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 ]

Other news stories related to: "What We're Reading – April 2019"


Humor Is the Dominant Note: On James McBride’s “Deacon King Kong”

A MAJOR FEATURE of the African-American writer James McBride’s books — beginning with the memoir The Color of Water (1995), a tribute to his white mother — is the large dose of humor injected into subjects that are, on the face of things, deadly serious if not sacred. Here in The Color of Water... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-03-18 19:00:39 UTC ]
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Hodder to publish memoir by YouTuber Calum McSwiggan

Hodder has acquired a celebrity memoir, Eat, Gay, Love, by the YouTube star and radio presenter Calum McSwiggan.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-17 11:41:15 UTC ]
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A Stirring Family Saga Tells a Taboo History of Vietnam

“The Mountains Sing,” the first novel in English by the Vietnamese poet Nguyen Phan Que Mai, imagines her country’s traumatic 20th century through the stories of three generations of women. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2020-03-17 09:00:13 UTC ]
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The Ghost Writer: An Author Imagines a Letter From Her Late Grandmother

“Nobody Will Tell You This but Me,” a memoir by Bess Kalb, traces her family history from the Russian pogroms to the American dream. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2020-03-17 09:00:08 UTC ]
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Greta Thunberg’s family memoir sends an urgent message to us all, especially moms

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[ The Washington Post | 2020-03-16 16:00:00 UTC ]
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New memoir from Rupert Everett to Little, Brown

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[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-15 15:05:18 UTC ]
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A Gay Man Remembers His Awakening, as AIDS Shook His World

Paul Lisicky, author of “Later: My Life at the Edge of the World,” talks about Provincetown, the challenges of memoir and learning not to suppress anger. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2020-03-15 09:00:05 UTC ]
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What It's Like To Be A Black Widow

Leslie Gray Streeter's memoir about grief is funny, sad and real. When a critic said it wasn’t “top shelf,” she said, "I was like, 'I’m the mid-price vodka of memoirs.'" Continue reading at HuffPost

[ HuffPost | 2020-03-14 10:00:03 UTC ]
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Book Deals: Week of March 16, 2020

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-03-13 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Rebecca Solnit on the Intersection of Activism and Writing

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[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-12 08:49:53 UTC ]
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Jamie Redknapp memoir to Headline

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[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-11 22:25:10 UTC ]
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Writing a Family Memoir When Your Grandfather was Stalin’s Bodyguard

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[ The New York Times | 2020-03-11 16:29:22 UTC ]
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Rebecca Solnit’s Memoir Is Much More Than a Feminist Manifesto

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[ New Yorker | 2020-03-11 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Human rights lawyer's Parting Words sweeps through Europe

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[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-10 23:17:05 UTC ]
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HarperCollins buys memoir of Holocaust survivor who drew Auschwitz as child

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[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-10 19:10:45 UTC ]
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The Cover of My Face

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[ Guernica | 2020-03-10 12:00:35 UTC ]
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Woody Allen memoir may still go ahead in France, despite controversy

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[ The Guardian | 2020-03-09 14:57:23 UTC ]
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HBG drops Woody Allen memoir

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[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-08 18:31:06 UTC ]
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Stephen King attacks axing of Woody Allen book

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[ The Guardian | 2020-03-08 08:10:29 UTC ]
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Publisher drops Allen memoir after employees protest

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[ Crains New York | 2020-03-06 23:58:20 UTC ]
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