Salka
If a masterpiece can be defined as the ability to poetically and unshrinkingly circle despair, hope and love and to find meaning there, Richard Flanagan has delivered us yet another of this class.
The cruel, torturous suffering and darkness is balanced by equally authentic evocations of love and light. The story unfolds with craftsmanship and care, and weaves between episodes of the protagonist's life in Australia, early and later, with the episodes of horror he experiences as a WWII POW labouring on the Thai-Burma Railway under the Japanese forces.
There were moments when I held my hand to my heart and gasped with joy at the lyricism and depth of Flanagan's prose, particularly when the words of Joyce and Basho are revered and their invocations - the invocations of high poetry - come to life in the emotions and lives of the so-real-you-can-almost-touch-them figures that feature in The Narrow Road to The Deep North”s pages.
The recurring motifs and orchestral storytelling, the lyricism, the literary nous and heft, the historical authority, the tender touch of personal connection, all converge to embody the living certitude that Flanagan himself is a poet, whose poetry is contained in a novel. This is his ode to what it means to live, love and hope. Ultimately, though it be sacrilege in the face of this book's complexity and beauty, if a message can be distilled, it is that to love is to hope, and to live is to hope, and it is this hope which must be the stuff of our being, what gives shape to our lives and animates them.
An irrevocable addition to the hall of Australian literary fame.
Part professional memoir, part advocacy apple crate pitch, part self-promo, this engaging book by paediatrician Nadine Burke Harris chronicles her work in linking science around developmental trauma and lifelong health outcomes with applied practice as a doctor and health professional. It's a must read for any health professional, regardless of your familiarity with ACEs or the physiology of the stress response.
Burke-Harris' occasional venture into that tenor of self promotion common to American entrepreneurism is not too invasive and can be seen as a creature of the environment she campaigned within.
I know a lot of people loved this book, and I don't want to take their joy away from them. These views are entirely subjective. I did not finish reading this book. I found it unrealistic and contrived, a fluffy pastiche of hollywood fanfiction whose intrigues could not overcome simplistic and heavy-handed writing. And I mean to cast no aspersions on the validity of fanfiction there, only to comment that the story does not feel original in plot or writing style and does not have the flair, eloquence, metaphor, meaning, and rhythm of solid literary fare.
I found the central characters of Monique and Evelyn lacked emotion, soul, and nuance for my liking and seemed tired and without freshness or complexity.
Loved, loved, loved it. My university library had it on display and I picked it up because I loved the play on Stone Butch Blues. I read it in one sitting. I didn't think it would resonate with me so much and be so full of humour, and joy, and hope,and self-love and learning. I'm so glad this book exists. Visibility of this story is everything
I had originally typecast Sally Rooney into a particular brand of light bestseller fiction for Karens. I feel like this book does fit into that genre, but there is definite perspicacity and depth to the observational skill of her writing and its ability to communicate layered depths in her protagonist. There were parts that didn't sit comfortably, particularly the way the power dynamics between the male and female characters where left in a dangerously ambivalent space. I think the story would have benefited from including perspective of the older male character or an older female character.
I wanted the characters to make better choices and others to face some culpability.
No-one, however, can deny the utterly original voice with which Rooney writes, and the engaging compulsive readability of her writing.
One of the funniest & well written books I've ever read. An instant fave. Fans of Zadie Smith & Salman Rushdie, hell, even David Sedaris, will love this.
The privileged loafing son of a rags-to-riches family gets a gradual wake-up call as he ultimately realises his family's lack of morals profiting off a corrupt and shady system
Swing Time is an instant literary classic. Zadie Smith writes at her finest & is in top form, bringing back the full power of her witty & nuanced storytelling evident in White Teeth. I would say that the commentary is not as fresh & revelatory as the latter (this mostly comes through in the inequality/development part of the plot), but that may just be a factor of perspective change in me in the intervening years between reading both, & my education in inequality & development. the juxtapositions of characters & their messy contadictions against layers of inequalities of race, class, gender are satisfying & relatable. What stands out is the sisterly relationship between two best friends, and I can see how the comparisons to Ferrante are relevant & accurate here.
ESSENTIAL reading for mental health professionals.
I've said it before, but this book really should have the reputation of The Body Keeps Score - because it achieves what many want out of Van Der Kolk's book, but better, I'd say!
If that isn't the best endorsement, I don't know what is.
Don't be put off by the dry title. Although academic, this work is accessible and not too difficult to read. It's definitely more academic that your average pop-psychology bestseller, but any reader with an interest in relational trauma or emotion regulation willing to get into some more science-y non-fiction would love it.
