Thursday, October 3, 2019

A WOMAN IS NO MAN by Etaf Rum

























🌟🌟🌟🌟 1/2




Personal copy

DescriptionIn Brooklyn, eighteen-year-old Deya is starting to meet with suitors. Though she doesn’t want to get married, her grandparents give her no choice. History is repeating itself: Deya’s mother, Isra, also had no choice when she left Palestine as a teenager to marry Adam. Though Deya was raised to believe her parents died in a car accident, a secret note from a mysterious, yet familiar-looking woman makes Deya question everything she was told about her past. As the narrative alternates between the lives of Deya and Isra, she begins to understand the dark, complex secrets behind her community.

Saturday, September 28, 2019

INDELICACY by Amina Cain

























🌟🌟🌟 1/2

Farrar Strauss and Giroux
Publishing date February 11, 2020


Description


In "a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch" (Blake Butler), a cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society, and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labor—social and erotic—but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary?
Reminiscent of a lost Victorian classic in miniature, yet taking equal inspiration from such modern authors as Jean Rhys, Octavia Butler, Clarice Lispector, and Jean Genet, Amina Cain's Indelicacy is at once a ghost story without a ghost, a fable without a moral, and a down-to-earth investigation of the barriers faced by women in both life and literature. It is a novel about seeing, class, desire, anxiety, pleasure, friendship, and the battle to find one’s true calling.

My thoughts coming soon

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

MAN BOOKER PRIZE SHORT LIST 2019







Margaret Atwood, The Testaments (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)

Lucy EllmannDucks, Newburyport (Galley Beggar Press)

Bernardine EvaristoGirl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton)

Chigozie ObiomaAn Orchestra of Minorities (Little Brown)

Salman Rushdie, Quichotte (Jonathan Cape)

Elif Shafak10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Viking)


 Winner anounced October 14, 2019

NÉ D'AUCUNE FEMME by Franck Bouysse

























❤❤❤❤❤
Available now
French edition only

Description

"Mon père, on va bientôt vous demander de bénir le corps d'une femme à l'asile. — Et alors, qu'y a-t-il d'extraordinaire à cela ? demandai-je.— Sous sa robe, c'est là que je les ai cachés.— De quoi parlez-vous ? — Les cahiers... Ceux de Rose." Ainsi sortent de l'ombre les cahiers de Rose, ceux dans lesquels elle a raconté son histoire, cherchant à briser le secret dont on voulait couvrir son destin. Franck Bouysse, lauréat de plus de dix prix littéraires, nous offre avec Né d'aucune femme la plus vibrante de ses oeuvres. Ce roman sensible et poignant confirme son immense talent à conter les failles et les grandeurs de l'âme humaine.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

THE MOUNTAIN IN MY SHOE by Louise Beech



















❤❤❤❤❤

Available now

Description

On the night Bernadette finally has the courage to tell her domineering husband that she’s leaving, he doesn’t come home. Neither does Conor, the little boy she’s befriended for the past five years. Also missing is his lifebook, the only thing that holds the answers. With the help of Conor’s foster mother, Bernadette must face her own past, her husband’s secrets and a future she never dared imagine in order to find them all.

My view
Louise is a gifted story teller, she shines in The Mountain In My Shoe.
Her novels were brought to my attention by a dear friend at WORD AFTER WORD 
Claire wrote a beautiful review

A must read