Poverty
A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion
“That summer when I so desperately tried to reel us all in, I didn’t understand the forces spinning us apart.” The opening of A Crooked Tree is certainly chilling. Libby, our fifteen-year old narrator, is in the car with her siblings. When their squabbling gets too much their mother dumps twelve-year old Ellen on the […]
MoreCrime And Punishment: A Novel in Six Parts with Epilogue by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot is a favourite of mine so I was expecting Crime And Punishment be right up my street…aaaaand I hated it. Many consider Crime And Punishment to be one of the most influential books of all time…and I have to wonder…how? The Idiot, although certainly flawed, tells a far more cohesive and compelling […]
MoreThe Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye is an unflinching and deeply harrowing examination of race, colorism, gender, and trauma. Throughout the course of her narrative Toni Morrison captures with painful lucidity the damage inflicted on a black child by a society that equates whiteness with beauty and goodness, and blackness with ugliness and evil.In her introduction to her […]
MoreWinter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
“Winter counts. This was the winter of my sorrow, one I had tried to elude but which had come for me with a terrible cruelty.” Winter Counts is a compelling debut novel. Although this book uses elements and tropes of the thriller genre, the narrative isn’t solely focused on its ‘loner vigilante vs. bad guys’ […]
MoreTravellers by Helon Habila
“Are you traveling in Europe?” he asked. I caught the odd phrasing. Of course I was traveling in Europe, but I understood he meant something else; he wanted to know the nature of my relationship to Europe, if I was passing through or if I had a more permanent and legal claim to Europe. A […]
MoreRagged Company by Richard Wagamese
“We become eternal by being held in memory’s loving arms.” After I read Richard Wagamese’s Medicine Walk, I was looking forward to reading more of his work. And Ragged Company did not disappoint. Similarly to Medicine Walk, which felt like a long conversation between a dying man and his son, Ragged Company presents its readers […]
MoreThe Street by Ann Petry
“A woman living alone didn’t stand much chance.” Ann Petry is a terrific writer. The precise way in which she articulates the thoughts and various state of minds of her characters brought to my mind the writing of Nella Larsen and Edith Wharton. But whereas I could stand the cynicism and tragic finales of Wharton’s […]
MoreThe Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
“We all lived in an unwalled city, that was it. I saw lines scored across the map of Ireland; carved all over the globe. Train tracks, roads, shipping channels, a web of human traffic that connected all all nations into one great suffer body.” This is the third novel I’ve read by Emma Donoghue and […]
MoreThe Less Dead by Denise Mina — book review
The Less Dead is a gripping, if bleak, piece of tartan noir. When sex workers, drug addicts, migrant workers, and otherwise marginalised groups are victims of murder, they are called the ‘less dead’. Their deaths are less important, not as ‘impactful’. Denise Mina’s novel, in a similar vein to recent releases such as Long Bright […]
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