In Affect Regulation Theory, Daniel Hill clearly and efficiently integrates existing research and understandings of the neuroscience of the nervous system (think fight/flight/freeze) with attachment research (think insecure attachment styles) and contemporary understandings of trauma symptomology including dissociation and the pattern of symptoms often labelled Borderline Personality Disorder.
Hill ties together the more recent advances in psychological research by Allan Schore, Peter Fonagy, and Judith Herman with attachment researchers and theorists like Dan Siegel, Main, Ainsworth and Bowlby. It has a warm endorsement from Pat Ogden, founder of sensorimotor therapy.
The book is structured well and starts with probably the best explanation of the neuroscience of the autonomic nervous system and limbic system I've read, then summarises how these parts of the nervous system develop with reference to early attachment experiences. Hill then moves on to using these interpersonal neurobiology frameworks to describe common pathologies and symptoms in relational trauma, summarises mentalisation theory, and at the end provides some practical examples of rupture and repair in adult therapy (ie how the insecure attachment underlying relational trauma symptoms can be repaired in the therapeutic relationship).
In this way Affect Regulation Theory provides a kind of capstone or grand integration of cutting edge psychological approaches to date, tying together broad swathes of research that are often less accessible and more academically dense or scientific in structure and language.
If you are going to read one interpersonal neurobiology book, make it this one.
Szubanski is an unexpectedly fantastic writer and this memoir is about her whole family with herself as a product of that family. It holds its own even when you take it as a family story removed from celebrity. It particularly focuses on Szubanski's formative relationship with her father, who was an assassin in the Polish resistance during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw in WWII. Szubanski weaves the stories of both her parents together with the story of her own childhood and the development of her own psychological schemas, habits, sense of humour, queer idenitity, and public persona. I listened to the audiobook via the ABC Listen App where Australians can listen to Szubanski herself read it.
Simple light read well written in straight-forward accessible language. 4 starts and not 3.5 because of the personal resonance. Getting more and more into Alice Oseman. Engaging & relatable characters drive a plot that balances elements of realism while avoiding traumatic emotional manipulation or unnecessarily dark plot devices.
This book is just incredible. It's in this third book of the series that Ferrante's masterstrokes as a writer really become clear. As a reader you see how the stories and experiences of the characters in the previous two books have been illustrated to pave the way and lend an emotional gravitas, visceral realism and acuity to Ferrante's social commentary and observations in Book III without sacrificing nuance.
There's no heavyhandedness here. Instead of the emotional and personal plot elements being sacrified for clunky righteous statements, the poignant personal plot elements and character relationships enrich and in turn are elevated by meta-narratives of social and political themes; there is a balance and carefully woven realism that is utterly distinct and which I can't remember having witnesses a writer balance so deftly. This alone places Ferrante in the firmament of the a contemporary literary canon.
In this book I also really began to see Ferrante's qualities as a writer in how she preserves the consistency of the narrator Lenu's voice, but has imbued each book's a perspective and expression befitting her age and stage of life. We see Lenu's emotional intensity, acute observational skills, imagination, and simple naivete in Book I, and the pace of life is sped up and chaotic and exciting in Book II, here in Book III, Lenu begins to draw more complex inferences as she places herself within a wider world and begins to integrate and apply her theoretical and abstract knowledge to her own life (albeit blind spots and hypocrisy notwithstanding).
It was this book that also really began to resonate with my own experience as a AFAB reader in a more distinct and profound way. I couldn't believe how much of Lenu and Lila were in me and the women in my life.
More books like this please! It's great that it exists & more people should read ut. What it's saying should not be revolutionary but unfortunately for many, it will. Many readers will find reassurance & information that should have been accessible to them a long time ago. As far as self-help books go, it does use legit research & contains some useful exercises! Therapists should read it!
Disappointing to see the second and third parts of this tale descend into a tale which unashamedly prioritised the male characters' stories & completely sidelined the women characters until their narrative roles dwindled to bit parts serving the development of male characters. Whole key aspects of plot & narratives essential to the story are just abandoned & never resolved.
The story too just became unnecessarily bogged down in the tedious & odious details of military manoeuvring & violent resolutions
I liked it, but it didn't feel special. It was a story that you wanted to get to the end of and evocative of the time, but lyricism and poeticism in the writing was rare.
It was dark, and murky, and there was little lightness, hope, or deeper meaning to the story, for me.
I appreciate its historical accuracy and the research this story was built on. I'm probably more interested in historical fiction from other parts of the world.
Mostly read it because it's by an Australian woman writer.
