Tag: book-reviews

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“I believe that life is not damnation but grace”

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In Misery of Love a spiritual seuquel to the acclaimed Yellow Negroes and other Imaginary Creatures, Yavan Alabé continues his unflinching interrogation of race and family in modern France. Colonial history haunts this stunning spectral-looking graphic novel, a spiritual sequel to the author’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. Alabé focuses on the dream-like memories of a woman named Clare, blonde, slight, willful- faces her estranged father as her family comes together to bury her grandparents   One of earlier stories suggests there was a double suicide.  Alagbé seamlessly glides between narratives of the family’s past and present, all haunted by the legacy … Continue reading “I believe that life is not damnation but grace”

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How can we love, or make sense of our lives?

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One night in August 1977, ten-year-old, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is discovered suffering from hypothermia and half-drowned found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone, presumed drowned. Despite prolonged searches no trace of her father and the pair’s sandals remain side by sided where they were placed at the end of jetty. They become the objects of a temporary shrine of rice bowls, flowers, fruit and trinkets donated by local people, until they are washed away. What is left following this … Continue reading How can we love, or make sense of our lives?

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Constant struggle to find daily necessities

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In 1966, China is on the cusp of a decade of upheaval, and the furnaces of Old Kiln have never been this cold. The village’s once-famed ceramics production has almost ground to a halt. Only ancient grudges smoulder beneath its poverty-stricken streets, never forgotten by the two families that preside over the village making them “backward, simple, petty, absurd and cruel” Jia writes. Between them stands the adopted Inkcap, whose mysterious origins leave him unloved and barely tolerated. Historically they have always been told what to do, and they have had the inertia of people trained in passivity. “Everyone is … Continue reading Constant struggle to find daily necessities

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Portraits of survival and resilience wins the Booker Prize

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Indian writer, Banu Mushtaq’s fiction Heart Lamp won the International Booker Prize this week. The 77-year-old writer  said “ I never dreamt it could happen. I don’t know how to express my emotions, except to say it is the greatest experience of my life”. Her translator Deepa Bhasthi 41, said “the honour lies in becoming the first translator of colour to win the annual award which goes to the best work of fiction translated into English. splits the £50,000 prize money equally between author and translator. Heart Lamp is a collection of 12 stories Mushtaq  exquisitely captures everyday lives of women and … Continue reading Portraits of survival and resilience wins the Booker Prize

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Hope and despair

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The emotional story of an intense friendship between the narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders. A Leopard-Skin Hat may be the French writer Anne Serre’s most moving novel. Anne Serre is a Prix Goncourt winner who has published 17 novels in French, as postmodern sensuous fairy tale. A feminist fantasy, where women satisfy their sexual needs free from society’s ignominy. The first to be translated into English by Mark Hutchinson, 1992’s The Governesses. Hailed in Le Point as a ‘masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance, with a series of short scenes painting the … Continue reading Hope and despair

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Love in the Therapeutic age

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Tanja and Jerome are navigating a long-distance relationship in a world of constant communication and emotional hyper-reflection. Whether they are texting one another trip updates from midday raves or debating the best trainers in the own-brand aisle of Decathlon, every gesture is controlled and self-aware. This is love in the therapeutic age. Both conform to the archetype: Tanja is a Berlin-based writer whose first book sits somewhere at the intersection of virtual reality and gay romance. “People who didn’t like it came across as cringingly proud of their dislike of a book that meant something to others, “ writes Randt, … Continue reading Love in the Therapeutic age

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Consequences of our choices

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A brother and sister lost and found, in a novel from the author of the Patrick Melrose series, Edward St Aubyn’s Parallel Lines, the novel seizes your heart and enthrals your mind. “We set off in opposite directions and walked around the world until we met, and I’m very pleased we have…”. It is summer. Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him with a fragile hold on reality and a bigger to connect with the mother who abandoned him. His therapist, Martin Carr, also faces challenges, including his adopted daughter Olivia’s tenuous relationship with her biological … Continue reading Consequences of our choices

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Albatross loses its bearings to turn into an unmoored wanderer

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Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel’s novel Still Born, about motherhood, shortlisted fort the 2023, International Booker Prize, “Being a mother means being worried about someone else all the time”, mused its narrator Laura, explaining why she preferred to remain childless. Her latest book The Accidentals feature Mothers and labours of parenthood, where conventions of family life are examined, challenged and subverted. The protagonists of these eight stories each find the ordinary courses of their lives disrupted by an unexpected event are pushed into unfamiliar terrain: a girl encounters her uncle in hospital, who was cast out of the family for reasons unknown, … Continue reading Albatross loses its bearings to turn into an unmoored wanderer

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Brief Liaison encounter

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All lives are nothing more than the chronicle of countless stinging might-have-beens that continue to haunt us. In the scorching heat, a hundred people wait to be selected as jurors. Paul, a lawyer reading Wall Street Journal. Catherine, a psychiatrist reading Wuthering Heights. So, begins a whirlwind flirtation over cappuccinos in Manhattan and gallery trips to Chelsea. Paul and Catherine, strike up a conversation and leap to judgements. Catherine thinks she could read him like a book, Wall Street, Park Avenue, Ivy League – arrogant self-satisfied, clearly prejudiced and knows it too. With lawyerly precision, Paul sums her up as … Continue reading Brief Liaison encounter

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Voice to Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless

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Introduction to DARK HOLY GROUND by Linda Granville DARK HOLY GROUND: A Journey into Activism to Give Voice to the Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless is a deeply personal and politically potent memoir from British activist and writer Linda Granville. Set in Middlesbrough, a once-thriving industrial town devastated by deindustrialization and economic abandonment, this book is both a testimony of survival and a call to moral action. Granville’s story begins in the heart of hardship: an unemployed single mother navigating life on society’s margins in a town where iron and steel, shipbuilding and the chemical industry once provided prosperity but now lie … Continue reading Voice to Voiceless and Hope to the Hopeless