though not as explicitly dark as her two published novels, eliza clark's first short story collection she's always hungry contains the usual absurditythough not as explicitly dark as her two published novels, eliza clark's first short story collection she's always hungry contains the usual absurdity and grossness clark has become known for.
there’s a range of different oddities to sink your teeth into here: in ‘build a body like mine’, a woman welcomes a parasite into her body to lose weight. ‘the shadow over little chitaly’ is written in the form of google reviews about the bizarre orders people receive from a italian-chinese fusion takeaway. there’s a teenager buying an acne treatment from the dark web, and an immortal female cannibal who rules over a new planet. this collection also showcases clark leaning into the sci-fi genre, with some apocalyptic-themed, speculative fiction scattered throughout. many stories also benefit from the inclusion of internet culture and humour, which was partly what made her previous novel penance so chillingly realistic.
it’s an unsettling if not outright weird collection, but if you’re an eliza clark fan, that’s what you’re here for!
rating: 3.75
thank you faber books for the advanced copy!!...more
mamele follows 50-something edie, who is reflecting on her fraught relationship with her mother throughout her childhood, and how she navigated her qumamele follows 50-something edie, who is reflecting on her fraught relationship with her mother throughout her childhood, and how she navigated her queerness and the complexities of desire when she was younger, which has ultimately left her feeling trapped in her current situation. it’s a short and quick read, i read it in one evening! i’d recommend if you like books about complex mother-daughter relationships. ...more
“no one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.”
i sat down to read this and then ended up finishing it in a few sittings. ‘shred sisters’ i“no one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.”
i sat down to read this and then ended up finishing it in a few sittings. ‘shred sisters’ is a raw story about the messiness of human relationships, of sisterhood and family dynamics, and the rippling effects of mental illness. all of the characters are well-crafted, especially the 2 shred sisters themselves, amy and olivia, and their polarity to one another. it’s a very poignant, touching novel, and i’m excited to read more of betsy lerner’s work after this!
thank you to betsy for kindly sending me a copy! ‘shred sisters’ comes out on 1st october 2024....more
4.5. WOW. sally rooney has such a talent for writing about interpersonal relationships and human connection, and it’s something i’ll never tire of rea4.5. WOW. sally rooney has such a talent for writing about interpersonal relationships and human connection, and it’s something i’ll never tire of reading.
intermezzo is the story of two brothers: peter, a successful lawyer in his thirties who is juggling relationships with two different women, and his younger brother ivan, a competitive chess player in his early twenties who begins a relationship with an older woman he meets at one of his tournaments.
it’s hard to talk in depth about this book for fear of spoiling it, but it definitely feels like a step forwards for sally rooney as a literary fiction author. intermezzo contains a much deeper character study into its two protagonists, exploring their family dynamics and how they grapple with navigating their brotherhood in the shadow of their father’s recent death. the scope of the novel feels wider; you really feel like you know these characters and why they are the way they are, why they act the way they do.
intermezzo also has rooney’s trademark political zest: commentary on wage labour, the housing crisis in dublin, monetary power dynamics, religion, existentialism, and discussions of chronic pain (to name a few). another thing i’ve always liked about sally rooney’s novels is how she talks about the internet / social media. it’s present in her books, as it needs to be when writing about young characters navigating the contemporary world, but it’s never too much. her awareness of social media, coupled with her lack of (public) personal accounts, conjures the image of rooney lurking on the periphery of the internet somewhere. she is also a master of dialogue, perfectly weaving in all the intricacies and subtleties of human conversation.
all this to say, it’s another hit from sally rooney & further cements her as my favourite author! (but who’s surprised). thank you SO much @faberbooks for the advanced copy, i’m forever indebted. intermezzo is out on 24 sept 2024!
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update: i got the arc!!! i will be devouring it asap so stay tuned
Blue Sisters tells the story of 3 estranged sisters trying to navigate their complex relationships and personal lives in the wake of their sister’s deBlue Sisters tells the story of 3 estranged sisters trying to navigate their complex relationships and personal lives in the wake of their sister’s death.