It was with anticipation that I sat down to read Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries. I did so not long after it was announced that the young author had won the Man Booker Prize in 2013. I was excited to be reading a novel so acclaimed, yet written by a young woman, of similar age and similar antipodean extraction to myself. As an astrology enthusiast, I was also curious to see how Catton had executed a plot structured according to astrological sensibilities.
Although the book is dense - definitely a ‘doorstopper' in the traditional sense- I found the narrative engrossing and compelling. In brief, The Luminaries is a murder-mystery set in nineteenth century New Zealand. For the most part, events take place in a weatherbeaten and isolated town built upon the gold rush and its surrounding coastal region. Everyone is looking to make something of the boom, though all in their own ways.
Catton's cast of characters are positioned to represent both the planets and the twelve zodiac signs, and their personalities designed to manifest their respective astrological traits. Not only the characters in Catton's novel, but all the story's events are written to correspond to the stars' position in the heavens. In this way, one chapter may manifest the square of Uranus in Capricorn and Venus in Pisces, for example. And there is another layer, that is evident to the reader as they progress, which is that the length of the chapters themselves are measured to correspond to the waxing and waning of the lunar cycle.
There is no denying the structural genius and penetrative research that Catton demonstrates in this work. Though with all the focus on timing and astrology, I felt that perhaps an element of the human was lost in the emphasis on the engines of fate, so to speak. At times I felt it difficult to connect to characters, not least because Catton's chosen style, though executed with great grace, necessitated shifting the narrative from one character's experience to another's. In terms of astrology too, the characters were restricted to wholly manifesting almost one sign or planet exclusively, rather than a more realist portrayal of nuanced influences that modern astrology generally takes. There was a dryness to the story, I felt, and a magic left out of it, for all the calculation. I was never transported, or truly moved. This is not to say I don't admire Catton's breaking of new ground. Reading it was quite a rigorous exercise - in all senses, but one which I nevertheless was happy to partake in, though it fell short of my high expectations.
Could not get through the first couple of chapters. Mostly because: casual racism. The fact that Tartt repeatedly feels the need to keep referring to minor characters using weird vague nondescriptive labels like “small Asian man” and reinforcing cultural stereotypes. Blergh.
The only information “Asian” provides is something regarding appearance - & even then not much. Why? WHY?
Really cool premise, disappointing plot direction. Weirdly for Winterson, unempowering in a feminist sense.
I loved this book so much. I thought the first half was the best written and I relished the combination of gleeful abandon and authenticity, gravitas and flip, fierce love, gentle grace, rollicking adventure and audacious poeticism that make Winterson such a wonderful writer.
“Sexing the Cherry” is definitely the literary relative/offspring of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and Winterson is in many respects, a worthy heir to her vision, albeit with a more earthy, humour-filled, action-oriented voice. There is less logic, less careful observation, and more pure feeling, provocation, and chaotic life here. Somewhere between the Dog Woman and the boy Jordan we can locate Orlando plainly, despite appearances.
This masterpiece is written like water - the rhythms of its words, moving and flowing back and forth in time, and characters that bleed into each other - ‘real life' and imagination, illusion, delusion are indistinct, and the distinction is irrelevant. This book is Neptune incarnate. It is brilliant, brutal, beautiful, bewildering, horrifying and fascinating.
Its brilliance is in its evocation of the true timbre of colonial Tasmania that treads the knife-edge between a fictionalised baroque fantasy and historical record.
Immediate Australian classic. Bit tough-going at times, but crazy piece of genius storytelling.
That this book is a page-turner is undeniable. There is suspense, romance, coming of age. I kind of expected, given the subject material of the Iliad, for it to be sad and violent and martial, and it was. I guess that's what I found difficult and for this reason I didn't enjoy it as I did Miller's Circe. Circe was more relatable to me in that the adaptation figured a way around the extremes of patriarchy and had more hope.
I'm glad I read it but I didn't find it satisfying or hopeful.
3.5. Meandering and slow building, but in the end warming and quietly wholesome. Topical messages for the contemporary South Korean zeitgeist of escaping the capitalist ratrace and emancipation from older norms of traditional marriage.
Really loved this. The characters are complex and written well, and it's a rollicking adventure that relishes the chaotic melting pot of the times. A little bit salacious in the way that tv series writing can be these days, in latter parts I actually felt like I was reading something designed for contemporary TV audiences of the kind that love Outlander, Vikings, and other historical adventure series. It's perfect for TV adaptation and I hope that reports of a production beginning will come to bear.
I loved the richness of the language and linguistic plays. Good mix of shock, humour, romance, drama, intrigue, whilst not compromising literary merit or stretching, too far, the bounds of historical accuracy.