uuuultraviolennnnt's reviews
99 reviews

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan

challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

immediate prose, so modern. an honest account of living and dying in the 21st century. the children are cruel, life’s nihilism even crueler. the irrelevance of whole pieces of body just disappearing was really scary, because it truly doesn’t matter anymore. we’ve lost mattering and hold on to life for dear solace. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent

Moderate: Animal death

Assembly by Natasha Brown

challenging emotional funny informative tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

my ‘as a woman, as an immigrant, as an over-achiever’ frustrations exemplified.

“Best case: those children grow up, assimilate, get jobs and pour money into a government that forever tells them they are not British. This is not home”

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

adventurous emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I catch eyes when I read this novel on public transport. Japanese literature is serious about its naturalist perspective. The way Yasunari speaks of women is intriguing, poetic, and so careful. Snow country holds many beautiful interactions in such a short space, what an ethereal escape 

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

emotional informative mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

"because that is what nature did to death, it transformed abrupt endings into a thousand new beginnings"

A creative exploration of life after mass death; human death, animal death and plant death alike; a meaningful prose that seeks to learn how memory can be harboured without its dignity, how history becomes the unwanted baggage carried silently by diasporas. pain- an unintentional birth right passed on from wounded parents. Grief- the human emotion most strongly attached to new seasons, new beginnings 

The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir

dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Women feel the full scope of jealousy without the demand of a fixed age, it may just be what keeps us young. Resentment and bottled emotions relate to no special place in time, they are endless opponents. The suffering brought on from a lack of solidarity between generations can often feel like a private failure, as our adult-life shuts off from the world first. Women are destroyed first. Simone writes with so much knowing, detailing fears, miscommunications and emotions with such clarity, making this the perfect novel

Tree Language by Marion McCready

dark inspiring medium-paced

3.5

A beautiful cadence in these boney, sharp poems. Irrefutably feminine in that women especially see the natural world for all its abject beauty. Drover’s Loch, I had to memorise, keep those words with me. The order McCready places words in is so special. The branches were long and beautiful, the language and themes so fertile and wild. Mind poems, Out-loud poems, poems you feel like retitling because the vastness of emotions brought over by them is inconceivable under one phrase

Indelicacy by Amina Cain

lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Quiet yet so pulpy, queer ponderings in a Victorian world with a hopeful voice. No person pin points the desires of women better than a woman who longs for infinite moments with them.

Vitória heightened sensitivity towards life, art, and social currency is so clear in its femininity. There were no blanket statements, only truthful, emotionally charged observations. I love this book so so much, it’s like a throw from the finest wool, spun out from the cleanest sheep, no imperfections. 

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

this is such a compelling compilation of lives crossed by a single, insightful woman, I love how Didion is able to speak of people exactly how they present, with all their intrigue and ironies, she’s so wonderful and perfectly American. The titular chapter made me feel all kinds of worried and hopeful, worried about youth, hopeful for the innocence that clearly exists in our world, or existed at that time but feels so current still, it made me want to be sixteen run away from home, but also cry like the distraught parent I am not. Joan Didion observes so we can feel. She was young so young people could know what it sounds like to feel alone

Patient X: The Case-Book of Ryunosuke Akutagawa by David Peace
Did not finish book. Stopped at 42%.

I miss-placed this one lol

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

adventurous lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

a fiesty, gleaming, White novel. ‘Might have to keep this permanently in the ‘one-time-read’ pile so as to not scrutinise the inexcusable privilege of it all. Soirées and scandals and decadence are always cool to read about. Again, it is hard to ignore how wildly out of touch The Great Gatsby is, especially since I’m not sure that this flaw was meant to be eye-opening or insightful when Mrs Fitzgerald wrote it (wink).