10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - Elif Shafak

"For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the
taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . ."

10 Minutes is separated into two parts, the Mind, with Leila recalling the moments of her life and The Body, the efforts of her friends to recover and bury her. Right there, in that two-part structure is something startlingly radical: Leila is both a mind and a body, a fully rounded woman with four decades of lived experience and a cadaver on a medical examiner’s table. Her death is not where the story ends or where it begins. Her grisly murder is not an outrage to be avenged, nor a puzzle to be solved , there is no brilliant/jaded/antisocial detective , it is simply a tragedy. A lurid death of the type so common in fiction (and upon which a whole genre has been built) – a murdered whore stuffed into a bin – but here the victim is humanised, centred, she is no plot device in someone else’s story.

It is a deeply depressing story of exclusion, sexual abuse, the fall into prostitution, the death of loved ones and an all encompassing feeling of abandonment and hopelessness. But that is not all it is. Yes, there is incredible sadness. But there is also hope, and friendship, and love. For me this book re-affirms how very special life it. What it means to be alive. How and why we can try to make changes and make the world more inclusive and loving.  Most importantly to seek out those with which you will be able to share your life with, those who are meaningful and understand you. 

Shafak's sensual writing abounds. You can smell the scents of spices, cardamom, lemon. You can feel the heat from the sky. The evening breeze on your neck. The lights of the city at night. The sizzle of the food vendor's grill. See the sun reflecting off the harbour. Hear the seagulls careening. The writing is so wonderfully descriptive. 

This is not a perfect novel by any stretch. Leila’s life story is compelling, but not remarkably so; Shafak’s prose style is undeniably lush and sensual, but also occasionally sentimental. Two consecutive chapters open with almost identical lines, which felt slightly lazy. Leila’s ‘found family’ of misfits are drawn with broad brushstrokes and feel more like ‘types’ than real people and their farcical efforts in Part Two are a bit slapstick (Part Two is overall weaker than Part One). 

But along with the mawkishness and melodrama there is poignant charm , wisdom, beauty and compassion. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is a novel that beguiles and seduces despite its flaws.

Age Rating 18+. Sexual abuse of a minor, prostitution, swearing, murder, serious mental illness. 

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

"In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by
dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two."

I picked this book up on a whim at the library. I had no idea what it was about. I had never heard of it before, and I must be honest, I didn't put the name James Baldwin together with the Civil Rights Activist I was taught about in school. So, I had no idea I was about to read one of best book I have yet read. 

This book unravelled me completely. I felt like my whole body was strung out by the sheer, inexorable weight of this story. During reading, I often found myself having to close the book and just process. Giovanni's Room is one of the rawest, most wounding and open-chested portraits of what it is like to burn with the fires of self-loathing as a result of internalized hate, and to wrestle, every day, from the webbing of a shame that stains, indelibly, yourself and everything you love. 

There is viciousness, lust, loneliness, sensuality, deception, sorrow, tenderness, despair, and ultimately tragedy that makes this book easily one of the top 100 best books I’ve ever read. Every reader will find something of themselves in this book, maybe not the part of themselves that they want to hold up to the mirror, but certainly a fragment, disdainful in nature or worthy of pity, that can not be denied.

It is classified as a "gay book." I think that is a overly simplified grouping, it is a book about doomed love. I do not think that you have to be queer to enjoy or relate to this book. You must only have felt out of place, a stranger in a strange land, to have looked at yourself in the mirror and not liked what you saw. To have felt the deep well of loneliness and meaningless desperation that comes with living as a human. Baldwin explores and expresses the torments of humanity and love, through his achingly beautiful prose that often left me breathless. David is profoundly selfish, and evasive to the attention he receives. He paradoxically wants love but cannot bear the responsibilities that go with it. He is an unlikable man, yet you cannot help but emote with him. You cannot help but feel all of his pain and regret and loathing. 

Truly a haunting read, one that will stay with you long after you have finished it. My review cannot do it justice, I merely urge you to read it. 