Made clear by the title, the core of this novel is just about the unique bond that sisters share. As I was reading this book, I was reminded of a tweet along the lines of ‘you won’t let your sister borrow your clothes, but you’d give them a kidney in a heartbeat’ - which I think just sums up sisterhood perfectly.
Though heavy in subject matter, Blue Sisters makes for a a somewhat ‘fun’ read as it switches between the cities of Paris, London, New York, and L.A., plunging you into a new location as each sister desperately tries to find a sense of home again after their sister’s death.
Mellors doesn’t shy away from discussing the difficult aspects of life, exploring grief and how it manifests differently in each person, especially through the different coping mechanisms of each sister. The novel also largely focuses on addiction, and the determination to break the cycle of addiction within a family.
Blue Sisters has a lot of heart and emotional tenderness, and will relate to anyone who has sisters (I also have 3 so the relatability was high for me). It’s about letting go, moving on, and learning how to live again.
Thank you 4th Estate Books for the arc copy! Blue Sisters is out in the UK on 23 May
tinted with tender melancholy, the premonition follows 19 year old yayoi, who lives with her perfect family yet is plagued by the thought that she hastinted with tender melancholy, the premonition follows 19 year old yayoi, who lives with her perfect family yet is plagued by the thought that she has forgotten something important about her childhood. due to this premonition, yayoi moves in with her mysterious aunt in a quest to uncover her seemingly lost memories.
this novel mainly centres around family; the idea of what constitutes family, the concept of lost and found family. yayoi is struggling with the feeling of displacement in her family with her constant feeling that something is not quite right. just like a typical 19 year old (minus the slight clairvoyance), she is trying to figure out who she is, where she belongs, and where she came from.
the premonition contains depictions of taboo relationships that probably wouldn’t be found in fiction today, but it doesn’t seem done for the sake of shock value, more so to simply fit in with the underlying tone of unease and the conversations around the complexity of relationships/love that runs throughout the novel. i would be interested to find out how readers reacted to this element of the book when it was first released in japan in the 80s.
the premonition is a dreamy, strange, nostalgic little book, with a fluid translation / writing style which is easy to get lost in and read in one sitting.
thank you @faberbooks for the arc - the premonition is out in the uk now!
death valley follows an unnamed narrator, a novelist in her forties who is simultaneously trying to cope with her father’s current hospitalisation in the ICU and her husband’s ongoing illness. needing some time alone and seeking inspiration to finish her novel, she checks into a hotel in death valley, embarking on the nearby hiking trails where she finds a towering cactus which seems to have some mystical properties.
i’m not usually one for magical realism/fantasy, but the way the fantastical elements (the cactus portal, the main character having conversations with inanimate objects and her father as a child etc.) were used as a vehicle for the protagonist to explore and process her grief is something i can appreciate. the protagonist’s foray into the desert allows for an exploration of grief, love and loss, death, family, existential dread, father-daughter relationships, empathy and compassion, survival, and of what it means to love someone who is dying. despite these rather existential themes, the novel is still a fast, easy read due to the companionable, witty voice of the narrator, whose humour offers a touch of lightness.
death valley is a strange but vulnerable novel about feeling lost, but going on and surviving anyway.
Piglet is an impressive and propulsive debut novel following a woman who, after her husband-to-be reveals a shocking betrayal 2 weeks before their wedPiglet is an impressive and propulsive debut novel following a woman who, after her husband-to-be reveals a shocking betrayal 2 weeks before their wedding, is forced on a journey of hungry self-revelation.
Piglet is a tale of simmering female rage, delving into the life of a woman torn between the things she wants in life and the things she thinks she wants. The novel follows the protagonist Piglet, a childhood-nickname in place of her real name, in the lead-up to her wedding as she attempts to balance the wedding organisation, family expectations, work pressure, and her complicated relationship with food.
The novel is led by food, and the exploration of food is really where it shines. Many pages are devoted to decadent descriptions of cooking food, eating food, shopping for food, all of which largely serve as an allegory (particularly towards the end of the novel) for Piglet’s obsession with perfection and the crutch she leans on when feeling like her life is spiralling out of control.
