Kate becomes best friends with Max during their first year of university. His privileged life is very different from her modest upbringing, but that doesn’t stop them from becoming inseparable. Then one night at Max’s family’s home, Kate is raped and her life is pulled apart. This is an excellent read created by a talented writer about the immediate and lasting effects of sexual assault.
Gwenamon says: A horrible topic is told extremely well
I’m mystified that this made the New York Time’s list for Best Fiction of 2018. Really? Let me save you some time: A college drop-out joins the army after his girlfriend and fellow ecstasy taker, Emily, moves away. They then marry before he’s sent overseas. By the time they reunite, they’ve both become heroin addicts. Maybe the fact that Nico Walker wrote the book (with a lot of coaching from the sounds of it) while in jail makes it special. Or the fact that he served his country since he had few other options. What I do find remarkable is that he lived to tell his tale, which is extremely repetitive once he’s on heroin. Score, shoot up, repeat. His writing has some grisly stark moments, especially of his time in Iraq.
Gwenamon says: Readable, but not worth the hype
This is a captivating, moving story about the AIDS epidemic. The novel splits itself between two timeframes and characters. In the 1980s, we follow Yale Tishman in his career as a development director for a university’s art gallery, and in his relationships during the recognition of and fallout from AIDS. In the almost present day, we follow Fiona (the sister of Nico, one of Yale’s friends) as she travels to Paris to find her estranged daughter. I found Yale’s story to be the strongest of the two timeframes. There’s always a winner with different timeframes. This novel is so easy to read and so deeply affecting…at least for Yale’s story. Fiona’s story is weakened because her daughter isn’t developed as a character and an old friend reappears unexpectedly without much purpose. Or so it seems.
Gwenamon says: Well worth it
This is the very long story of Clyde Griffiths’ demise, showing a very dark side to the American Dream. Full disclosure: I only read half of this tome. However, I was invested enough to care what happens. So I found a summary online. I know that the classics are often more detailed than today’s novels, but this still could have stood an edit. Griffiths’ downward spiral (and the reasons around it) didn’t need so much explanation.
Gwenamon says: Decent, but it’s way too long
Having grown up in a Malaysian fishing village and served time for his crime, Ah Hock tells a journalist of how he came to commit murder. The writing is poignant and quite vivid. I’ll always remember the images created around a flooded house. The story also, brutally at times, traces the dividing line between the well off and the impoverished.
Gwenamon says: I didn’t love it, but I really liked it
I really liked this first novel by Dalton about a 12-year-old boy, Eli Bell, who has to navigate a world of crime as he grows up in a suburb of 1980’s Australia. This is a fantastic tale about family, crime, fate, and love. I came to appreciate this novel more when I listened to an interview with the author, who actually lived a similar life, complete with the red telephone.
Gwenamon says: Overwritten at times, but still well done
Maybe I missed something about this book? People seemed to really love it. I really liked parts of it. Those are the parts actually about the book’s purpose or claim: a woman’s best friend and mentor dies; as a result, she inherits his dog while coping with grief. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some great writing and I think I’ll check out some of Nunez’s other novels. But there’s a lot of meandering. The phrase “losing the plot” literally applies to this book. I’d say it could be broken into two novellas – one about writing (and the difficult life of a writer), and one about the dog.
Gwenamon says: Decent, but quite a hodgepodge