Age Rating 16+. An insinuations of rape, murder, execution and prostitution but nothing overt. 

Candide - Voltaire

"Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous, the French philosopher's immortal narrative takes Candide around the world to discover that -- contrary to the teachings of his distinguished tutor Dr. Pangloss -- all is not always for the best."

I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into when I picked up this book, with little understanding of Voltaire's philosophy or the plot of Candide. So you can imagine my surprise at the contents of this wonderful and horrifying little satire which might shape up to be one of my favourite books. 

Voltaire's novel introduces the reader to Candide, a wide-eyed, calm and amusingly bland young gentleman who resides at Castle Westphalia and who believes in the philosophy that "everything in the world is for the best." One of the first scenes is filled with two emotional opposites for Candide who first gets to kiss his love, Cunegonde behind a screen, only to then be kicked out of the castle, literally, by the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh.

Here begins Candide's incredible, fantastical adventure which takes him all over the globe with his mind always believing in "the folly of optimism". Moving on from being a soldier in the Bulgarian army to being shipwrecked, being involved with the aftermath of an earthquake, discovering then leaving the mythical El Dorado, to being robbed and swindled more times than seems fair - our hero has a lot of bad luck. One of the overarching issues of this narrative is to present that it isn't just Candide that bad things happen to and that the world is just pretty damn horrible. Tragic things happen to all our main characters including philosopher Dr. Pangloss, Candide's love Cunegonde, and a nice old lady who saved Candide from certain death. The tale is humorously and satirically presented in short, sharp chapters by Voltaire. Most descriptions of doom and degradation are presented in a highly comic fashion which not only serves to allow the reader to continue reading with less emotional scarring but also highlights the stupidity/horror of optimism and a "positive outlook" in these kinds of situations. Though somehow there where scenes that where just so horrific yet comically absurd that I couldn't help but laugh. 

The heartlessness, negativity, and cold-heartedness of humans is a frequent aura and undertone throughout. The novel features all sorts of nastiness such as rape, murder, torture, prostitution, robbery, and slavery among other nastiness and nonsense. 

The whole cast is, strangely, relatable and likable with each being a symbolic caricature of some aspect of ourselves. Some of the times they meet up with friends spontaneously all over the world is amazingly far fetched and draw attention to the satirical character of the story, allowing the characters to compare experiences, hardships, and evolving outlooks. Two of the main characters are the optimistic philosopher Dr. Pangloss and ultimately pessimistic scholar and travel companion of Candide's, Martin. The juxtaposition here is very interesting, with a "black and white"  of these two view points.

I loved the way that the book ends. I wont spoil it too much, but it was just perfect. The group of lost souls finding a unity in tending and being surrounded by nature and enjoying their own creative hobbies. The difference of outlook being forgotten in the coming together to live as good a life as they are going to get. The ending was surprisingly hopeful, at least to me, for such a horrifying story. You will not be able to avoid suffering as it is a part of life and complete optimism is a stupid outlook with so much pain in the world, however you can still find a life where you can, if not overcome you trauma, at least live with it. 

The story reminded me somewhat of the Journey of Buddha before he becomes the Buddha where the naïve and sheltered Indian Prince first ventures out and encounters all of the suffering in the world. I don't know whether this was intentional on Voltaire's part but it was an interesting thing to note. 

Age Rating 18+. As stated above this book contains every level of awfulness possible and doesn't shy away from it. 

The Bridge of Clay - Markus Zusak

"Our mother was dead. Our father had fled.

Five Dunbar brothers are living – fighting, loving, grieving – in the perfect chaos of a house without grown-ups.

This is a family rocked by tragedy and long buried secrets. To understand his family’s story, Matthew Dunbar must travel to find three things. A lost typewriter -- A dead dog -- The bones of the snake that killed it.

He will learn of a mother who crosses continents for a new home; of a father searching for love in the keys of an old piano; and, finally, of a brother named Clay, who will make the most challenging journey of them all, and change their lives for ever."

A stunning book from a prose point of view, however disappointing when it came to plot. 

