In How to Build a Girl Caitlin Moran manages to write a story of teenaged angst that so closely resembles my own experiences that I though she had perhaps stolen my diary and just added a lot (like, a lot, a lot) more sex. Except I didn’t keep a diary in those days. (Now you would call it a journal, and be really precious about it). How to Build a Girl is the story of Johanna Morrigan, a working-class girl in 90s England who hates […]
Five Ishiguro tales about the human experience…and music
These are five lovely stories which all deal with very vulnerable individuals and the critical role of music in their lives. Ishiguro’s tales embrace a wide range of life’s challenges, from loss and loneliness to romance and recovery, to friendship and fulfillment. The recurrence of certain characters from one story to another lends a hint of continuity, almost like a piece of music with five movements and an occasionally recurrent theme. In one story, an aging singing legend takes his beloved on a final trip […]
Adult “Harry Potter”-style series is irresistible
This first novel in the Kingkiller Chronicles is a brilliant addition to the fantasy genre and already has a huge fan following. A sort of adult Harry Potter, our multi-named protagonist is everything you want in a hero: a warrior/musician who is strong, courageous, brilliant, respectful of women … and full of magic. And yet the novel begins with Kvothe as a broken man tending an inn in the middle of nowhere. How did he get that way? The rest of the novel is his […]
Does the author know how he feels about his subject matter?
(This post originally appeared on Persephone Magazine.) Though anything overly cliquish, with rules of operation and preconceived notions, makes me squirm, I realized that I had made assumptions of my own about the word “Twee,” and any movement that might be associated with it. So with mixed feelings did I pick up one mouthful of a title: Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television, Fashion, and Film by Marc Spitz. Spitz begins by acknowledging that, for some, Twee is a pejorative term meant to […]
“I’m a bullet that thinks for itself, and I want to know what I’m being shot at.”
War for the Oaks is widely considered to be the establishing foundation of the urban fantasy genre. Setting a war between the Seelie and Unseelie (or, Light and Dark) Courts of the Fae in modern-day Minneapolis (or, at least, modern in 1987, when this was written,) Emma Bull established a paradigm. One: in contemporary times, in recognizable places, there are intersecting magical realms and accompanying magical beings that are invisible to most humans. Two: certain humans have an aptitude for magic, even if they haven’t […]
A charming and evocative tale of friendship, love, music and small-town life.
Shotgun Lovesongs centres around five school friends meeting up again for a wedding in their hometown after going their different ways. Kip is a successful and impetuous financier returning home and craving recognition from the locals; Lee is a Bon Iver-esque musician, famous for his lonely and lo-fi first album recorded in a barn but now regretting his fame; Ronny is a former rodeo star and recovering alcoholic with a damaged past; while Beth and Henry are a long-married couple running the family farm and struggling […]