Fee

I had to laugh when I typed the title of this book into Goodreads to write my review, only to discover my previous review from 2008 - a measly two stars! I distinctly remember reading this at twenty eight, enchanted by Goldberg's fusion of Zen Buddhism and writing reference but frustrated that it wasn't the clearly laid out roadmap to writing success that I had been looking for; annoyed at the earnestness of it, and scoffing at Goldberg's suggestion that learning to be a good writer is not a linear process. Oh how things change. Straight into my top five for the year.

The 30th anniversary edition is wonderful, with additional content from Goldberg after each chapter discussing her thoughts at the time of writing the original manuscript and how her practice has or hasn't changed in the years since. And of course, the core message of the book remains the same: we learn writing by doing it. That simple. So write.

I'm stuck in a weird kind of limbo with this book. I liked it a lot but I have no idea why. I hated every character in it. I seethed at their conduct. I despised the depiction of the art world. At one point I had to close the book to shout at my ceiling. But other than that I didn't want to put it down, and it's been on my mind often since I finished it.

This is an excruciatingly modern book, reflecting the age of the privileged and entitled back to us in painful clarity, and Ottessa Moshfegh captures it all with such ease.

4.5 reluctantly glowing stars.

A dark and brooding story about two brothers, Phil and George, who own a ranch in Montana in the 1920s, and what happens when George chooses to disrupt their well-established routines and get married. This is such a well-written character study, playing with the motif of ‘opposites attract' throughout, and examining how Phil's repression of his sexuality in the ultramasc world of the cowboy has affected him so detrimentally. The tension builds and builds with each chapter, and the abrupt and visceral ending is perfectly crafted.

This is a novelisation of the 1977 TV series of the same name, one of my faves. I generally find novelisations of TV shows a little lacking because the visual doesn't translate well to text. In this case it's difficult to convey the uncanniness of the show without experiencing its tense atmosphere, conveyed through long, quiet shots of the village that houses the eponymous stones, but other than that the writing was pretty good, and gave some extra insights into the motivations of the characters.