It contains poignant and brilliant writing, this story is messy and complicated and raw. I can feel every ounce of tears, hope, frustration, dedication, doubt, and love.

It tackles topics like how to make a home with those who surround you, what it truly takes to extend forgiveness, that family means those you love and who love you in return, the overwhelming grief of losing someone who is simply extraordinary, the shy but steady feelings that can only belong to a first love, and most importantly, the unwavering and unbreakable bond between brothers.

I'm still sitting with my thoughts trying to figure out how I feel. I liked how focused it was on the characters and there was a moment where I felt brought close to tears by something that occurred or a descriptive passage. Or found myself grinning at the joyful bond between brothers. Unfortunately though, I wanted more from the plot and I felt like things just kept getting unnecessarily dragged out. The plot is very sparse yet highly confusing. It felt like a story that kept getting tangled up in nonsense and wasn't ever untangled. Thematically it was confused and never really settled on what it wanted to say or committed to saying anything. While it was written unbelievably beautifully, it didn't say anything to me. I wanted to love it, but ended up feeling mixed about it as a whole. 

Age Rating 17+ Suicide, slow death from cancer, sex. 

Everything Under - Daisy Johnson

"The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer
by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries.

One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found community and shelter with them, and all three were haunted by their past and stalked by an ominous creature lurking in the canal: the bonak. Everything and nothing at once, the bonak was Gretel’s name for the thing she feared most. And now that she’s searching for her mother, she’ll have to face it."

A truly haunting book. Something that sits with you for weeks after you have read it. 

Johnson creates a unique tale, channelling an ancient Greek tragedy, in a voice that is almost unbearable raw at times. Full of a strong symbolism, it is a novel that defies genres and labels. At the heart of the story is the relationship between mothers and daughters. A very particular, very difficult relationship, a bond that is unbreakable, a bond that, more often than not, goes horribly wrong, especially with a mother like Sarah. It is an exploration of a highly problematic childhood, a time of threat, of the moments when the roles of the mother and the child are reversed. The lack of clarity is central to the development of the story. Johnson's prose weaves and loops, hauntingly vague and allusive at times, and painfully and bluntly raw at others. Truly a writer to be watched. 

Told in 1st person through Gretel and in 3rd person through Marcus, words become jumbled, conveying cryptic messages that takes on all of the aspects of a non-disneyfied Grimm fairy-tale. As Sarah is struggling with dementia, there is an extreme confusion of words and intentions and communication is lacking. It is not accidental that Gretel is a lexicographer working on a dictionary and that she and her mother had invented a language of their own. There is also a focus on riddles, often without any provided answers and each character while being fully realised also feels recognisable to traditional fairy-tale tropes. I really enjoyed the representation of trans people, it just felt natural and unforced.

As someone who lives around Oxford it was wonderful to see my city being displayed with such wonderful literary aplomb and the creepiness only fitting the abandoned water pathways in autumn. 

Johnson weaves a tale that is impeccably rich. Piece after piece of the puzzle is discovered under layers of unspoken words and untold stories until you are slapped in the face with a plot twist that you where desperately hoping wasn't the case. We often say that one has to read a book in order to understand it. This phrase finds its true meaning in Everything Under. No one can explain the feelings it causes, you have to experience it to realise its impact. A difficult yet startlingly beautiful novel, easily the best book I have read in a while. Something I can see being studied in years to come. 

Age Rating 16+. Dark, uncomfortable and touches on mental illness, suicide, abuse, abandonment, murder, aging and incest. 

Girl - Edna O'Brian

"I was a girl once, but not anymore. So begins Girl, Edna O'Brien's
harrowing portrayal of the young women abducted by Boko Haram. Set in the deep countryside of northeast Nigeria, this is a brutal story of incarceration, horror, and hunger; a hair-raising escape into the manifold terrors of the forest; and a descent into the labyrinthine bureaucracy and hostility awaiting a victim who returns home with a child blighted by enemy blood."

