“The person who had given birth to me said I was a dead loss, so I decided it really must be true.” A few days before reading Earthlings I read Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman and I really loved its humour and eccentric narrator. So, perhaps I approached Earthlings with the wrong expectations. Or maybe […]
More“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.” Convenience Store Woman delights in its own absurdity. In spite of its slender size and its deceptively deadpan style, Sayaka Murata’s novel is surprisingly subversive. Keiko Furukura’s clipped yet enthusiastic narration manages to both […]
MoreWays to Disappear tries hard to evoke the absurd and surreal atmosphere that is often associated with Latin American magical realism, the end result makes for a rather dismal homage. The lack of quotations marks and the inclusion of word definitions hardly make Ways to Disappear innovative. A nondescript American translator flies to Brazil after […]
MoreHaving read two novels by Yōko Ogawa, I was curious to read Revenge, a collection of interconnected short stories. Ogawa’s magnifies the sense unease that usually permeates her narratives (even The Housekeeper and the Professor has its unsettling moments), as these stories seem intent on unnerving their readers. The characters within these pages are morbid, […]
More“I mean, why should I figure I’m so special, the world is going to end while I’m around?” In The Sundial, perhaps Shirley Jackson’s most comical novel, twelve rather disagreeable individuals are cooped together in a mansion waiting for the end of the world. “The house would be guarded during the night of destruction and […]
More“The gods created the First Temporary so they could take a break.” Temporary is a wonderfully bizarre novel. Readers who prefer to read stories that are grounded in reality or that are ruled by logic and reason may be better off steering clear from the sheer absurdity that is Temporary. “She noted the fallacy of […]
MoreLike many collections of short stories Naomi Ishiguro’s Escape Routes is a bit of a mixed bag. The stories collected in Escape Routes are centred around individuals who feel ‘trapped’. Throughout the course of these narratives Ishiguro’s characters seem to undergo some sort of existentialist crisis. Most are mystified by their present and deeply uncertain […]
More“I understand that art is a necessary component of a civilized society, but you cannot just go around shooting people. That’s going to be a problem.” Having recently read and loved Nothing to See Here I wanted to check out Kevin Wilson’s earlier work. While The Family Fang has the same whimsical tone as his […]
MoreMy rating: ★★★★✰ 4.5 stars “I had the children. They caught on fire. I had to keep them from catching on fire.” As soon as I read Kevin Wilson’s dedication (“for Ann Patchett”) I had a feeling that I was in for a treat (and I was right). There was something about Wilson’s surrealism that […]
More“Bow all your heads to our adored Mary Katherine.” In recent years Shirley Jackson has experienced a kind of renascence. Perhaps because of Netflix’s adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House or possibly thanks to contemporary authors (such as Donna Tartt, Neil Gaiman, and Stephen King) who have credited Jackson as their inspiration, enhancing her […]
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