Read 20/04/2020-26/04/2020
Rating 5 stars
Ice is a post-apocalyptic dystopia full of frozen emotions and Kafkaesque happenings. It’s a difficult book to review. The plot is barely linear, cut through with hallucination and adumbration. There’s an impending climate disaster that influences the action, but at heart it’s an examination of the worst of human nature. And yet it’s not entirely grim, either. Continue reading
Read 11/04/2020-20/04/2020
Rating 3 stars
Zadie Smith’s Swing Time is a sprawling tale of how two girls’ lives intersect and separate over the years. It’s about growing up poor but aspirational, a tale of friendship and rivalry, and of the inadequacies of adulthood. Continue reading
It’s a weird old time. I’m no longer sure what point in the year we’re at. It feels as though March was a long time ago. I missed the start of April somehow. And so I’m very late to the April Six Degrees of Separation. Continue reading
I’ve been working from home since 18 March. How long is that? I’ve lost track of time. Continue reading
Read 05/04/2020-11/04/2020
Rating 3 stars
I don’t remember buying Elmet. I don’t remember anyone buying it for me, either (my apologies if it was you). And yet it’s a book that I found that I owned while digging through my piles of books to be read, back at the start of this period of viral pandemic and social distancing that isn’t even four weeks ago yet. Continue reading
Read 29/03/2020-05/04/2020
Rating 5 stars
I chose Hannah Kent’s The Good People for my next read because it seemed like the direct opposite of The Book of Strange New Things. Set in rural Ireland in the heart of Munster, it’s the story of a small community of farmers. The year is 1825. Life is hard. For Nóra Leahy it gets harder still. Continue reading
