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Assembly by Natasha Brown
“I feel. Of course I do.I have emotions.But I try to consider events as if they’re happening to someone else. Some other entity. There’s the thinking, rationalizing I (me). And the doing, the experiencing, her. I look at her kindly. From a distance. To protect myself, I detach.” So blinded I was by the ‘for…
ALIENATION, Assembly, Black & Black heritage authors, BOOK REVIEW, BOOK REVIEWS, Booklr, Brexit, British author, class, Contemporary, different styles (1st/2nd/3rd povs), england, female authors, illness, language, LONDON, My reviews, Natasha Brown, netgalley, no quotations marks, politics, published in 2021, RACE, read in 2021, SOCIAL COMMENTARY, style over character, stylised prose, unnamed narrator, work culture -
Three Rooms by Jo Hamya
“I was no longer sure what I was allowed to want. Everything I had been raised to desire, had, at some point, become passé, but no one had told me. There was a chasm between my expectations and the reality I had to exist in which no one else seemed to grasp.” In theory, Three…
1st pov, 3 STARS, academia, Adult, Black & Black heritage authors, Brexit, British author, Contemporary, contemporary malaise, england, existentialism, female authors, introspective, Jo Hamya, LITERARY FICTION, LONDON, millennial, navel gazing, netgalley, no quotations marks, oxford, philosophical, politics, published in 2021, read in 2021, social media, style over character, stylised prose, Three Rooms, UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE, unnamed narrator, work culture -
A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo
On paper A Lover’s Discourse is the type of book that I generally like: we have an unmanned who recounts her relationship to her unmanned ‘lover’—a man she addresses as ‘you’. Our narrator met ‘you’ after moving from China to Britain in 2016. Recently orphaned and feeling somewhat alienated by her new environment the protagonist…
1st pov, 2 STARS, A Lover's Discourse, Adult, ALIENATION, AUSTRALIA, Brexit, China, chinese author, Contemporary, cultural dissonance, dialogue heavy, england, existentialism, female authors, Germany, LITERARY FICTION, LONDON, migration/immigration, navel gazing, published in 2020, read in 2020, ROMANCE, unnamed narrator, Xiaolu Guo -
Just Like You by Nick Hornby — book review
Set against the backdrop of the 2016 referendum (Brexit) Just Like You follows two very different individuals who happen to fall in love. Recently divorced Lucy, a forty-one year old white schoolteacher, is looking to date again so she hires a babysitter for her two sons. The babysitter, Joseph, happens to be a twenty-one year…
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Grand Union: Stories by Zadie Smith — book review
Grand Union: Stories was one of the most insufferable collections of short stories I’ve ever read. While I do think that Zadie Smith is a good writer I wonder whether she is one in actual practice…sadly I’m starting to think that she will never write something that I will be able to actually appreciate. Her…
2 STARS, Adult, Black & Black heritage authors, Booklr, books i hate, Brexit, British author, collection of short stories, different styles (1st/2nd/3rd povs), england, female authors, Grand Union: Stories, HUMOR, hyped authors, netgalley, politics, published in 2019, READ IN 2019, satire, SEXUALITY, short stories, social issues, ZADIE SMITH
luce [is reading] 