suicide
Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto
There is something idiosyncratic about Yoshimoto’s novels. Every time I read something of hers I feel almost comforted by how familiar it all is. Her narrators sound very much like the same person: they are young women prone to navel-gazing yet attuned to their environment (especially nature or their hometown). Moshi Moshi follows Yoshie after […]
MorePretend I’m Dead by Jen Beagin
Pretend I’m Dead was 50 shades of fucked up but boy was it funny. “When he went to order their drinks, he asked, “What’s your poison?”“Oven cleaner,” she’d said with a straight face.Her sense of humor sometimes made people—herself, included—uncomfortable.” This novel is divided in four chapters, each one focusing on a particular relationship of […]
MoreMadame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Emma Bovary has become the epitome of desperate housewife, the archetypal unfaithful wife, the ultimate daydreamer whose fantasies lead to a premature self-destruction. “She wished she could stop living, or sleep all the time.” Madame Bovary follows the ‘provincial ways’ of the petite bourgeoisie. Charles Bovary is a so-so doctor, married to an older woman, […]
MoreThe Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson
“Loving a country besides the one you lived in was a recipe for disaster.” The Star Side of Bird Hill is an enjoyable coming-of-age novel about two sisters, Dionne and Phaedra, who are sent off by their mother to spend their summer with their grandmother, Hyacinth, in a small town in Barbados. The girls’ aren’t […]
MoreThe Bridge by Bill Konigsberg
The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg took me by surprise. While I did enjoy reading two of Konigsberg’s previous novels, Openly Straight and The Music of What Happens, they certainly didn’t affect me as The Bridge. This is the kind of novel I wish had been around when I was sixteen and contemplating suicide.While there are […]
MoreThe Midnight Library by Matt Haig
“You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life.” […]
MoreThe Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai
In The Setting Sun Osamu Dazai captures a nation in transition. Set during the early postwar years Japan this novella is centred on an aristocratic family fallen on hard times. Kazuko, our narrator, and her fragile mother who are forced to move to the countryside and give up their family home. Gentile Kazuko has no […]
MoreThe Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan — book review
“When I closed my eyes, I could still hear her sharp, stubborn voice and surprisingly unbridled laugh.” With grace and clarity Clarissa Goenawan’s The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida tells a tragic yet tender tale, one that begins with an ending: Miwako Sumida, a university student, has committed suicide. “I hadn’t thought I would use […]
MoreGhosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella — book review
“It’s supposed to be a time when you’re about to embark on your adult life, but for many young people, that springboard looks more like a precipice.” Ghosts of Harvard is a patchwork of a novel. While the summary seems to promise more of thriller/academia type of book (I personally would not recommend this to […]
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