boys who went to school with the girls, lived on the same street as the girls, who dreamt of “saving” them. Initially I was appalled by the way the sisters were described- unnecessary sexualisation, the girls’ shared bathroom with hanging brasserie and tampons, accounts of them sleeping with some of the boys. After Cecilia’s death, we never find out (and were never meant to) why she died, but instead see how the boys fetishised this trauma so much so that they reconstructed the incident into a case they could solve, with exhibits. I realise this was done purposefully to critique how society views suicide: with detached, romanticised lenses. What we know about the sisters throughout the entire book is only from what the boys could see, and for all the time they spent trying to find the reasons behind the suicides, they never knew the sisters at all.
The account is meant to be flawed, and fallacious, but a double-edged sword this was… the writing felt odd and overdone to me at some parts, with unnecessary names (unmemorable) and long depictions of side characters (useless). In trying to create a one-dimensional perspective from the boys’ fixation, we never get to know the Lisbon sisters, which I think is sad. It’s a short read, a fresh take on how criticism can be written, and I can see how you could either love or hate this book. Never trust a man who says he loves this book though.
This book is about the Lisbon sisters, but also not really. The youngest Lisbon, Cecilia, commits suicide first, commencing the obsession and indecorous speculation of the family from the neighbourhood. They watch the sisters at school or from the house across the street, consumed with their fantasies of what the girls were doing and who they were.
What is key to this entire book is the NARRATOR!! It was written by a collective narrator “We”: the boys who went to school with the girls, lived on the same street as the girls, who dreamt of “saving” them. Initially I was appalled by the way the sisters were described- unnecessary sexualisation, the girls’ shared bathroom with hanging brasserie and tampons, accounts of them sleeping with some of the boys. After Cecilia’s death, we never find out (and were never meant to) why she died, but instead see how the boys fetishised this trauma so much so that they reconstructed the incident into a case they could solve, with exhibits. I realise this was done purposefully to critique how society views suicide: with detached, romanticised lenses. What we know about the sisters throughout the entire book is only from what the boys could see, and for all the time they spent trying to find the reasons behind the suicides, they never knew the sisters at all.
The account is meant to be flawed, and fallacious, but a double-edged sword this was… the writing felt odd and overdone to me at some parts, with unnecessary names (unmemorable) and long depictions of side characters (useless). In trying to create a one-dimensional perspective from the boys’ fixation, we never get to know the Lisbon sisters, which I think is sad. It’s a short read, a fresh take on how criticism can be written, and I can see how you could either love or hate this book. Never trust a man who says he loves this book though.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm and Suicide
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
adventurous
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
5 stars😭 I hesitated reading this bc I’d felt that these books tend to talk of the same banal things: how love doesn’t make you whole, how friendships are equally important etc, through stories where the writer would ironically… obsess over romantic love & then learn from it all in the end. I’d expected myself to feel bitter reading this, wondering what it could possibly offer me that I don’t already know. HOWEVR
Yes all the cliches are there, but it didn’t feel trite or full of platitudes. Alderton made the book feel like a friend, a cozy warm thing, recounting her experiences in early adulthood: MSN, her first dates, her changing ideas of love, being mostly inebriated during uni, her first heartbreak, flat-sharing in london, her eating habits, sharing wisdom she’s learnt from these experiences. I found her uni stories particularly relatable, times when she felt like she owned London, her youth and her freedom. I felt exactly like this when I lived there, like I had to be having the most fun, every time, all the time.
With Alderton being 30 & me being in my mid-20s most of the things she’s written I relate to painfully. For eg I love how like Alderton in her twenties, I am also obsessive, painfully nostalgic, and envision love to be endlessly passionate and all-consuming. Alderton writes about the difference between intimacy and intensity through a relationship with a man she deeply connected with in a shockingly short amount of time that eventually ended as abruptly as it began.
She talks of the scariness of this transitionary time from your early adulthood to actual adulthood, how scary it is to no longer be the generation that decides what is relevant, to wonder what the point of it all is - “Is this it? TCR & ordering shit off Amazon?”
While the book shares insight into what it feels like to be a coming-of-age woman, we should note that Alderton is a straight white woman living in London, whilst poc & lgbt+ women have to bear the burden of all the extra struggles that come w the intersectionality of our race and sexuality. Apart from that, it has a lot of wisdom, spirit & honesty, full 5 stars😭🫶🏼❤️🩹
Elektra by Jennifer Saint
adventurous
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
funny
hopeful
inspiring
slow-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
2.75
So many rave reviews and on bestselling bookshelves everywhere I thought it was going to be spectacular and literary, spewing wisdom, but really it felt like a child’s read.
The great part about it is the characters and the way Garmus tells the story. The characters are very loveable, at times funny. I especially loved Six-Thirty (the dog)‘s internal monologues. The writing has no metaphors, no subtlety, just straightforward, direct prose that allows you to devour the book in a couple sittings. I usually have to reread sentences when I read, but hardly did it at all for this one. Most of the prose was back and forth conversation so it feels like reading a movie script. It’s like reading at an easy level, there’s nothing in it really that requires critical thinking, so this one’s for you if you want to relax your brain.
The plot though… cliche after cliche. It’s the 1950s and the protagonist, Elizabeth Zott, is a chemist who struggles to be taken seriously by anyone because people believed women belonged at home. Most of what Zott stands for (writer’s moral voice) is awesome - feminism, the importance of choice and the role of the housewife, education and learning etc, but Garmus conveyed these in a way that came off so so SO cheesy. I get that it’s the 1950s but the good guys and the bad guys were so black and white that it felt like I was reading a children’s book.
And THEN there’s the trauma dumping… topics of rape, sexual harassment, suicide, abuse, littered in between the cliches🥴🥴
I wanted to love this book. I do like the story, it’s fun and cute, but the writing just didn’t hit the mark for me… I can see older women enjoying this one though. Maybe I’m just not the target audience🤷🏻♀️
The great part about it is the characters and the way Garmus tells the story. The characters are very loveable, at times funny. I especially loved Six-Thirty (the dog)‘s internal monologues. The writing has no metaphors, no subtlety, just straightforward, direct prose that allows you to devour the book in a couple sittings. I usually have to reread sentences when I read, but hardly did it at all for this one. Most of the prose was back and forth conversation so it feels like reading a movie script. It’s like reading at an easy level, there’s nothing in it really that requires critical thinking, so this one’s for you if you want to relax your brain.
The plot though… cliche after cliche. It’s the 1950s and the protagonist, Elizabeth Zott, is a chemist who struggles to be taken seriously by anyone because people believed women belonged at home. Most of what Zott stands for (writer’s moral voice) is awesome - feminism, the importance of choice and the role of the housewife, education and learning etc, but Garmus conveyed these in a way that came off so so SO cheesy. I get that it’s the 1950s but the good guys and the bad guys were so black and white that it felt like I was reading a children’s book.
And THEN there’s the trauma dumping… topics of rape, sexual harassment, suicide, abuse, littered in between the cliches🥴🥴
I wanted to love this book. I do like the story, it’s fun and cute, but the writing just didn’t hit the mark for me… I can see older women enjoying this one though. Maybe I’m just not the target audience🤷🏻♀️