Famesick by Lena Dunham Continue reading
Tag Archives: grief-lit
Sample Saturday – grief-lit
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. Continue reading
Sophie, Still Standing by Meg Mason
In some ways, Sophie, Sill Standing by Meg Mason is wildly unbelievable. But in other ways (and I was reading it while I was enjoying the Edinburgh International Book Festival) it is clearly informed by experience and therefore quite believable (and Mason’s chat with Ann Patchett reveals a bit about that experience).
Anyway, real of not, it doesn’t matter a jot. The story is charming – it features Mason’s signature, gentle humour, and it’s set at a literature festival – what a bonus! Continue reading
First two collections for Short Story September
I began Short Story September with two remarkably similar collections – Other People We Married by Emma Straub and Middle-Aged Boys & Girls by Diane Bracuk. Continue reading
Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week
01. My Melbourne International Film Festival picks this week: Continue reading
My Latest Listens
The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon Continue reading
Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer
Most of the grief-lit that I read is nonfiction (either memoir or academic texts about grief). Lots of fiction that I read has elements of grief but rarely is it the main theme – I tend to avoid these because I fear there will be something that doesn’t ring true, which then colours my opinion of the entire book (probably unfairly).
So with that said, why did I pick up Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer? I was intrigued by the blurb that alluded to a ‘surprising’ end-of-life request. Continue reading
Soft Serve by George Kemp
The premise for George Kemp’s novel, Soft Serve, is deceptively simple – four people taking shelter in a regional McDonald’s as bushfires close in around the town. What unfolds, is a story about grief, expectations and imagined futures.
…orange embers dart over her head and flutter down the hill towards the town, flicky death-filled confetti… Continue reading
Literary Wives Club – Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
For the first time since I’ve joined the Literary Wives Club, the selection is a short story collection – Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies.
There are nine stories in the collection, the majority focused on Indian or Bengali immigrants in America. Lahiri writes from different perspectives, not bound by gender or age, and the stories feature details and quirks that make them ‘splendid’* and memorable. Continue reading
Wait Here by Lucy Nelson
In previous years, I’ve attempted to read the full Stella Prize longlist – that took some effort in terms of coordinating predictions, library reservations and bookshop visits! This year, the longlist announcement crept up on me and I was totally unprepared. Nevertheless, I got my hands on a copy of Lucy Nelson’s short story collection, Wait Here. Continue reading