In Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo creates more memorable characters than some authors could only dream of doing in a whole career.
The novel iIn Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo creates more memorable characters than some authors could only dream of doing in a whole career.
The novel is set off by Amma who is walking across the brutalist playground that is the Southbank toward the NT where her newest play is just about to open. Over the next couple hundred pages, Evaristo explores the lives of Amma and eleven other people, all black womxn and one trans man, who are either directly or indirectly connected through Amma and her work.
The novel is a stunning study of blackness in Britain and Evaristo's prose is just an utter treat to behold. Reading this novel gave me the same thrill I felt when I first read White Teeth. Somehow both vast and compact, Evaristo presents a queer black history of Britain that perfectly balances the hilarious and the tragic. I'm going to be recommending this one for quite some time....more
sometimes when i flick through the television channels of a sunday i accidentally happen upon a load of heterosexual men in nylon suits talking about sometimes when i flick through the television channels of a sunday i accidentally happen upon a load of heterosexual men in nylon suits talking about sport. one thing they always seem to say is: it was a game of two halves. it's a nice phrase. so nice i'm going to steal it. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is a novel of two halves.
the first half of the novel, Leila in her bin, recounting her life, is not great. I felt like I had read that specific narrative so many times before. in fact I was about ready to go into autopilot and skim the rest of the novel. but then Part 2 happened and somehow, it became good. following the Five as they hatch their plan leads to some of the novel's best, and unexpectedly funny, scenes. I wish the whole novel were just that. but alas. I feel I would recommend this book to people, but on the caveat that it does get much better midday through....more
a really stunning road trip novel that has its finger on the pulse of modern american life. multimedia novels often feel meta for meta's sake but the a really stunning road trip novel that has its finger on the pulse of modern american life. multimedia novels often feel meta for meta's sake but the documents, the archives, and the polaroids in this novel actually aid the narrative immensely, it's so rare that this style of novel works this well. the 'elegies' presented throughout, for me, harked back to the border writings of Tomás Rivera and Gloria Anzaldúa, two comparisons I do not make lightly! easily one of the best and most essential novels published in 2019....more
My first Lanchester and probably not the best place to start. In The Wall a wall has been built around the UK after an event called The Change and ourMy first Lanchester and probably not the best place to start. In The Wall a wall has been built around the UK after an event called The Change and our protagonist, Kavanagh, has just began his service as a guard on the Wall. Marketed as a dystopia, I think it's more befitting to call it speculative.
Yet Lanchester doesn't really have anything to say with this novel. The whole thing feels like something Channel 4 would produce as a limited series supported by stark in-yer-face billboards and cryptic television ads. Whilst the novel has some exciting moments, you're left wondering exactly what Lanchester's point was....more
Although marketed as a standalone novel, not much of Dance Dance Dance would make sense if you haven't read A Wild Sheep Chase. It's a sorta sequel toAlthough marketed as a standalone novel, not much of Dance Dance Dance would make sense if you haven't read A Wild Sheep Chase. It's a sorta sequel to Murakami's Trilogy of the Rat where we once again meet the unnamed narrator with a penchant for Cutty Sark and Bill Evans.
A couple years after the events of A Wild Sheep Chase, our narrator finds himself returning to the strange and ethereal Dolphin Hotel in Sapporo. However, upon his arrival he is shaken to discover that the Dolphin Hotel has been entirely razed and on its site now sits the grand and opulent l'Hotel Dauphin. He asks around what happened to the Dolphin Hotel but nobody is letting on. It seems that all knowledge of the Dolphin Hotel has been expunged from history. In his attempt to find out what happened to the Dolphin, our narrator once again finds himself tangled in a cat's cradle of a plot which sees him revisiting his not-so-recent past.
Murakami returns to his semi-hardboiled, semi-insane style of novel with Dance Dance Dance. In terms of bibliographical chronology, this novel was written after the surprising and runaway success Murakami had with Norwegian Wood. Completely bewildered by his sudden status as a literary celebrity, Murakami decided to retreat to familiar territory and wrote this sequel to his earlier series. If you're familiar with Murakami's novels, you'll know what a change of style Norwegian Wood is. At this point in his career it was perhaps his least Murakami-style novel but it was the one that became a massive success. It's still his most popular and enduring work, despite the fact it's so different from everything readers expected from Murakami.
As a knowing reference to his new-found celebrity, there's a character in Dance Dance Dance named Hiraku Makimura, barely an anagram of Murakami's name, who is a novelist who became a 'darling of the literary community' but his success is sort-lived with critics panning all his subsequent novels and he eventually pivots to becoming a moderately successful travel writer. Perhaps Murakami suspected the same career path for himself, however, as we know, the success of Norwegian Wood was only the beginning of the dazzling career of Japan's greatest literary export.
Yet just as the plot of A Wild Sheep Chase seemed to flounder and flop as the reader is taken on a disorientating journey of dead ends and MacGuffins, Dance Dance Dance suffers from the exact same problem. Murakami loves to leave the reader in the dark until the very last moment. A consequence of this is that the novel can read like an episodic jaunt through several completely unrelated scenes. This novel is also not as quickly paced as its predecessor, whereas Sheep Chase felt genuinely frenzied, this is more a gradual descent into the maelstrom.
But yet I really enjoyed Dance Dance Dance. By reading Murakami's works in writing order, this is my fourth and final dalliance with the unnamed narrator and I feel it is a fitting end to the series. Meeting him in his early years in Hear the Wind Sing now feels like looking at an old black and white photograph, ah I remember you back then, I think to myself, wistfully. Then watching him stumble into his first weird adventure in Pinball, 1973. I think of the Rat, ah the poor Rat. Years pass. A Wild Sheep Chase. How did you ever get out of that one? Will you ever know peace? Years pass. Dance Dance Dance. A fitting coda.
I'm weirdly sentimental for a character who isn't particularly likeable, nor does he even have a name.
A really stunning memoir, which despite being published in the US in 1994, is only appearing in print at this side of the Atlantic in 2019 (due to FabA really stunning memoir, which despite being published in the US in 1994, is only appearing in print at this side of the Atlantic in 2019 (due to Faber's recent acquisition of Aciman's back catalogue).
Aciman's accounts of his family are almost unbelievable. Whereas many families may have one character who stands out amongst the rest, Aciman's family seems to have been entirely comprised of characters with strange origins and wild lives. All of these lives are projected against the fraught setting of Alexandria before, during, and after WWII.
Oftentimes you forget you're reading a memoir, due to Aciman's novelistic approach, which transforms this book from a random memoir of a would-be novelist to an almost essential work of non-fiction.
I hope that this reissuing (which is actually a first printing) gives this book a second wind. It deserves to be loved again....more
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