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Dear Auður, In Butterflies in November, tr. Brian FitzGibbon (2013. Original: Rigning í nóvember, 2004), you play with our sense of reality, bringing into light what is fundamentally odd…… Read more “A woman caught in a finely interwoven pattern of feelings and time”
Tag: Contemporary
The all-seeing eye
Dear Claire, In Bitter Orange (2018), we are made accomplices of the main character’s voyeurism, caught in a claustrophobic atmosphere that grows ever more disturbing as we…… Read more “The all-seeing eye”
The view and the woods opening to a light that’s itself untrodden
Dear Ali, Winter (2017) is a novel full of the ambivalence embodied in this season: the dying of light that is also a promise of new light.…… Read more “The view and the woods opening to a light that’s itself untrodden”
Standing at this border where land and water meet
Dear Han Kang, The White Book, tr. Deborah Smith (2017. Original: 흰, 2016) is a meditation on colour. We start with a list of white things –…… Read more “Standing at this border where land and water meet”
My past life would be but a dream,
Dear Ottessa, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) seems to be a novel suffering from split personality: on the one hand, it is a book about…… Read more “My past life would be but a dream,”
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”
My Year in Nonfiction 2018 | Essay collections & Memoirs
Hi, folks, Continuing with the discussion started a couple of posts back, about nonfiction trends in my reading this year, I’ve also noticed that I read a good amount of…… Read more “My Year in Nonfiction 2018 | Essay collections & Memoirs”
The old brag of my heart
Dear Maggie, I Am, I Am, I Am (2017) reads like a reliquary of the string of moments your bragging heart, in a way or another, snatched…… Read more “The old brag of my heart”
Minna sits with the sea inside
Dear Dorthe, Both of the novellas comprised in So Much For That Winter, tr. Misha Hoekstra (2016. Original: Det var så den vinter, 2016/ Minna mangler et øvelokale, 2013…… Read more “Minna sits with the sea inside”
It is politic to tell our own story,
Dear Sara, The Poets’ Daughters: Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge, by Katie Waldegrave (2013) draws from letters, journals, memoirs, and other primary sources from your circle of acquaintances,…… Read more “It is politic to tell our own story,”
I wished I could split my body in two,
Dear Hanne, The Blue Room, tr. Deborah Dawkin (Original: Like sant som jeg er virkelig, 1999) is a novella about a girl who finds herself unable to…… Read more “I wished I could split my body in two,”
I preferred us when my father was away
Dear Birgit, The Mussel Feast, tr. Jamie Bulloch (2013. Original: Das Muschelessen, 1990) is a novella about the collapse of a man’s rule over his family during the course of an…… Read more “I preferred us when my father was away”
My Year in Nonfiction 2018 | Biographies
Hi, folks! Continuing with the discussion started in the previous post, about nonfiction trends in my reading this year, I’ve also noticed that I read a good amount of…… Read more “My Year in Nonfiction 2018 | Biographies”
My Year in Nonfiction 2018 | 18th-century women writers
Hi, folks, I am late to the game, but I am discussing here the first prompt of Nonfiction November, posted during week 1 and hosted by Kim at Sophisticated…… Read more “My Year in Nonfiction 2018 | 18th-century women writers”
She regarded life as an expedition into the unknown,
Dear Erika, I was not planning to read yet another book about you, nor anything related to the Mann family, but Gunna Wendt’s Erika und Therese: Erika…… Read more “She regarded life as an expedition into the unknown,”
Ringing out in a very open space
Dear Leena, Doña Quixote and Other Citizens: A Portrait (‘Doña Quixote’, 1983) reads like a string of impressions of place and feeling, made by a character that…… Read more “Ringing out in a very open space”
The sea’s only sentence
The scalpel and the metronome on my father’s piano kept a silence between them, when I was a child. Only now, with time, have I begun to…… Read more “The sea’s only sentence”
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”