This was a disappointing book. One that I really wanted to learn from and was expecting to enjoy due to the large amount of critical attention that this book has garnered. I really need to stop trusting Literary awards. 

One struggle I was not expecting to have with this book was with O'Brien's prose, but that actually ended up being one of the main issues for me. Structurally it left a lot to be desired; every time a new character was introduced, Maryam's first-person narration would be interrupted, and we would switch to an italicized segment, also first-person, where the character would narrate their life story for several pages. It felt like the linguistic equivalent of flashbacks. 

This is a pretty petty way to say that I was baffled by how bad the prose was. While I do kind of see why she chose to switch between tenses (it does add to the feeling of a fractured state of mind her protagonist has), overall I found this choice clumsy and the writing lacking.

There's a lot more that didn't work for me: the pace of the first half of the novel hurtled by at breakneck speed as if it were running through a checklist of every horror imaginable, and the second half slowed to such a standstill that all potential momentum was lost. I felt absolutely emotionally numb and disconnected reading this, which is particularly noteworthy given how graphic it is (trigger warnings for everything imaginable apply). The exploration of trauma only ever felt surface-level; all I ever really learned about Maryam was about her identity as a mother.  The more I read the less I understood O'Brien's aims with this book. Thus I am left having reading about the worse of human experience, yet I didn't feel anything. I didn't learn anything new and I was never drawn into the story emotionally. Disappointing to say the least. 

Age Rating 18+. Rape, stoning, involuntary pregnancy, horrifying birthing scene, humiliation, exorcism and pretty much everything you can imagine.

My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russel

"Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a
precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood."

This book was difficult. Difficult to read, and even more difficult to determine how I felt at the end. 

How do you best write about a fictional love affair between a teacher and a 15-year-old student that is actually a predatory relationship? There are no easy answers to that question but that is what happens in My Dark Vanessa which alternates between 2000 and 2017 as we see how Vanessa Wye is groomed and then raped by her teacher Jacob Strane. We see the repercussions she must deal with as an adult who does not allow herself to realize that the relationship was, in fact abusive. We see how a child is forced to carry the responsibility the adults around her should have assumed themselves. The delicate and fraught nature of adolescence is captured well.

This book is definitely very, very well-written and the first half is well paced. There is a strong sense of place— the landscape, the sparseness. The prose is tight and careful, intimate and descriptive. The protagonist, Vanessa, is fully realized and the author does a good job of showing Vanessa’s struggle to face what she experienced. Her point of view and how it shifts over time is expertly managed and feels honest. You see how pernicious this kind of abuse is because it makes Vanessa doubt herself and lose herself and see herself, rather than the predator, as the problem. There is an interesting and relentlessly claustrophobic quality to the prose. You want to escape the quiet horror of Vanessa’s story while also wanting to see how it all ends, if she is going to be okay. You want there to be a freeing moment of clean air without knowing if you will get it.

There is some interesting cultural context developed through pop culture references, Lolita, and the #MeToo movement. I suspect we are going to see quite a few novels doing this over the next several years as writers try to distill into fiction what has been happening culturally with regard to sexual violence. There were ways the people in Vanessa’s life responded to her that were infuriating and inadequate and that is, all too often, how these things go.

The book does run too long. After about 250 pages, there is a thematic repetition that doesn’t serve the novel well. Vanessa bites her cheek constantly. It’s like, girl, is there anything left on the inside of your mouth??? Vanessa is fully realized but most of the other characters don’t get as much depth, though they really should. 

The real challenge I had with this book is that at times, the abuse felt romanticized, eroticized. It gave me pause. As a mature reader, the way the relationship is described is quietly horrifying. However I am unsure if a less mature reader would fully pick up on the horror. As the novel goes on there were so many rape scenes (and I will always call it rape because that’s what it was), that it just felt… somewhat gratuitous. And, I suspect, that’s kind of the point, that Vanessa, particularly at fifteen, was torn between love and repulsion, that she was shaped into someone who would see the situation as romantic while, with the distance as readers, we understand the situation as appalling. Strane is clearly a horrible piece of shit. Russell makes that crystal clear. But… I don’t know. Does she go far enough?

