unreliable narrators

New Ideas: January 2026 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Creative Non Fiction, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Thrutopia

Spent by Alison Bechdel

I love Bechdel’s work so I saved this book as a treat and I read it all on one go during New Year. It didn’t disappoint. The art is incredible detailed as always (specially the cats, look for the cheeky cats in almost every frame!). Also, this time Bechdel treats us to a fully-coloured work which makes the small community she portrays here all the more vibrant.

There’s something distinctive about this book. Whereas a lot of Bechdel’s work is autobiographical (i.e. Fun Home, Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength) what Bechdel does here is something different. The main character is called Alison and looks exactly like her. Her partner is called Holly and looks exactly like the Holly from her other works who we know is the author’s partner. However, Bechdel classifies this work as fiction from the get go. For example, the Alison of this work became famous after publishing a graphic novel titled Death and Taxidermy about her father who was a taxidermist artist (so, no Fun Home and no father working in the funeral business). She doesn’t have two younger brothers but an older sister called Sheila. And this graphic novel is not written in the first person but in the third person.

I’m intrigued but also excited – and creatively stimulated – by observing these approaches. Coincidentally, I also read another book this month that plays with the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, Soldiers of Salamis, which I discuss below. But let’s go back to Bechdel’s new work. Spent tells the story of a small community in Vermont in which established graphic novelist Alison and her partner Holly have decided to start a pigmy goat sanctuary. Alison’s work has recently been adapted into a very popular TV series. However, life is not as easy as her friends think: it’s actually excruciating for Alison to see her own life adapted into TV. Also, the publisher who has made an offer for her new work is also involved with some far-right politics that go against everything Alison believes in so she has to decide between her career and her ideals on this next step of her professional journey.

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Defying form and conventions: September 2023 Reading Log

Book Review, Books, Crime Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Literary Fiction, Queer Literature, Science-Fiction

The Gathering by Anne Enright

I’m always intrigued by books that whin the Booker prize. To be honest, I wasn’t really aware of the Booker and its significance in the literary world until I started working in a bookshop. There, the day of the launch of the long-list would always be a big event, and we would display all the chosen books in a special table. There would be people who came to buy them all read them and draw their own conclusions about which book deserved to win the final prize and why. Things would get even more interesting with the announcement of the shortlist and, finally, the winner (which was always controversial, some customers would come saying how the winning book was actually not that good and such and such other book should have won instead…) Which really tells you a lot about prizes and how subjectivity plays an essential part when judging their value.

I had no idea what The Gathering was about when I started reading, and it’s also my first piece by this particular author – who I’d heard from before. The first thing that became evident was the quality of the writing: superb. I was immediately drawn into the story by its unreliable narrator, a woman trying to make sense of a memory she has from childhood (or that she think she has, things are not completely clear in that regard). She’s convinced that, if she manages to remember it all, she’ll finally understand why her older brother Liam died by suicide.

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