With perfectly-built tension throughout, the novel also explores the spectacle of a wedding and all its esoteric complexities (bringing to mind Jia Tolentino's essay about the wedding industrial complex in her 2019 collection Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion), and the tensions created from class disparities in a relationship and two different families coming together.
Piglet (the character) is unlikeable at times but her deep characterisation allows you to understand her, which is one of the things that made the novel so compelling for me. Here's a woman who's been told to want more from life, but then is criticised for wanting more. Piglet is a character you can’t stand at the start, but by the end of the novel you’re left just wanting to reassure her that everything will be ok.
Thank you Penguin UK / Doubleday for the arc and the amazing PR package! Piglet is out in the UK on 25th January - so make sure you grab a copy to satiate your appetite.
Although Clark’s second novel Penance takes quite a different approach to her first one (don’t go into this expecting Boy Parts 2.0), her debut gives Although Clark’s second novel Penance takes quite a different approach to her first one (don’t go into this expecting Boy Parts 2.0), her debut gives enough of a hint that she knows how to make a novel like this work.
Relayed by a journalist using witness accounts, interviews, news articles, podcast transcripts, tumblr posts, and correspondence, Penance tells the story of the shocking and gruesome murder among teenagers in a sleepy northern seaside town on the eve of the Brexit vote. Needless to say, the social and political context of the novel sets it up for a lot of interesting commentary, and Clark definitely delivers on this front. The setting of the northern seaside town, Crow-on-Sea, allows Clark to explore the decay of the north/seaside towns, and how dangerous the political and class divides of these towns can become when left to fester.
Alongside this, Penance also provides an unflinching and disturbing look at what has become the true-crime industrial complex, specifically in relation to internet fandom culture. Clark captures the pure malice and nastiness of 2010s internet culture in such a way that you simultaneously recoil in horror and laugh at how accurate it is. She is one of the few authors I’ve read who write about the internet in an authentic way, you can really tell she was in the trenches of Tumblr like the rest of us.
In terms of internet culture, the novel explores how easily the online radicalisation of young, vulnerable people can occur, with fans in online fandom communities like Tumblr feeding into each other’s obsession until everything starts to derail – and to what degree onlookers are complicit as they watch it all unfold in real time.
The characterisation is brilliant, specifically in terms of how Clark writes the teenage characters navigating the discomfort of adolescence and trying to forge a sense of self in a small, suffocating seaside town (relatable). She also perfectly, and horrifyingly, captures the cruelty of teenage female friendship groups and how awful teenagers can be to one another.
All in all, Penance is a compulsive and unsettling examination of the morality of true-crime and how true-crime cases are treated and discussed today, particularly in a post-truth world.
Thank you Faber & Faber for the advanced copy! Penance comes out in the UK on 6 July.
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this is gonna be a tough one for the chronically offline (aka normal people who didn’t have their teenage brains rotted by tumblr and the internet) to understand....more
the last book i read before this was quite disturbing so i picked this one up as a palette cleanser, like watching cartoons after a horror film, and ithe last book i read before this was quite disturbing so i picked this one up as a palette cleanser, like watching cartoons after a horror film, and it delivered for that. it’s a quick, easy read, about a rich family with unlikeable characters dealing with their rich family problems. i think it could’ve gone a bit further with the dramatics / secrets, most of the ‘drama’ which happened was pretty tame.
one thing i’ve noticed with american media that claim to explore class (with shows like succession, gossip girl, the white lotus, this book etc.) is that they often fail to discuss class with much nuance. these stories are never really about class, they’re about wealth / money. maybe this is just a product of the differences between the class systems in america and the uk, but i think it’s interesting nonetheless.
still not sure if parts of this were meant to be satire or if these rich characters really were committed to ‘listening and learning’ and thought that’d absolve them, but it’s ideal if you need a light, fast-paced read, and was just what i needed at the time.