My Dark Vanessa is certainly not an easy book and I get why some readers have found it to be over the top regarding the descriptions of abuse that the main character faces. I don’t share that same opinion entirely, but there were moments when I questioned the sheer number of rape scenes that Kate Elizabeth Russell chose to include, and/or the gratuitous level of detail they held; because even without explicitly showing the brutal assaults on Vanessa’s autonomy, her “relationship” with Strane was awful and his paedophilia was always obvious to the reader, as was its effect on 15 y/o Vanessa.

Age Rating 18+. The highest rating I think I have ever given a book. This is certainly not appropriate for younger readers. 

The Cellist Of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway

"This brilliant novel with universal resonance, set during the 1990s Siege of Sarajevo, tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst.

One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope.

Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims.

In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress."

The futility and horror of war are felt most acutely and despairingly when the young, the helpless and the innocent, bear the ultimate price. At 4 pm on 26th May 1992, in a war-torn Sarajevo marketplace, a mortar bomb killed 22 people, mostly women, as they queued for bread. In homage to each of those lost souls and in protest against the violence and conflict, an unknown Cellist enters the square at 4 pm each day afterwards for 22 days, to play his cello. He is completely isolated, vulnerable and a high priced target for the attacking snipers.

The narration is told through the eyes of 3 characters as they each navigate the shelled-out city at risk of losing their lives. One is an elderly baker travelling across the city to work and make sure he has bread for his family. Another is a man making the daily routine of fetching fresh water from the brewery. The third character is a female sniper watching and protecting the Cellist from the surrounding buildings of rubble.

A quietly stunning and thoroughly haunting book. The prose is sparse and contains a quiet tension and dread. The character's humanity and quite horror but acceptance are all communicated artfully. Truly wonderful prose. 

The author shows the impact of war on ordinary citizens (as opposed to soldiers), and the role of art in maintaining a sense of hope. This novel is not about the war itself, how it started, or any of the ethnic groups involved. It is about how people struggle to retain their humanity in the midst of death, destruction, and chaos. The author paints a vivid picture of what it would be like to live in a war zone, the drastic changes in the way people interact with each other, and the emotional harm inflicted by living with the threat of imminent death. But the book never becomes preachy or overblown, slips into the bombastic or overtly sentimental. It keeps it's sparse prose and characterisation. 

I must quickly mention that I did find Arrows character a little unbelievable and whenever she appeared she pulled me out the the story a little. Why is she such a good sniper?Why was she learning to shot in the "normal world"? Why is she allowed so much freedom to pick and choose her missions in a time full of strict martial hierarchy? 

Overall a haunting book well worth a read. It certainly sparked an interest in me about the conflict, that I shamefully knew woefully little about. 

Age Rating 15 +. Some realistic description of violence, aftermath of shootings and mortar blasts. 

The Seed Collectors - Scarlett Thomas

"Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander’s role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can’t stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love.

A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire, and family trees."

A deeply unusual and unexpected book. This offbeat novel about obsession, sex and inheritance is set in Kent in 2011 and stars an extended family of botanists. The concept of a family tree has a more than usually literal meaning here given the shared surname is Gardener and most members are named after plants. We have Great-Aunt Oleander, recently deceased; cousin Bryony and her children Holly and Ash; siblings Charlie and Clem (short for Clematis); and half-sister Fleur, who has taken over Oleander’s yoga centre, Namaste House. The generation in between was virtually lost, perhaps to a plant-based drug overdose, on a seed collecting expedition to the South Pacific. Oleander has left each motherless child one of these possibly deadly seed pods.

First, did I mention the book is saturated with sex? Incest, adultery, illegitimate children, S&M, Internet porn, you name it. But beyond that, the metaphorical language is highly sexualized – bursting with seeds, fertility and genital-like plants. I can’t think when I’ve encountered such oversexed vocabulary. It was unexpected and raw and quite shocking. 

