heddagobbler's reviews
24 reviews

The Merry-go-round in the Sea by Randolph Stow

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5.0

— "The boy thought of a windmill that had become a merry-go-round in a back yard, a merry go-round that had been one substitute for another, now ruined merry go-round, which had been itself a crude promise of another merry-go-round most perilously rooted in the sea."
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

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5.0

— "When I look on back it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman—just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life." 

— "To have loved you as much as anyone else does? Was that horrid?" / "No, but to go and tell me so."
A Woman's Battles and Transformations by Édouard Louis

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5.0

— "The story of my mother starts with a dream: she was going to be a cook."

— "She was desperate to deny reality, and yet I could see it—she regarded the destiny of her sons as a dreadful repetition of the mechanisms that had crushed her own life, as the unbreakable cycle of a curse."
The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order by Joan Wickersham

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5.0

— “There’s something that happens in the ocean, called a double high tide.” The winds and currents are so fierce that the tide comes in and never gets the chance to recede. It’s trapped near the shore for hours and then the next high tide comes in on top of it. That’s when catastrophes happen: boats, houses, and people swept out to sea.

“That’s what killed your father,” he says, “a double high tide.”