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A thought-provoking darkness: January 2024 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Literary Fiction, Nature Writing, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction, Speculative Fiction

Caliente (Hot) by Luna Miguel

I learned of Luna Miguel by chance, in one of those late night internet searches which took me to an old blog of hers. I saw that she’d published plenty of poetry but also some non-fiction and became curious. When I was in La Librería de Mujeres (The Women’s Bookshop) – one of my favourite places in Madrid, they recommended this book to me, and so I bought it and read it in a couple of days.

Luna Miguel explores female desire in this book, which starts with her personal experience of going through a divorce after being with a partner (and also married) for many years and having a child in common. What follows is an exploration into self-pleasure, female masturbation and poliamory. It’s interesting to note here that Miguel brings in many other authors and examines their work and their life experiences to develop some of her points.

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Embracing winter: October 2023 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Fantasy, Horror, Literary Fiction, Nature Writing

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

This is the first book I’ve read by Emma Donoghue but it certainly won’t be the last. I immediately connected with the main character in this story, Lib Wright, a young nurse with a tragic past who trained with Florence Nightingale herself. Her voice is strong and distinctive, with a superb attention to the detail, as you’d expect from a nurse, caring, yet strict.

The premise of the story also hooked me from the start: in rural Ireland, an eleven-year-old girl seems to be able to survive, month by month, without consuming any food, her only nourishment being ‘prayer’. Lib Wright is brought from England to investigate.

The mystery is an enticing one and keeps you reading. The most horrific part is not the reveal of how Anna (the Irish girl) is surviving or why she has decided to fast in the first place. The real horror, to me, was the fact that this story is actually based on an array of different cases of young women, such as Anna, who did similar things throughout their lives – always under the excuse of religion, of wanting to feel closer to God. It often ended with their deaths.

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A month of magic and dispair: March 2023 Reading log

Book Review, Books, Fantasy, Horror, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Speculative Fiction
Photo credits: Neil Rolph

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

“What is it like to be you? I need to say: This is the question that has made me a writer; always that deep desire to know what it feels like to be a different person.”

Elizabeth Strout

When I used to work in a bookshop, Elizabeth Strout was an author that many of my University friends came for. They’d get every book Strout published, telling me how much they adored her writing. I remember shelving those same books. The covers didn’t seem particularly attractive. When I read the blurbs I wasn’t especially inspired either. Once we got a review copy of Olive, Again and instead of reading it I gave it to one of these friends, who was very, very happy.

Fast forward to March 2023 – I saw Lucy by the Sea in the library. I picked the book just to try and see but very much doubted it was going to be my thing. Where to start? Strout is one of those authors that manage to imbue a certain hypnotic quality to their writing that traps you, no matter how interested you really are in the characters or the plot. She’s similar to Haruki Murakami and Sally Rooney in that regard. Especially to Sally Rooney, even though she writes about a demographic that’s in their sixties and seventies, rather than late twenties and thirties (I suspect Rooney’s characters may grow with her as she keeps writing them, though?)

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A fair share of horrors: February 2023 reading log

Book Review, Books, Horror, Literary Fiction
Photo credits: Jacques Peltre

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

“No, Ernie, says Agata, there’s no plot, we’re only women talking.”

Miriam Toews

I’m currently working on a novel that features a religious community, so a writer friend of mine recommended I read this book. She told me it was based on the real case of a Mennonite community in which women of all ages were raped in their sleep by some men from the same community who were using an animal anaesthetic to render them unconscious. Their complaints were dismissed by the elders – who went as far as to suggest the women were being attacked by demons – until the truth was revealed.

Toews’ novel focuses on the aftermath of these traumatic events. A group of women meet at a barn to discuss what they are going to do next. The options are to stay and forgive the men, to stay and fight back, or to leave the community. The story is narrated by August, the only man allowed in the barn with these women, who’s taking the minutes of the meeting because none of the women knows how to read or write.

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