I found the plot very loose. I would say it is my main disappointment. Nothing was really achieved or resolved. There was no momentum or push.  Not all the story lines are truly essential, so the book seems aimless for its final third as it doesn't really know what to do with itself. It definitely could have been shorter and tied together better, perhaps with some flashbacks to the previous generation’s experiences on the island to make the past feel more alive. The spiritual element also remains incredibly vague and a tad shoehorned in, I am still unsure if they where high, crazy or experiencing reality. Although it was a pleasant touch of magic realism along the way in the midst of the raw and brutal character studies. 

Finally on to the characters. They really are the driving point of this book, it really does feel like a long character study. Unfortunately all of these characters are complete unlikable for a variety of different reasons. They are obsessive, cold, angry, stupid, apathetic but all the time so uncomfortably real. I have read some reviews of people commenting that the characters are unrealistic and unlike anybody they know, well then I really envy you. Sure the characters could be said to be boiled down to their key traits but as someone from a large and highly dysfunctional family, the characters and their mannerisms where all too recognisable. 

Despite these reservations, I truly enjoyed Thomas’s unusual writing. She moves freely between characters’ perspectives but also inserts odd second-person asides asking philosophical questions about wasted time and what is truly important in life. I like the range of questions you’re left with as a reader: Is nature malicious? Can we overcome our addictions? How much of who we are is down to our parentage? Does life really just come down to sex? 

Age Rating 15+. Large amounts of sex, drugs, mental illness, alcohol addiction, realistic family dysfunction, abuse and suicide. 

A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara

"When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity.

Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever."

It is not often I cannot finish a book. But this is one of them. I made it half- way and I just had to stop, put it down and accept I couldn't finish. I found it too painful, horrific and appalling. I am all for books that push our boundaries and make us feel something but I just couldn't...

At this point, I'm not certain whether this is a positive or negative review. There's no doubt that this book is beautifully-written and contains some of the most raw and honest prose I've ever had the pleasure or misfortune of reading, but it's a long very long character study - over 700 pages of misery, substance abuse, self-harm, sexual and psychological abuse (and its aftermath), with very little of that "light" promised in the blurb.

It starts with four young friends moving to New York - poor and uncertain of themselves - and trying to make their way. The characterization of JB, Malcolm, Willem and Jude is, to put it plainly, marvellous. They are such complex, well-crafted individuals with their own passions, hopes and fears. They where a painful delight. 

While the book details the lives of all four of them, Jude finds himself at the centre of this story, influencing the lives of his three friends. The more you read, the more you realize that it is really a novel about Jude, and the other three characters - though important - are secondary to the story of Jude's journey from a childhood full of sexual abuse to an unhappy adulthood.

It's brutally, painfully honest. It makes you feel like you're witnessing something you shouldn't be in the relationship between Willem and Jude. And, by the way, it is one of the most interesting, strange and truly depressing relationships I've ever encountered. The fear Jude feels that this relationship will be pulled apart by his own problems is palpable, and the lengths he goes to in order to conceal his issues made me so sorrowful for him.

This book is relentlessly sad and exquisitely written. Hanya Yanagihara spares us no mercy when revealing Jude's trauma. She details both his past abuse and his present self-harm with explicit specificity, her diction so precise and piercing it made me shake, and at times, sob. Yanagihara writes both Jude's suffering and his friendships with a keen eye. She captures the nuances of human emotion, physical space, and change over time with eloquence and heart. She writes about some of the most wretched, abominable acts of cruelty I have ever read without sentimentalizing any of the abuse or making any of the characters' feelings mawkish.

Age Rating 17+. Trust me. 

Madame Bovary of The Suburbs - Sophie Divery

"She has everything; doting parents; a loving husband; all the comforts that the middle class have grown accustomed to. But she's bored. She takes up all sorts of hobbies to try to make something happen in her life, but no matter what she does, nothing truly satisfies her, because deep down, she feels flat. Empty. Until she meets Phillippe...In Madame Bovary of the Suburbs, Sophie Divry dramatizes the philosophical conflict between freedom and comfort that marks women's lives in a materialistic world."

