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p4chen's reviews
107 reviews
Dream State by Eric Puchner
medium-paced
4.25
“If you look for a meaning, ….. you’ll miss everything that happens,”
Life was a long, incompetent search to get back to a feeling you had when you were six.
What a mystery your own children were. You gave them everything, and it was like tossing a coin into a well.
A beautifully written, multigenerational saga set in Montana which spans 50 years.
Exploring friendship, marriage, parenting, grief - and life’s many regrets. Relationship commitment and love through the many joys, challenges, disappointments, hardships and fears we must face in connection with others.
Well drawn characters - engaging and thought provoking.
Such an interesting and refreshing approach to time transitions!
Well drawn characters - engaging and thought provoking.
Such an interesting and refreshing approach to time transitions!
Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger
4.0
This novel is full of literary Easter Eggs!
A multi-generational family saga - which challenges traditional assumptions of what makes a good mother and then presents other mothering roles as alternatives.
The narrative is driven by character and character dialog.
Mostly strong women, grappling with their own identities and actions in relation to their mothers…
Deciding if these mothering truths, experiences, family histories and secrets matter now in the present - and how they have shaped who they have become and are today.
A compelling, engaging, and enjoyable read.
A multi-generational family saga - which challenges traditional assumptions of what makes a good mother and then presents other mothering roles as alternatives.
The narrative is driven by character and character dialog.
Mostly strong women, grappling with their own identities and actions in relation to their mothers…
Deciding if these mothering truths, experiences, family histories and secrets matter now in the present - and how they have shaped who they have become and are today.
A compelling, engaging, and enjoyable read.
Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán
4.0
Clean is an intense, disturbing, claustrophobic novel about class and power and the kind of deep down dirt that lingers, despite the most vigorous scrubbing.
The experimentation with literary form was innovative, unconventional and engaging.
The experimentation with literary form was innovative, unconventional and engaging.
This is just the way life goes: a drop, a drop, a drop, a drop, and then we ask ourselves, bewildered, how we’ve ended up soaked to the bone.
Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell
5.0
Longlisted - Women’s Prize for Fiction - 2025
A stunning emotive debut! The narrative is at times very difficult, visceral. It explores the emotional, coercive and psychological abuse within a marriage and the desperate attempt of a young mother to protect her children - against every odd, within a social care system that is infuriatingly bureaucratic and broken. Set against the backdrop of the housing crisis in Ireland, the situation becomes desperate. There is a panicked, claustrophobic energy that permeates throughout the novel. A stark reminder of the many vulnerable people forced to live in this way within the societies that surround us.
The symbolism of the crow was particularly disturbing.
A stunning emotive debut! The narrative is at times very difficult, visceral. It explores the emotional, coercive and psychological abuse within a marriage and the desperate attempt of a young mother to protect her children - against every odd, within a social care system that is infuriatingly bureaucratic and broken. Set against the backdrop of the housing crisis in Ireland, the situation becomes desperate. There is a panicked, claustrophobic energy that permeates throughout the novel. A stark reminder of the many vulnerable people forced to live in this way within the societies that surround us.
The symbolism of the crow was particularly disturbing.
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
4.25
A beautiful, engaging debut novel and epic family history.
Such a touching conclusion and ending for C&G.
Such a touching conclusion and ending for C&G.
Untold stories shape people’s lives both when they are withheld and when they are revealed.
Who I am is your mother. This Is the truest part of me.
The thing about identity. There’s your family history, there’s how you see yourself, and then there’s what others see in you. All these elements factor into your identity, like it or not.
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
5.0
The hare lends itself as a symbol of the transience of life and its fleeting glory, and our dependence on nature and our careless destruction of it.
To be dependable in love and friendship more than in work. To leave the land in a more natural state than I found it. And to take better care of what is to hand, seeing beauty and value in the ordinary.
River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer
3.5
Love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.
We whisper the names of the ones we love like the words of a song. That was the taste of freedom to us, those names on our lips.
Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby
4.5
Razor sharp prose, character and plot!
Profound and enthralling!
Profound and enthralling!
Tears ran from his eyes and stung his cheeks. Tears for his son. Tears for his wife. Tears for the little girl they had to raise. Tears for who they were and what they all had lost. Each drop felt like it was slicing his face open like a razorblade.
…it is just being respectful of people and accepting them for who they are…
His empty hands. Hands that had held his boy when he was barely ten minutes old. The hands that had shown him how to tie his shoes. The hands that had rubbed salve on his chest when he'd had the flu. That had waved goodbye to him in court with shackles tight around his wrists. Rough callused hands that he hid in his pockets when Isiah's husband had offered to shake them.
Flames by Robbie Arnott
5.0
A beautifully lyrical, fantastical novel! An exploration of the depths of love and grief in many forms, and how it can burn and wound.
The deep connection to nature and its magic, and the descriptions of the landscape, creatures and elements gave a mesmerising and enchanting voice to this narrative.
The most beautiful aspect of this novel was the ability to show many endings together with many beginnings.
And even after the experience of grief, rage and destruction there comes a moment of change and connection that offers hope.
Unlike anything I have ever read!
The deep connection to nature and its magic, and the descriptions of the landscape, creatures and elements gave a mesmerising and enchanting voice to this narrative.
The most beautiful aspect of this novel was the ability to show many endings together with many beginnings.
And even after the experience of grief, rage and destruction there comes a moment of change and connection that offers hope.
Unlike anything I have ever read!
A cloud’s sorrow: you cannot imagine it. But you can feel it, whenever a storm hits the world with uncommon force.