I had issues with this book. Yes, I know, I have issues with everything, but once again, they really got in the way of my enjoyment of the book. First off, this is a romance. That’s okay. It also isn’t a romance at all. It isn’t much of anything, because a lot of the issues at the core of the book – ambition, the definition of love, coupleship, the spread of one person in a relationship, the cult of the self – they’re all so […]
Whooo boy…
If my last book (The Fireman) surprised me with relevance to our current political climate when I was looking for escapism, this one had the exact opposite effect. I bought the book on remainder on the strength of Shriver’s work, having loved Double Fault, The Post-Birthday World, and of course, We Need to Talk About Kevin (thank god I read that one before getting pregnant). I didn’t so much as look at the back cover and had no clue as to the book’s subject matter, […]
It’s a Lot to Think About
This book is… heavy. Having seen the film a number of years ago, I obviously knew the main progression of the story, but having so much more added detail and insight into the mind of Eva made the gut-punch at the end all the more devastating (I have no idea how I could have forgotten it!). We Need to Talk About Kevin is comprised of a series of letters that a woman named Eva is writing to her husband, some time after their son commit […]
The Mandibles
Even though I am giving this book a high rating, I want to warn everyone that it may not be palatable in light of the recent election. I actually started reading it in late November, but was still too traumatized by Trump’s winning the Presidency that I had to set it aside after a few chapters. Sometimes I’m in the mood for dystopian fiction, but I usually prefer authors who write about plausible futures, not vampire or alien invasion futures. (Stephen King’s The Stand being a […]
*Thursday*
Okay, you guys warned me about this one, and you were right — devastating doesn’t begin to describe it. “…You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.” Written as a series of letters to her husband, Eva Khatchadourian tells us the story of a Thursday that will forever be […]
“Plots set in the future are about what people fear in the present.”
I kept thinking while listening to this audiobook: “This is what Orson Scott Card would write if he decided to tackle economics instead of world politics”. It’s a lot of talking, a lot of smart people arguing, and way more interesting that you’d expect. Lionel Shriver (who is apparently a woman?) also wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is next on my TBR. “Of course for professional traders on the stock exchange, money had always been imaginary – just as notional, just as easy come and […]