In which there is talk of novels which were read too quickly to allow for extensive note-taking and snapshots: good reading. Yewande Omotoso's The Woman Next Door (2017) Longlisted for the Women's Fiction Prize this year, this story about two women in their eighties, neighbours in South Africa, is quietly
Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (2014) Reading. Then Not. Simon & Schuster, 2014 Sharp sentences. Jabbing thoughts. Unkindnesses bearing down. Book, set aside. Pause. And here is where the experience of reading A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing may end for many readers. Some, however,
Knopf, 2013 Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland (2013) “Naxalbari is an inspiration. It’s an impetus for change.” One brother in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel is a member of the Naxalbari movement, Udayan. His involvement with the far-left radical Communist group in Calcutta vitally impacts the entire family, even Subhash, who
It seems perfect. Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be? is not really a novel. And this is not really a review. It's a collection of my collisions with understanding. Opening sentence: "How should a person be?" Subtitle: A Novel from Life Off the page, there is an interview with Shelagh
Each of these novels considers a shattered state of being, whether the devastation plays out through the cycle of addiction or societal breakdown or international conflicts. The characters employ a variety of coping mechanisms and the authors' styles are diverse; Elizabeth Renzetti's Based on a True Story, Edan Lepucki's California and Audrey
