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A Carnivore’s Inquiry by Sabina Murray
“This is what exploration had opened up the door to. Not only widespread slaughter, but the necessary accompaniment of gorging.” Unapologetically solipsistic and deeply manipulative, Katherine, the central character of A Carnivore’s Inquiry, makes for an awful human being and a deeply entertaining narrator. A predecessor to Ottessa Moshfegh and Mona Awad’s protagonists, and many…
1st pov, 2000s, 4 STARS, A Carnivore's Inquiry, A Carnivore's Inquiry by Sabina Murray, Adult, affairs, age gap, ALIENATION, ambiguous protagonist, ambivalent mood, America, ART/CREATIVITY, books about writers, cannibalism, cheating, class, cold tone, colonialism, Contemporary, dark, dark humor, desire, ennui, female authors, feverish, filipino american author, GOTHIC, history, HORROR, introspective, Italy, LITERARY FICTION, literary references, madness, maine, Mexico, modern gothic, MURDER, MYSTERY, navel gazing, NEW YORK, no plot just vibes, otherness, PRIVILEGE, psychological, Psychological thriller, psychopaths, published in 2004, read in 2023, rich people, road trip, Sabina Murray, satire, self-destructive, serial killers, she is dangerous, she is not feeling good at all, SOCIAL COMMENTARY, SUSPENSE, terrific prose, the female malaise, travel, unreliable narrators, violence, womanhood/femininity -
Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri
“Writing in another language reactivates the grief of being between two worlds, of being on the outside. Of feeling alone and excluded.” While I can’t quite satisfyingly articulate or express why I find such comfort in Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing, I can certainly make a stab at it. In many ways, Translating Myself and Others reads…
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Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
Despite the many moments of poignancy that appear throughout the course of Searching for Sylvie Lee, the novel is ultimately diminished by unnecessary melodrama and convoluted (yet predictable) soap-opera-ish twists. At its heart Searching for Sylvie Lee is a family drama about long-held family secrets. The narrative switches between three points of view: a mother and her two…
1st pov, 3 STARS, Adult, America, BOOK REVIEWS, Booklr, chinese american author, Contemporary, DEATH, drama, family, female authors, gay side characters, grandmothers, incest, Italy, Jean Kwok, lgbtq+ side, MELODRAMA, migration/immigration, missing persons, missing women, musicians, My reviews, MYSTERY, Netherlands, NEW YORK, published in 2019, read in 2022, reading, Searching for Sylvie Lee, secretiveness, SISTERS, suicide -
Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
In many ways Sex and Vanity was exactly the pulpy light-hearted read I was in dire need of. Kevin Kwan’s engrossing and entertaining storytelling made me speed through his book and I ended up finishing it in less than a day. As retellings go, this manages to be both (fairly) faithful and rather refreshing. What…
1st pov, 2010s, 3.5 STARS, 3rd pov, Adult, America, American, asian american, BOOK REVIEW, BOOK REVIEWS, Booklr, cheating, class, Contemporary, dialogue heavy, drama, E.M. Forster, family, gossip & scandals, holidays, HUMOR, Italy, kevin kwan, LGBTQ+ Author, light reads, Long Island, male authors, MARRIAGE, My reviews, NEW YORK, new york state, PRIVILEGE, published in 2020, read in 2021, reading, RETELLINGS, rich people, ROMANCE, romcom, satire, Sex and Vanity, singaporean american author, SOCIAL COMMENTARY, summer reads, travel, wedding drama -
Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love by Huma Qureshi
With the exception of the first story, I just did not buy into the stories collected in Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love. These stories struck me as early exercises from a creative writing class. We have a few stories that try to have ‘ambiguous’ endings and a few attempts at using…
2 STARS, Adult, BOOK REVIEW, BOOK REVIEWS, Booklr, British author, collection of short stories, Contemporary, cultural dissonance, different styles (1st/2nd/3rd povs), england, female authors, FRANCE, huma qureshi, intergenerational, Italy, LITERARY FICTION, MAGICAL REALISM, motherhood, mothers & daughters, My reviews, pregnancy, published in 2021, read in 2021, short stories, spain, style over character, Things we do not tell the people we love, toxic relationships, travel -
Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy
Sweet Days of Discipline is a slim dagger of a novel. Written in a prose so sharp it will cut you, Sweet Days of Discipline is a work of startling and enigmatic beauty, a study in contradictions: order and chaos, sublimity and abjection, clarity and obfuscation, illusion and reality. Fleur Jaeggy is in absolute command…
1950s, 1st pov, 20th century, 5 STARS, ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE, academia, Adult, all girls school, ambiguous protagonist, atmospheric, beauty, bildungsroman, boarding/private school, BOOK REVIEW, BOOK REVIEWS, Booklr, CLASSICS, cold tone, dark academia, Dreams, existentialism, favourite authors, female authors, first love, Fleur Jaeggy, girlhood, HISTORICAL FICTION, Italian classics, Italy, lgbtq+, LITERARY FICTION, melancholy, modern classics, My reviews, nostalgic reads, NOVELLA/SHORT STORY, obsession, psychological, published in 1989, queer, re-reads, read in 2018, read in 2021, reading, sapphic, SEXUALITY, Sweet Days of Discipline, swiss italian author, Switzerland, terrific prose, unnamed narrator, unreliable narrators, unrequited love -
Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost by David Hoon Kim
While I can recognise that Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost is far from a terrible novel, I don’t have a lot of positive things to say about it. Personally, I don’t think the world needed yet another novel about a modern-day (wannabe) flâneur (who happens to be, you guessed it, an intellectual…
2.5 STARS, academia, Adult, ALIENATION, BOOK REVIEW, BOOK REVIEWS, Booklr, Contemporary, contemporary malaise, cultural dissonance, David Hoon Kim, DEATH, different styles (1st/2nd/3rd povs), ennui, existentialism, FRANCE, identity, introspective, Italy, korean american author, language, LITERARY FICTION, loneliness, male authors, metaphysical, My reviews, navel gazing, Paris Is a Party Paris is a Ghost, philosophical, published in 2021, read in 2021, reading, Rome, style over character, stylised prose, suicide -
Sunset by Jessie Cave
“When I next love someone, they will die suddenly, unfairly, quickly, oddly, suspiciously, horrifyingly, traumatically; they’ll die in the worst way that someone could, and I will have to stand by and watch, take a photo.” Funny, raw, heartbreaking, Sunset is an exceptional debut novel. Jessie Cave’s unsparing portrayal of grief in all of its…
1st pov, 4.5 STARS, Adult, ALIENATION, BOOK REVIEW, BOOK REVIEWS, Booklr, Contemporary, contemporary malaise, dark humor, DEATH, DEPRESSION, england, female authors, GRIEF, introspective, Italy, Jessie Cave, LITERARY FICTION, LONDON, loneliness, MEMORY, millennial, My reviews, netgalley, no quotations marks, published in 2021, read in 2021, SISTERS, Summer, summer reads, Sunset, trauma, travel, work culture -
The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
In this short and meditative piece, Jhumpa Lahiri examines the role that book jackets play in a person’s reading experience and the responsibility they have in not only conveying the book within but in catching someone’s attention. Lahiri looks back to her youth and recalls how the books she borrowed from at the library were…
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If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales & Cale Dietrich
“It’s been so hard for me to believe that being adored doesn’t mean I’m one mistake away from being despised.” If you are looking for an escapist read, look on further. If This Gets Out is a cute and ultimately uplifting YA romance. It does have the sort of tropes and scenarios that you would…
1st pov, 3.25 stars, America, American, AMERICAN AUTHOR, BISEXUAL/PANSEXUAL, boybands, Cale Dietrich, co-authored, Contemporary, Czech Republic, Denmark, drama, england, female authors, FRANCE, gay, Germany, hungary, influencers, Italy, lgbtq+, LGBTQ+ Author, light reads, LONDON, m/m, male authors, music, musicians, netgalley, Netherlands, published in 2021, read in 2021, road trip, ROMANCE, Sophie Gonzales, spain, summer reads, uplifting reads, YOUNG ADULT