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rebeccahussey's reviews
442 reviews
Mostarghia by Maya Ombasic
The word “Mostarghia” is a combination of “nostaglia” and “Mostar,” the city in Bosnia Herzegovina where Maya Ombasic spent her early years. When civil war broke out in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, her family suddenly became refugees, fleeing first to Geneva, Switzerland, and then to Canada. Prompted by the death of her father, an outsized personality who loved Mostar and suffered deeply from exile, Ombasic explores their complicated relationship and describes her family’s experiences as refugees. The book is written in the second person, directed at Ombasic’s father, so it becomes a conversation with a lost loved one as well as a meditation on nations, cultures, and exile. Ombasic’s descriptions of her refugee experiences are fascinating and timely, and anybody who wants to think deeply about what happens when people are forced to leave their homelands will want to pick this book up.
https://bookriot.com/2019/08/18/august-indie-press-books/
https://bookriot.com/2019/08/18/august-indie-press-books/
Ma mère rit (Traits et portraits) by Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman was a Belgian artist and film director as well as writer. Originally published in 2013, My Mother Laughs is her last book before her death in 2015. It’s a memoir about caring for her mother, a holocaust survivor, who was gravely ill at the time. Their relationship was complex, and Akerman struggles with their history and her own depression. She is trying to understand her feelings about family and her lover, C., with whom she has a fraught relationship. Akerman’s sentences are elegantly simple even as they capture depths of emotion. Accompanying the text are photographs and film stills that complement the stories Akerman tells. It’s a beautiful book, both in the writing and as an object. Anyone who has loved Akerman’s films will be interested, as well as anyone who admires honest, haunting writing about illness, care-taking, family, and love.
https://bookriot.com/2020/02/07/february-indie-press-releases/
https://bookriot.com/2020/02/07/february-indie-press-releases/
Epitaph for a Tramp & Epitaph for a Dead Beat: The Harry Fannin Detective Novels by David Markson
5.0
Totally awesome. Loved these books.