Title: Summer (Seasonal #4) Writer: Ali Smith Publishing House: Hamish Hamilton Date of Publication: August 6th 2020 Rating: 3 stars ‘’No point in asking anyone else to hold your world.’’ In the last instalment of the monumental Seasonal Quartet, Ali Smith introduces to families that have to fight their own demons, siblings who view the…
Category: Literary Fiction
There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In
Title: There Once Lived A Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In Writer: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (tr. by Anna Summers) Publishing House: Penguin Modern Classics Date of Publication: 2014 (first published 2002) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Oh, great mother nature! Why do you have to trick us? Why do you need all this mucus,…
Βlue Postcards
Title: Blue Postcards Writer: Douglas Bruton Publishing House: Fairlight Books Date of Publication: July 8th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ”Years ago in the blue mists of memory, there was a street in Paris called the Street of Tailors. Men sat outside their shops like kings on their thrones, and they nodded to each other or…
Taking Flight
Title: Taking Flight Writer: JT Torres Publishing House: Fairlight Books Date of Publication: July 8th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Νana appeared by my bed, staring at me with vacant eyes that I felt responsible for filling. The pre-dawn moonlight sliced by the blinds iced her skin a soft blue.’’ A young boy has the unfortunate…
Wild Swims
Title: Wild Swims (original title: Kort Over Canada) Writer: Dorthe Nors (translated by Misha Hoekstra) Publishing House: Graywolf Press Date of Publication: February 2nd 2021 (first published April 23rd 2018) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Both fairground and field have been baking all day in the late-summer sun. It’s September now, and when she walks around the…
Golem
Title: Golem Writer: Pierre Assouline Publishing House: Gallimard Date of Publication: January 1st 2016 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it’s me?’’ Samuel Beckett – The Unnamable Gustave Meyer…
Luckenbooth
Title: Luckenbooth Writer: Jenni Fagan Publishing House: William Heinemann Date of Publication: January 14th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’I kiss my mother’s cross. Set into the floor so there’s one holy thing between me and oblivion. The sea won’t take me. I am the devil’s daughter. Nobody wants responsibility for my immortal soul. My address…
The Faces
Title: The Faces (original title: Ansigterne Writer: Tove Ditlevsen (translated by Tiina Nunnally) Publishing House: Penguin Classics Date of Publication: January 26th 2021 (first published 1968) Rating: 5 stars ‘’She could think about the words in peace, without fearing that new ones would appear before the night was over. During this time the night held…
The Woman in the Purple Skirt
Title: The Woman in the Purple Skirt Writer: Natsuko Imamura (translated by Lucy North) Publishing House: Faber & Faber Date of Publication: June 3rd 2021 (first published June 30th 2019) Rating: 4 stars ‘’Some people would pretend they hadn’t seen her, and carry on as before. Others would quickly move aside, to give her room…
Dreaming in Quantum and Other Stories
Title: Dreaming in Quantum and Other Stories Writer: Lynda Clark Publishing House: Fairlight Books Date of Publication: November 1st 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’In winter, there’s nothing. Maybe a lone dog walker skirting the edges, but usually just the crows in the yew trees above, cawing threats at the wood pigeons. Silence, punctuated by those…
Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café
Title: Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café (original title: 在謊言拆穿之前) Writer: Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated by Geoffrey Trousselot) Publishing House: Picador Date of Publication: September 17th 2020 (first published April 27th 2018) Rating: 5 stars ‘’That night… Around the station there stood many Christmas trees, decorated with lights that shone and sparkled. The…
The Field
Title: The Field Writer: Robert Seethaler (translated by Charlotte Collins) Publishing House: Picador Date of Publication: March 18th 2021 (first published June 4th 2018) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Did I talk about tomorrow? Did I tell you that I love you? Do you remember?’’ In a German town, the dead have indeed their own stories to…
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Title: The Dangers of Smoking In Bed (original title: Los peligros de fumar en la cama) Writer: Mariana Enriquez (translated by Megan McDowell) Publishing House: Hogarth Press Date of Publication: January 12th 2021 (first published November 2009) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Or she’d hear a rooster crow in the middle of the night and remember –…
Kink: Stories
Title: Kink: Stories Writer: Various edited by R.O.Kwon and Garth Greenwell. Publishing House: Simon & Schuster UK Date of Publication: February 9th 2021 Rating: 4 stars ‘’Bristol, Vermont. Summer – the flies biting. Vermont is named for its green mountains, the man tells her. To her, they look like sleeping animals with soft pelts. With…
The Ophelia Girls
Title: The Ophelia Girls Writer: Jane Healey Publishing House: Haughton Mifflin Harcourt Date of Publication: August 10th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’I have run from that summer, tried to forget its hazy pleasures and its tragedies, how it ended, how things fell apart. I have trusted the years to fade my memories and destroyed those…
Errantry: Strange Stories
Title: Errantry: Strange Stories Writer: Elizabeth Hand Publishing House: Small Beer Press Date of Publication: November 13th 2012 Rating: 3 stars ‘’For as far as he could, there was only night. Ghostly light seeped from a room downstairs onto the silver of lawn. Starlight touched on the endless sweep of moor, like another sea unrolling…
A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray
Title: A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray (original title: Un dimanche à Ville-d’Avray) Writer: Dominique Barbéris (tr. by John Cullen) Publishing House: Other Press Date of Publication: April 27th 2021 (first published 2019) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Some of the houses in the neighbourhood I passed through were still closed up – proof that their owners hadn’t yet…
Dogs and Others
Title: Dogs and Others (original title: Psi i Ostali) Writer: Biljana Jovanović (tr. by John K. Cox) Publishing House: Istros Books Date of Publication: November 5th 2018 (first published 1980) Rating: 4 stars ‘’Dogs always believe that they belong to Others (whom they consider to be, for unknown reasons enduring right up to our day,…
Fairground Magician
Τitle: Fairground Magician (original title: Vašarski mađioničar) Writer: Jelena Lengold (tr. by Celia Hawkesworth) Publishing House: Istros Books Date of Publication: December 17th 2013 (first published 2008) Rating: 5 stars ‘’It’s not that I need you to love me, but I need to suffer because you don’t.’’ I am a rather weird person. Strange things…
The Lamplighters
Title: The Lamplighters Writer: Emma Stonex Publishing House: Pan MacMillan Date of Publication: March 4th 2021 Rating: 4 stars ‘’Today it’s soundless. Jory knows loud seas and silent seas, heavy seas and mirror seas, seas where your boat feels like the last blink of humankind on a roll so determined and angry that you believe…
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