What We're Reading – April 2019

Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado I've absolutely loved this collection of short stories, which floats between the weird and the queer, passing horror, black comedy and feminism along the way. Doubles and others are especially important: a wife enters her wife’s dream when they are apart; a girlfriend fades until her girlfriend accidentally falls through her in bed. Most noticeably, in the magnificent story ‘Especially Heinous’, detectives Stabler and Benson from Law & Order: SVU meet Abler and Henson, who always get to the crime scene first but do nothing about the beautiful murdered girls whose deaths fuel most episodes of Law & Order: SVU. Machado’s stories are direct, fast-paced, and funny, yet there’s always a slow-moving malevolence to them, a hidden seriousness, a careful confusion, and a sense of meaning that’s just out of reach for the characters. I can’t wait for her second book – a memoir – to be published later this year. Swithun Cooper, Research and Information Manager   Ordinary People, by Diana Evans Just shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Ordinary People is the story of two couples in the second flush of marriage, wondering about where their lives together are going and what compromises they’ll have to make along the way. It’s also a love-letter to London, and to the music of John Legend. I’m enjoying Diana Evans’ lyrical writing style and in depth exploration of her characters inner lives, their frustrations and complex... Continue reading at 'British Council global'

[ British Council global | 2019-04-11 08:49:28 UTC ]

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Book Deals: Week of April 5, 2021

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Faber snaps up Tony King memoir

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21 Books for the 21st Century: The Longlist, by The Editors of WLT

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Hunter Biden’s singular memoir of grief and addiction

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Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo writing memoir about 'never giving up'

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A Quest to Reclaim a Family Home Unearths a Past Buried by the Holocaust

In “Plunder,” a memoir by Menachem Kaiser, the author tries to repossess a building owned by his grandfather before the war and discovers a history he knew nothing about. Continue reading at The New York Times

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In ‘Shaking the Gates of Hell,’ a preacher’s son examines his church’s culture of silence on civil rights

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Meg Mason | 'I hope that you get the sense that it is everybody’s tragedy'

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Book Review: ‘Model Citizen,’ by Joshua Mohr

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Book Deals: Week of March 8, 2021

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In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun,’ a robot tries to make sense of humanity

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