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illustrated_librarian's reviews
448 reviews
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Seperated in age by three decades, they're nonetheless kindred spirits - torn between their Baptist community and a desire for the wider world. The arrival of love in both their lives will send them spinning apart, but the mystery of a vanished 19th century astronomer, coincidences, and design, will bring them back into eachother's orbits.
This novel captures such quiet wonder: wonder at the things that shape our lives in all their unlikeliness and inevitability, wonder at being here at all, on this big rock spinning through the vast and ineffable cosmos.
It's a story of science, faith, friendship, love, ghosts, time, and the stars, wrapped up in Victorian black silk and embroidered with seed pearls. It's the story of lives that proceed moment by moment and all at once - time alternatively collapsing into a singularity and stretching away to infinity; it dwells on choices that can't be taken back, on their huge impact but also their vanishing smallness. Perry asks us to marvel at the wonders of the cosmos and the depths of the human heart, and evokes the sublime in both.
The narrative proceeds as an elliptical orbit: faster at either end, the middle section slower but no less necessary. The writing is delightfully Victorian, both warm and melancholy, with each character or setting or moment positively glowing under Perry's attentive gaze. There's a timeless quality to it all that feels so wise, like a forgotten classic.
I just love these beautiful, thoughtful novels Sarah Perry writes in her stylish prose questioning science and faith and kinds of love and mercy. Here is a story gentle in its telling but ambitions in its themes, presented with a clarity of insight that nonetheless doesn't presume to answer to the huge questions poses - I fear it's cleverer than I may ever understand though that doesn't diminish my delight. It won't be for everyone, but it certainly was for me.
This novel captures such quiet wonder: wonder at the things that shape our lives in all their unlikeliness and inevitability, wonder at being here at all, on this big rock spinning through the vast and ineffable cosmos.
It's a story of science, faith, friendship, love, ghosts, time, and the stars, wrapped up in Victorian black silk and embroidered with seed pearls. It's the story of lives that proceed moment by moment and all at once - time alternatively collapsing into a singularity and stretching away to infinity; it dwells on choices that can't be taken back, on their huge impact but also their vanishing smallness. Perry asks us to marvel at the wonders of the cosmos and the depths of the human heart, and evokes the sublime in both.
The narrative proceeds as an elliptical orbit: faster at either end, the middle section slower but no less necessary. The writing is delightfully Victorian, both warm and melancholy, with each character or setting or moment positively glowing under Perry's attentive gaze. There's a timeless quality to it all that feels so wise, like a forgotten classic.
I just love these beautiful, thoughtful novels Sarah Perry writes in her stylish prose questioning science and faith and kinds of love and mercy. Here is a story gentle in its telling but ambitions in its themes, presented with a clarity of insight that nonetheless doesn't presume to answer to the huge questions poses - I fear it's cleverer than I may ever understand though that doesn't diminish my delight. It won't be for everyone, but it certainly was for me.
Body Kintsugi by Senka Marić
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
Two months after her husband abandons her, an unnamed narrator finds a lump in her armpit. Facing down the news she's dreaded ever since her mother's breast cancer diagnosis years earlier, she begins down a road that changes the landscape of her body forever. But even a harrowing illness won't crush her drive for life.
This was an intimate, often uncomfortable, yet hopeful account of illness drawn from the author's own experience. The narration is in quick bursts of second-person sentences, making every crushing bit of news or small moment of joy feel visceral and immediate, a testament to the skilfull translation by Celia Hawkesworth. It's tightly focussed on the physical experience of illness; you're thrown right into the centre of a body breaking apart and being put back together.
Throughout her journey the narrator reflects on instances from her childhood where she learned to be ashamed of her sexuality and estranged from her body as a thing completely her own. Again the second person narration makes these moments so impactful: though the experiences themselves may differ, I think many will relate to those small moments that gradually teach shame, teach caution and unpleasant lessons in how women's bodies are perceived and controlled.
For such a slim book it manages to contain nuanced ideas about self-perception, gender, navigating ill health and the passage of time. I found the commentary around the physical body and gender especially well-expressed, yet authentic. The narrator is understandably attached to the parts of herself she's always been told make her a woman, even as she loses them to a series of life-saving operations, but also grows to understand her illness can't steal who she is away. This doesn't require impenetrable academic language to express - she knows herself to be a woman, whole and beautiful, and so she is.
A deeply personal book that manages to resist both sentimentalism and cold hopelessness with its unfussy prose, this is a powerful read I'd definitely recommend.