This book has really stuck with me and is not easy to forget. Everyone wants to believe that life will turn out well. We are something unique and beautiful and our life's path will reflect that. We will accomplish something amazing. People will remember us after we are gone. We will eventually find a moment of complete contentment and satisfaction. But what if, like all to often, we are nothing out of the ordinary, accomplish nothing and feel nothing.  

The book had an extremely unusual and unique narrative style which at first I wasn't sure I was going to get on with. It employs a second person narrative which I'm not entirely sure I've come across before but Divry uses it so effectively that it just fits the story beautifully. It almost seems to speak to the reader and I think this works well with the idea that the main character, M.A. shares a fate which could belong to any one of us. Her story is universal.

Never properly named, M.A. is seen growing from childhood into adulthood and traversing the various stages of life's well trodden path. She grows up longing to move away from her parents and her childhood home and embark upon a new adventure. She goes to university, she has her first boyfriend, she marries, has children and does everything that is expected of her, even while she wishes for something more. Something which she can't quite name and always seems to be just out of her reach. The circle of life is effectively portrayed as she grows older and morphs into the role that her parents once had.

Distinctly French in tone and conception, this is quirky and charming, bleak and deadly all at once.  The cool narrative voice skewers her subject, an unnamed woman called just M.A. (Emma), but equally addresses us as the reader, forcing an examination of our own lives. However much we might consider ourselves different from M.A., there are places where we, surely, recognise ourselves.

There are few passages where Divry explains mundane things such as driving or washing machines as if the reader was an alien from another planet. She also occasionally gives us an in-depth look at a minor and inconsequential character. It creates a feeling of awe and disassociation. That something or someone that means nothing to you is important in its own right and is the star in their own show. 

Like Flaubert's Emma Bovary, M.A. is on a search for fulfilment which is never quite reached - but whereas Flaubert's heroine in entrapped by bourgeois conceptions of gender and petty economics, M.A., in theory, has the social and cultural freedom to pursue her own goals... only to find herself following Emma's footsteps more closely than she expected. With personal happiness always dependent on something in the future or on someone else - leaving home, a good degree, falling in love, children, the perfect dinner party, a passionate love affair - M.A. moves through life always bored, always searching.

Deceptively easy to read, this is also both philosophical and deeply existentially depressing. Would definitely recommend. 

Age Rating 15+ Some quite graphic sex scenes and the content needs a more mature mind to fully appreciate the themes. 

Gone to the Forest - Katie Kitamura

"Set on a struggling farm in a fiercely beautiful colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, this second novel by one of literature’s rising young stars weaves a brilliant tale of family drama and political turmoil. Since his mother’s death ten years earlier, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained peace on their family farm. Everything is frozen under the old man’s vicious, relentless control—even, Tom soon discovers, his own future. When a young woman named Carine enters their lives, the complex triangle of intrigue and affections escalates the tension between the two men to the breaking point. After a catastrophic volcanic eruption ignites the nation’s smouldering discontent into open revolution, Tom, his father, and Carine find themselves questioning their loyalties to one another and their determination to salvage their way of life."


Kitamura's deceptively simple prose draws the reader into her tale of colossal colonial and personal collapse and keeps one spellbound to the end. The cast of characters runs from an infuriatingly cold and hostile land owner, to his ignorant and naïve son, to a victimized and victimizing young woman -- each of them unlikable, each at times sympathetic. Each unwitting participants in the undoing of the world as they know it. The land buckles, social order is breached, and the main characters march (or stumble)on at a time when just doing what one always did is no longer sufficient. Of course there is a price to be paid for such stubbornness, and Kitamura describes it with affecting, stark language that had me alternately holding my breath and rushing forward in the text unable to read quickly enough.

This is not a gentle book. There's no nostalgia here for the colonial era or its discontents. Interestingly, the story focuses not on the country's "natives" but on the colonizers who are in the process of being ousted. It's an uncomfortable focus--not a bad one, but a challenging one, since inevitably the readers' sympathies end up painfully divided.

