Two divergent storylines that eventually come together: a) conjoined twins (now separated) experiencing freedom from institutions for the first time and b) a Russian peasant girl at sea in a world of poverty and war.
Slapstick and comedic. I continue to be impressed by Pierre’s ability to write for ANY voice: this is a complete departure from his previous (Booker-prize winning), and very dialectic, Vernon God Little. Not a departure, however, in its brusque, harsh humor. I enjoyed it.
Very intense! A stream-of-consciousness letter to Osama (yes the Bin-Laden one) from a (lower?) middle class wife who lost her son & police officer (bomb defuser) husband to a terrorist bomb blowing up an Arsenal/Chelsea match…which she feels even the worse about as she was having sex on their couch with someone she met in a bar (on a “my husband is off defusing a bomb and I am insanely nervous and when I am insanely nervous I go have sex with strangers” evening) when the bomb went off. She winds up going a little crazy and getting involved in some messed up situations, some beyond her control, and throughout it she continues her commentary, directed to Osama.
She starts the novel thinking if she tells him about her sweet, sweet boy that he killed, maybe he’ll just stop bombing things…and ends it in a very different place.
The sentences are long and breathless and meandering (they felt like something Elizabeth Crane or Megan Stielstra would write), the emotions are hot and present and flustered, and it all feels very, very real.
Blew me away, in more ways than one. Wow.
I think some of the social class commentary was perhaps lost on a non-Brit reader; there are a few places where I thought “and I bet THAT adjective is explaining to someone EXACTLY what position she’s found herself in but it’s not something we say here so it’s not really doing that for me.” But that did not denigrate my enjoyment or the content at all.
I already told you last week about its exuberant use of adjectives and other writerly choices that lend to its fairy-tale adventure-story feel.
Very entertaining. Somewhat silly but a lot of fun.
“War creates opportunities too.”
“In the short term,” Joseph said, and spat again. “Good in the short term is always bad in the long term.”
As I mentioned when I read another collection of Lanagan’s in March, her stories are really unusual. They take you to other worlds and other times; to unexpected voices and unusual resolutions. They’re violent and sudden; sometimes a nightmare, sometimes a dream. I particluarly loved “Winkie”, “A Feather in the Breast of God” and “Hero Vale” but really there wasn’t a single story I felt I could have done without.
The Queen (of England) comes upon a lending library…and starts reading..and it changes her entire life.
This book was an absolute delight. Clever, funny and thoughtful. An excellent treatise on the many things reading brings one.
Slim book, huge margins, huge print. It’s a quickie. Really enjoyable.
She’d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. (emphasis = mine)
An somewhat philosophical memoir of hunger, being hungry, (at some points, actually anorexic), but also of being sated, in all of their various meanings: not just physically, but also emotionally, intellectually, etc. Also a book about “home”, going there, leaving, about living places that aren’t that. A book about feeling lost and alone even within the midst of your own family, let alone a strange city, school, country etc.
Very good. A very slim, quick read. But weighty in thought.
I thought I knew the meaning of the word ‘big’. You have to have driven across the United States before you can have any idea of what that means: whole days of straight road without seeing a single human being.
My parents were forty, the age at which you pull up your sleeves and put your responsibility to the test of work. [Really? Uh oh! Danger ahead!]
Is it not enough to have some very good chocolate in your mouth, not only to believe in God, but also to feel that one is in his presence? God isn’t chocolate, he’s the encounter between chocolate and a palate capable of appreciating it.
You know when something in a book can just creep you out so much because you don’t know whether it’s something the author just dreamed up out of nowhere or if he’s read about it and the ability to do that horrible thing is actually out there right now in the real world and could be happening to people? And I’m not talking “horrible thing” like something in a crazy horror/ slasher/ murder flick. I’m talking subtly yicky yicky mentally-disturbing “what if people are really doing that?” horrible. And it’s not the part about hiring someone to kill off your spouse instead of you going through a divorce. I’ve still kinda got the skeeves. But that’s really why you read a book like this one: to get your scary kicks.
Not your typical genre piece in that the main character is a sports agent rather than a PI, or retired cop, or former FBI agent or whathaveyou. Yet your typical genre piece with the “tougher than the main dude” sidekick (think Joe Pike in the Elvis Cole books). Some really yicky aspects to the mystery. Still: very enjoyable, lots of sarcastic witty humor. Already bought the second one.
Very intense set of stories; it took me a while to realize they were all taking place in the same town, with some recurring characters in the background (references to the same basketball coach, for example).
Subtle and quiet feeling, but the quiet before the storm. Emotionally brutal, sometimes breathtakingly so. Really, really good.
Loosely a follow-up to The Long Firm, although the connection is more tenuous than in your average “series”.
Again follows a variety of characters with many different narrators, different motivations. All warped or twisted, all involved in something unsavory despite their best intentions. There’s a little trick at the end I really liked.
The scenes with Billy in the forest, digging out a bunker, meeting up with the gypsy-types, really really reminded me of another book I dug — I know it’s one of the John Madden mysteries by Rennie Airth although I’m not sure which one.
The previous book was a lot more “social commentary” and “criminal biography” in feel. This one’s focus is slightly different, feels more like a combination of “police procedural” and “investigative reporting”.
One more to go (in this trilogy)! Glad I decided to rescue these off the TBR shelf. Enjoying them.