This was an intimate, often uncomfortable, yet hopeful account of illness drawn from the author's own experience. The narration is in quick bursts of second-person sentences, making every crushing bit of news or small moment of joy feel visceral and immediate, a testament to the skilfull translation by Celia Hawkesworth. It's tightly focussed on the physical experience of illness; you're thrown right into the centre of a body breaking apart and being put back together.
Throughout her journey the narrator reflects on instances from her childhood where she learned to be ashamed of her sexuality and estranged from her body as a thing completely her own. Again the second person narration makes these moments so impactful: though the experiences themselves may differ, I think many will relate to those small moments that gradually teach shame, teach caution and unpleasant lessons in how women's bodies are perceived and controlled.
For such a slim book it manages to contain nuanced ideas about self-perception, gender, navigating ill health and the passage of time. I found the commentary around the physical body and gender especially well-expressed, yet authentic. The narrator is understandably attached to the parts of herself she's always been told make her a woman, even as she loses them to a series of life-saving operations, but also grows to understand her illness can't steal who she is away. This doesn't require impenetrable academic language to express - she knows herself to be a woman, whole and beautiful, and so she is.
A deeply personal book that manages to resist both sentimentalism and cold hopelessness with its unfussy prose, this is a powerful read I'd definitely recommend.
Off-White by Astrid H. Roemer
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
'At least once a year, they would map the territory of their past and dig up the roots of the family tree for a brief inspection. And the adults would conclude once again that, regardless, they were all off-white.'
Suriname, 1966, and the long shadow of colonialism still hangs over the country. Grandma Bee, the proud cigar-smoking matriarch of the Vanta family, is dying. Her family is complex, reflecting the many different groups calling Suriname home, and they're scattered over the country and beyond. Once she is gone what ties, if any, will bind them together? What makes a family, a legacy?
Off-White is a vivid family saga told in prose remeniscent of Toni Morrison or Montserrat Roig, deftly translated from the original Dutch. Sweeping back and forth through time, through memories, and across continents, it maps how generations themselves are created, how they disperse into the world but remain shaped by their family history, the links that can push or pull.
Characters emerge slowly and deliberately from the kaleidoscopic mix of thought, memory, and narration, but occasionally I had the feeling the camera had panned away too quickly at a crucial moment shaping who they are. Perhaps something more was at play there, though?
We don't always get the clearest picture of an event, but we see insidious colonialism in Bee's offhand comments, the shadow of male violence in Louise's protectiveness over her daughters, and the consequences of white-centric power structures in Heli's exile to the Netherlands. Some revelations needed a longer treatment, but I understand the continual return of focus to the family as a whole and the ripple effect of each event, even when subtle.
Though there's so much pain, Roemer is possibly most concerned with the possibilities of breaking cycles of trauma, reconciliation, and healing. The Vanta grandchildren emerge as bright points of hope from their complex, diverse family tree; they embody the future of Suriname, and Roemer throws her faith behind them.
A layered and often tricky read (check content warnings!) but one that I'm sure will only grow richer every revisit.
Suriname, 1966, and the long shadow of colonialism still hangs over the country. Grandma Bee, the proud cigar-smoking matriarch of the Vanta family, is dying. Her family is complex, reflecting the many different groups calling Suriname home, and they're scattered over the country and beyond. Once she is gone what ties, if any, will bind them together? What makes a family, a legacy?
Off-White is a vivid family saga told in prose remeniscent of Toni Morrison or Montserrat Roig, deftly translated from the original Dutch. Sweeping back and forth through time, through memories, and across continents, it maps how generations themselves are created, how they disperse into the world but remain shaped by their family history, the links that can push or pull.
Characters emerge slowly and deliberately from the kaleidoscopic mix of thought, memory, and narration, but occasionally I had the feeling the camera had panned away too quickly at a crucial moment shaping who they are. Perhaps something more was at play there, though?
We don't always get the clearest picture of an event, but we see insidious colonialism in Bee's offhand comments, the shadow of male violence in Louise's protectiveness over her daughters, and the consequences of white-centric power structures in Heli's exile to the Netherlands. Some revelations needed a longer treatment, but I understand the continual return of focus to the family as a whole and the ripple effect of each event, even when subtle.
Though there's so much pain, Roemer is possibly most concerned with the possibilities of breaking cycles of trauma, reconciliation, and healing. The Vanta grandchildren emerge as bright points of hope from their complex, diverse family tree; they embody the future of Suriname, and Roemer throws her faith behind them.
A layered and often tricky read (check content warnings!) but one that I'm sure will only grow richer every revisit.