I spent the first half of Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This thinking “What…?” (similar reading experience to Fun Camp by Gabe Durham). And at some point I updated my progress on Goodreads by noting that I didn’t think I was cool enough for this book… because what the hell was going on? And then SUDDENLY it shifts gear, and the first part of the book sits in stark contrast to the second.
Something in the back of her head hurt. It was her new class consciousness. Continue reading
Is there a sub-genre of dystopian fiction called ‘it-could-happen-within-a-decade-dsytopian-and-that’s-why-it’s-terrifying’? If so, it’s my favourite sub-genre. And we can file The Mother Fault by Kate Mildenhall there.
Without revealing too much of the story, it’s about a woman named Mim, whose husband Ben is missing. Everyone wants to find Ben, particularly The Department (the all-seeing government body who has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip in the palm of their hand to keep them ‘safe’). When Ben can’t be tracked, Mim is questioned; made to surrender her passport and those of their children, Essie and Sam; and is threatened with being taken into ‘care’ at the notorious BestLife (which is essentially a branded detention centre). Mim goes on a risky quest to find Ben. Continue reading
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all three are recent releases that have crossed my radar. Continue reading
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, three new(ish) releases that have caught my eye. Continue reading
Do you want to read The Testaments by Margaret Atwood but have concerns? Let me address some of the things that might be nagging you.
Ian McEwan sure does have the corner on the middle-class-white-men-having-existential-crises market, doesn’t he?
In Machines Like Me, McEwan conjures a world not quite like the one we know. It’s the eighties in Britain – the Falklands War has been lost, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Continue reading
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week I’ve selected three from the last pages of my Kindle (meaning they’ve been there for years!) – I have no idea how I came across any of them. Continue reading
A few years ago, I decided to get to the bottom of my frequent migraine headaches. It was the beginning of an eight month process of tests (mostly ‘ruling things out’), visits to four doctors, and various medications and procedures. My experience ended with an iron infusion which ultimately made all the difference to my migraines, however, there were moments on this medical merry-go-round when I thought I was wasting my time and money.
Wayne Macauley captures this exact situation in his strange novel, Some Tests. Continue reading
If you’ve coming looking for a thorough and comprehensive review of Claire G. Coleman’s debut, Terra Nullius, move along. I, like others, are saying nothing about what happens in this book for fear of spoiling it. Continue reading
This book is bananas.
I didn’t ‘like’ it but it’s hard not to be impressed by something that is so incredibly creative and thought-provoking.
But before I go on, it should be noted that Krissy Kneen’s An Uncertain Grace comes with a big bunch of trigger warnings (rape, sex crimes against children, treatment of paedophiles). Continue reading