the nursery follows a young unnamed narrator, a swedish-english translator, who has just given birth to her first child, a girl who is referred to as the nursery follows a young unnamed narrator, a swedish-english translator, who has just given birth to her first child, a girl who is referred to as ‘button’ throughout the book. although short, this novel provides a visceral depiction of the first few days of new motherhood and the spiral into postpartum depression: the exhaustion, the fear, the pain, the intrusive violent thoughts, the endlessly long days, the mourning of a life and a body before childbirth.
the novel has a dream-like quality, made up of a collection of disjointed vignettes put together to capture the hazy, timeless postpartum days. as a reader you even start to feel a little disorientated - which feels like an intentional goal on the author’s part.
although i haven’t experienced it myself as i don’t have a child, i know that postpartum depression is incredibly common, affecting more than 1 in 10 women in the uk , but yet it’s still very taboo to openly talk about, often only whispered about or mentioned in hushed tones. in our society, especially if you’re a woman, we grow up hearing that motherhood is ‘magical’ and ‘special’, that the first few days with our baby after giving birth are a ‘gift’ that should be treasured. and i’m sure that can be true for some people, but maybe it’s not for others - and that’s ok. the nursery focuses on one woman who is struggling in those early days of motherhood with a level of raw honesty which i’m sure many women will find comfort and relatability in.
(side note: the parts about working as a translator/the discussions around language and the idea of the translator as the interpreter and the re-maker of meaning were really interesting parts of this novel too)
thank you to oneworld for the advanced copy! the nursery publishes in the uk on 4 may 2023....more
told in rhyming couplets, this short novel follows a young woman as she embarks on her first queer relationship. reflecting on her previous boyfriend told in rhyming couplets, this short novel follows a young woman as she embarks on her first queer relationship. reflecting on her previous boyfriend and the woman she’s now seeing, the book follows along on a series of vignettes exploring queerness, power, loss, freedom, desire, identity, art, love, and at its core - relationships. it begs the question whether we are shaped by every relationship we have, whether we are vessels which hold the ghosts of all our previous lovers inside of us.
couplets is a fast-paced, cerebral, and creative little book which plays with the form of both the novel and poetry. you can easily fly through it in one sitting.
thank you @faberbooks for the advanced copy! couplets is out in the uk on 2 march 2023....more
big swiss is a kooky, funny, and very gripping romp of a novel, exploring the differences in processing trauma, a humorous look at new age psychology/big swiss is a kooky, funny, and very gripping romp of a novel, exploring the differences in processing trauma, a humorous look at new age psychology/therapy, and queerness. the absurd but witty humour and the characterisation definitely stand out as the strongest aspects of the book. while reading you’re constantly teetering on the edge of entertainment and discomfort, and it may not work for everyone, but it worked for me. i couldn’t put it down as soon as i started it.
this is my first time reading bret easton ellis, and although i had heard his books aren’t for the faint of heart,this book is auto fiction on crack.
this is my first time reading bret easton ellis, and although i had heard his books aren’t for the faint of heart, after reading one i can confirm it’s true. bret easton ellis definitely isn’t afraid of grotesque violence and macabre description (i’m sure people who have read american psycho already know this).
the shards follows a fictional bret and his group of friends at a prep school in los angeles during the year of 1981, a year where the city is haunted by a serial killer on the loose named ‘the trawler’. as bret becomes increasingly preoccupied with ‘the trawler’ and his crimes, a new student, robert mallory, joins the school and works his way into bret’s friendship group, piquing bret’s suspicion and causing his obsession with both the trawler and robert mallory to begin to merge.
the shards is a bildungsroman of sorts, following bret as he navigates the shift between being a teenager and adulthood, although the plotting and pacing leans more towards a thriller, especially in the last third of the novel.
the shards feels quite meta in its exploration of the mind of the writer and their process, particularly their need to create narratives of the world around them in order to make sense of it. you really can’t analyse this book too much without spoiling anything, so all i’ll say is that if you like books where you can’t tell what’s real and what's not, give this a read.
(note: 3 stars is not a bad rating - for me it just means i liked the book, it just didn’t completely blow me away or become a new favourite) ...more
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