My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is one of the more bizarre novels I have ever read, but I liked it and found it to be darkly funny and compulsively readable.
…The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
My feelings towards The Confessions of Frannie Langton are ambivalent. I do not hate it, but I do not love it either. It was just… okay. If you like historical fiction, you may enjoy The Confessions of Frannie Langton, but I do not think you are missing out if you never read it. The novel is about a Black woman (a former slave) accused of murder, but the slavery aspect of the novel becomes a subplot to the primary narrative of a forbidden relationship between a mistress and her maid. I found The Confessions of Frannie Langton to be a bit boring in the middle, which is too bad because I was interested in reading about a former slave’s life in England during a time when slavery was recently abolished, and slaves were supposed to be considered free people in England.
…Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
Homeland Elegies is an intriguing mix of autobiography and fiction. The protagonist is named after the author, Ayad Akhtar. The fictional Ayad is a writer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a successful play called Disgraced, just like the real Ayad. The fictional Ayad’s father is a doctor, just like the real Ayad’s father. These little bits of fact will make you wonder, as you read the novel, how many other details are based on actual events that happened to the author. Ayad Akhtar does this on purpose as a commentary on the confusion between fact and fiction that we see today in social media and the news. What is truth? What is “fake news”? Are we discerning enough to not take things at face value? It is this blending of fact and fiction that initially attracted me to read Homeland Elegies, and I am very glad that I read it.
…Florida by Lauren Groff
Ahh, Florida. Home of Disney World, sunny beaches, the Everglades, alligators, “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, and Ron DeSantis. If you have been following my blog, then you know that Lauren Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton is one of my favourite novels and I reviewed her latest release, Matrix, which was one of my favourite reads from last year. Groff lives in Florida and Florida is a short story collection about people who live in Florida. I do not usually read short stories (don’t ask me why; I just don’t), but since I am a fan of Lauren Groff, I decided to give Florida a try. I wanted to like it, but it left me feeling too unsettled to enjoy it.
…Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
I have read a couple of Sarah Waters’ books prior to Fingersmith: The Little Stranger, which I ended up hating, and The Paying Guests, which I found interesting, but was not overly excited about. Usually at that point, I would give up on Sarah Waters, but Fingersmith is well reviewed, and it sounded like an interesting story, so I decided to give her novels one more chance. I am glad that I read Fingersmith. If you like Charles Dickens, or if you like historical crime fiction, then you will like Fingersmith as well.
…Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is one of my favourite novels. It has been adapted into an excellent TV miniseries on HBO. It was published in 2014 and is about a pandemic (I think Emily St. John Mandel must be a bit prescient) that wipes out over ninety percent of Earth’s population, and how what is left of humanity lives on fifteen years after the pandemic. I enjoyed Sea of Tranquility almost as much as I enjoyed reading Station Eleven. Written during the COVID pandemic, Sea of Tranquility also features a pandemic, but the pandemic does not take centre stage. I would not classify Sea of Tranquility as dystopian or science fiction, even though part of the novel is set in the future when humans have colonized the moon and outer space; rather, it is a novel whose focus is on human nature and human relationships.
…Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Shuggie Bain is a tragic and heartbreaking novel with no happy ending, but I think this coming-of-age story set in 1980s Glasgow is worth every second you will spend reading it.
…The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams
I had been interested in reading The Liar’s Dictionary for quite some time, and now that I have read it, I have to say that I found it to be disappointing. It is not at all as interesting as the blurb on the back cover makes it out to be. As I was reading it, I kept waiting for more plot to occur, but it feels like not a lot happens in this novel.
…The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Secret History is Donna Tartt’s first novel and was published in 1992, but it is not the first novel of hers that I have read. I read her third novel, The Goldfinch, first, and I love The Goldfinch; however, if I had read The Secret History first, I probably would not have read The Goldfinch. The Secret History is a somewhat interesting novel, but I was surprised to find that there is not a single likeable character in it. The main characters are so insufferable, I almost stopped reading after a few chapters. But I hate to leave a book unfinished, and I was curious enough to know how this novel would end, so I persevered in reading.
…A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
A Little Life is one of the most devastatingly beautifully written novels I have ever read. I sobbed my way through about the last quarter of this novel, but I still think it is one of the best books I have had the fortune to read and I am so glad I decided to read it. I will warn you, though, that A Little Life is very frank, and somewhat detailed, in its depiction of emotional, physical and sexual child abuse, which can make it very difficult to read at times. But it is such an exquisite portrait of a friendship that span decades, that A Little Life deserves to be read and loved.
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