style over character
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
“My mother had not believed in friendships among women. She said women weren’t to be trusted. Keep your arm out, she said. And keep women a whole other hand away from the farthest tips of your fingernails. She told me to keep my nails long.” Another Brooklyn is short yet vibrant novella. August, a Black […]
MoreOpen Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
“Your eyes meet in the silence. The gaze requires no words at all. It is an honest meeting.” Open Water is an exceedingly lyrical debut. The story, narrated through a second-person perspective (ie ‘you’) is centred on the relationship between two Black British artists (he is a photographer, she is a dancer). Although their relationship […]
MoreMy Education by Susan Choi
“Love bestows such a dangerous sense of entitlement.” Sometimes books really deserve their average rating…and this is one of those cases. As I am writing this the majority of readers have given My Education three stars, and more reviewers have given it 2 stars than 5. I know that at the end of the day […]
MoreThe Lover by Marguerite Duras — book review
The Lover strikes me as little more than an exercise in literary masturbation. This novella is overwrought, self-indulgent, and ultimately insubstantial. Fooled by the promise of its first pages, I soon found myself irked by the narrator’s linguistic burps. With the exception of two or three characters, everyone else is nameless. Alienation is de rigueur. […]
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