This beautiful, devastating, wonderful book… John of John by Douglas Stuart is my first, hands-down five-star read this year.
The story begins simply – Cal, out of money and with little to show for his art school education in Edinburgh, takes the ferry home to the island of Harris –
…the closer he got to home, the more lost he felt. 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. Continue reading
I’m always drawn to campus-lit, so I didn’t need much convincing for Grace Murray’s debut, Blank Canvas. And then I read the blurb –
…Charlotte begins her final year with a lie. Her father died over the summer, she says. Heart attack. Very sudden. Charlotte had never been close with her classmates but as she repeats her tale, their expressions soften into kindness.
– and I carried the book straight to the counter (at the always lovely Ramona Books). Continue reading
My last three picks for Reading Ireland Month (two audios and a hardcover) – Continue reading
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga Continue reading
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell is one of the most creative books I’ve read this year. Not creative in that it plays with style or structure, but simply for its somehow wholly engaging focus on the micro detail (and in doing so, tells a macro story).
What a strange thing a body is, I thought, how eerie to be filled with blood and covered with hair, to be a machine any part of which might fail; and how strange to have hated it so much, when it had always been so serviceable, when it had done more or less everything I had needed until now, when for more than forty years it had worked so well. Poor body, I thought again, looking down on it. I had hated it so much and been so ashamed and I might have loved it instead. Continue reading
In water, like in books – you can leave your life.
I don’t exactly know what I just read but Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, The Chronology of Water, has left a deep impression.
Her story is told sometimes in lush, rolling sentences; sometimes in angry snatches; and sometimes in an anguished monologue. She explores themes of being a daughter, abuse, addiction, self-destruction, failed relationships, mothering, and grief.
I hated my father most of all, a hate that never left but just changed forms. My life had been ruined by men. Continue reading
A Great Marriage by Frances Mayes Continue reading
My last bunch of Stella longlist reads before the shortlist announcement on 8th April (I also have Always Will Be by Mykaela Saunders on loan from the library but not sure I will have time to read it this week). Continue reading
The Winner by Teddy Wayne Continue reading