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Dear Sarah, In The Beth Book (1897), we feel that we are reading two very different, at times irreconcilable, books: a powerful coming of age novel and a…… Read more “Hers was a nature with a wide range”
Tag: Coming of age
Otherwise let this mad world crush us now
Dear Elizabeth, The Morgesons (1862) is that rare thing: a 19th-century novel with a sceptical, areligious, and probably amoral heroine. It reads like a modernist fiction avant…… Read more “Otherwise let this mad world crush us now”
I reach for it and reach for it, and it isn’t there
Dear Richard, The Easter Parade (1976) is inhabited by characters who are trapped in self-delusion and false appearances, constantly parading the lives they think they should be living.…… Read more “I reach for it and reach for it, and it isn’t there”
We ourselves became the ghosts
Dear Sarah, Ghost Wall (2018) feels like one of those dreams where a character is trapped in a room whose walls keep getting narrower and narrower. We…… Read more “We ourselves became the ghosts”
One’s prime is elusive
Dear Muriel, In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), there is something in the eponymous protagonist that repels us, but there is also something that strongly…… Read more “One’s prime is elusive”
Her body seemed outside her
Dear Dorothy, Pilgrimage is a sequence of thirteen semi-autobiographical novels, published between 1915 and 1967, following the life of our protagonist, Miriam Henderson, rendered as a collection…… Read more “Her body seemed outside her”
She was completely engrossed in a single thought
Dear Sofia, Nihilist Girl, tr. Natasha Kolchevska and Mary Zirin (2001. Original: Нигилистка, 1884) reads like a tale with a void inside, wrapped-up in a blue-tinged layer of melancholy: at its…… Read more “She was completely engrossed in a single thought”
This look of sadness would last perhaps for a minute
Dear Amy, Jill (1884) is a fast-pacing coming of age story with subtle social commentary and strong feminist undertones. The novel centres on the eponymous heroine, Jill,…… Read more “This look of sadness would last perhaps for a minute”
I don’t want them to reward me for nonsense
Dear Nadezhda, The Boarding-School Girl, tr. Karen Rosneck (2000. Original: Пансионерка, 1861), very much like your sister’s novel City Folk and Country Folk, tr. Nora Seligman Favorov (2017.…… Read more “I don’t want them to reward me for nonsense”
The milk of incomprehension
Dear Nora, Soviet Milk, tr. Margita Gailitis (2018. Original: Mātes piens, 2015) was this odd thing: a butterfly that, going in reverse, moults back into a chrysalis. What…… Read more “The milk of incomprehension”
Every abyss has its lullabies
Dear Julián, Tomb Song, tr. Christina MacSweeney (2018. Original: Canción de tumba, 2011) is an elegiac account of a writer who tries to reconcile himself both with a troubled past…… Read more “Every abyss has its lullabies”
It was a family of women buccaneers
Dear Gladys, The Matriarch (1924) is a family saga told in a fragmented way, weaving together vignettes, sketches and anecdotes that read like a series of family…… Read more “It was a family of women buccaneers”
The first tear opened up that day
Dear Victor, ‘The Love of Singular Men’ (2016. Original: O amor dos homens avulsos, not translated yet) reads like a delicate web, a coming-of-age tale of affection,…… Read more “The first tear opened up that day”
All we see is a haze
Dear Carol, As if under the muffled atmosphere of a tense game, the storyline of Sinuca embaixo d’água (2009, ‘Underwater snooker’, not translated yet) circumscribes an absence:…… Read more “All we see is a haze”
I was giving the glad-eye like blazes
Dear Connie, The Laws (1993, tr. Richard Huijing. De Wetten, 1991) reads like a draft of a draft: the shadow of an idea, hovering over the page…… Read more “I was giving the glad-eye like blazes”
Here is continuity spinning a web from room to room,
Dear Rosamond, Invitation to the Waltz (1932) makes use of the stream of consciousness technique and takes place, mostly, during the preparation for a party. However, our protagonist…… Read more “Here is continuity spinning a web from room to room,”
The point is not to negate reality, but to peel back its scrim,
Dear Chloe, Your novel The Immortalists (2018) seems to be cursed by the very premise it seeks to explore: the interplay between chance and destiny is not…… Read more “The point is not to negate reality, but to peel back its scrim,”
My spirit rose to meet this challenge
Dear Jamaica, The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) is an exploration of the self as other – and back. The book is centred on Xuela Claudette Richardson,…… Read more “My spirit rose to meet this challenge”