I thought Kitamura's decision to use an anonymous, generic country was a good idea as it allows everyone with a country with a colonial past to draw from their own experiences. The only things we know about the country in question is that it has a mild, probably equatorial, climate; plenty of rich agricultural land; volcanoes; and that dorado (mahi-mahi) live in its rivers. The term "dorado" is Spanish, which suggests that there's some Spanish influence--but that leaves plenty of territory wide open.
I personally enjoyed the brutal and very open ended ending. It leaves Tom and a heavily pregnant Carine cowering behind a tree as a large group of rebels approach. It is implied that they will be killed within moments. While I understand that this type of ending will not appeal to everyone as it has no real resolution or character growth I thought it fit the tone of the story very well. In real life, the world doesn't swerve just because you are experiencing you own story and sometimes people don't change. 

Overall a really stellar book. Some of the most exquisitely haunting language I have read in a long time. Short read that really packs a punch. I would highly recommend it with the proviso that it is an acquired taste. 

Age Rating 16+. A brutal rape scene of Carine by a large group of land owners. The descriptions of the massacres committed by the rebels are also vividly depicted. 

The Silence of The Girls - Pat Barker

"The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, which continues to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman—Briseis—watches and waits for the war's outcome. She was queen of one of Troy's neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece's greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles's concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.

When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis's people but also of the ancient world at large."

This year has been a good year for Greek retellings and this has to be one of my favourites. The Silence of the Girls is a dark and weighty retelling of the Iliad. Told from the voice of one of the defeated, Briseis, the reader is offered a different perspective on the destruction of Troy.

Briseis, once a queen, is now a prized possession of Achilles--the same man who destroyed her city and butchered her family. Relegated to be Achilles’ “bed girl,” she is merely serving a purpose in the Greek camp.  Often referred to as “it,” she isn’t thought of as a human being. She struggles to maintain her place and function in a world run by her enemies.  

Briseis is a compelling narrator and I was often on edge waiting to see if she was going to survive the horrors of her new life. I felt the weight of her story and the empowerment of her words. However, I occasionally found the narrative to be bit temperamental and the sudden and unexpected shifts to Achille's POV felt clunky and confusing.

Pat Barker captured the grandiosity of these characters and events in a way that really struck a chord with me; I felt constantly on the verge of tears reading parts of this novel because Homer's musings on fate and free will and grief and glory - in short, what makes the Iliad so epic and timeless - are all echoed in Briseis' narrative. But Barker also manages it all from the sidelines, zeroing in on the experiences of a war slave who has no choice but to watch events unfold around her with no personal agency. Briseis is fully aware that she is not the hero of her own story, that she's narrating these events as a spectator to her own life. 

I also felt these were some of the best depictions I've ever read of these characters, notably Achilles and Patroclus. I find that certain writers have a difficult time reconciling Achilles' brutality with his heroism, and likewise Patroclus' ruthless streak with his kindness, but Barker captures the duality of nature well.  

Barker continues on the themes of war, providing a brutally visceral portrait in this telling of The Iliad, adding the voices of the women missing from the original. When her family is wiped out by the forces of Agamemnon, Briseis becomes the premier warrior, Achilles, trophy prize. Barker provides complex and nuanced characterisation, of the women as slaves, prostitutes, nurses, whilst giving us an Achilles that is less a hero, more a troubled man with his own demons. We get the clash of male egos when Agamemnon demands Briseis for himself after losing his woman. A bitter Achilles agrees but refuses point blank to fight for him any more. As we are immersed in the daily horrors of war, Achilles's pain and despair overflows after a personal tragedy but still has him able to feel compassion towards the grief of Priam. The Silence of the Girls is a stellar novel, beautifully written, where the stories of the women are told, made authentic with their opinions and views, amidst the never ending cost of war they are forced to endure. Would highly recommend. 

Age Rating 16+ Extremely brutal depictions of war, rape and strong language.