March 13, 2022
I went into this one not knowing what to expect as I’d been seeing it on every book channel on social media and what struck me was that people who
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March 13, 2022
Rachel’s Holiday is a quick read but one populated with those signature laughs which Keyes is famous for. So go on, read this one (and why not Keyes’ entire backlist
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February 1, 2022
I felt ready for this read and, ultimately, it was everything I wanted it to be: easy, accessible and heart-breaking – oh, so heart-breaking.
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January 26, 2022
This is one of my very anticipated reads for 2022. I wouldn’t call myself an Allende fan but A Long Petal of the Sea changed the way I looked at
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January 20, 2022
It’s not often you find a book like Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It is a novel you will get lost in your world blurring slowly at the edges
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Preloved Book Box
I went into this one not knowing what to expect as I’d been seeing it on every book channel on social media and what struck me was that people who I really do love following and whose recommendations I take to heart, really loved this one. After all the rave reviews, it felt a no-brainer.
About the Book
An unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Crying in H Mart does what it says on the cover and it’s powerful. Maybe it wasn’t Zauner’s intention but, beyond that power, there’s a kind of magic to this book that makes it hypnotising. I was utterly mesmerised from the first line. Crying in H Mart doesn’t have the cheeriest of themes – it’s this love letter, a means of coping with losing one’s mother, that anchor in every woman’s childhood and life. While this was a quick read for a theme so deeply personal and sad, at the heart of this little artichoke of a book,  you find these themes that just pierce you to your core: tradition, identity, motherhood, love, family (the complexities of that), race, belonging, childhood, food and history – and Crying in H Mart explores these themes in varying degrees.
Zauner’s writing is incredible, unlike anything I’ve encountered before. She brings you in with descriptions of food so vivid you’d swear you could taste it, and smells which somehow seem to lift off the page. You’re there, ready to feel the truth of losing your mother, and everything else that comes in tow. The raw honesty of writing about your parent’s flaws, of listing them and putting them on display has a way of showing you where you fall as an adult because of their mistakes and decisions.
This is a wonderful, honest memoir. One that I’d absolutely recommend to anyone for its uncanny beauty.
5 out of 5 stars
This review copy was purchased from Amazon Kindle Store. Published by Pan Macmillan.
So, if you know me – as in really know me – you’d know that I’ve been a Marian Keyes fan since Anybody Out There was shoved into my hands by a night-staff colleague when I worked for Exclusive Books. I did what I could to make my way through her backlist—never quite making it—till a new one came along. So, as a confession: I do have a few gaps. I think the only set of books I have multiple covers of besides Harry Potter, is Marian Keyes. When her new book Again, Rachel (out now!) was announced I knew I had to get into it ASAP.
About the Book
Meet Rachel Walsh. She has a pair of size 8 feet and such a fondness for recreational drugs that her family has forked out the cash for a spell in Cloisters – Dublin’s answer to the Betty Ford Clinic. She’s only agreed to her incarceration because she’s heard that rehab is wall-to-wall jacuzzies, gymnasiums and rock stars going tepid turkey – and it’s about time she had a holiday.
But what Rachel doesn’t count on are the toe-curling embarrassments heaped on her by family and group therapy, the dearth of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll – and missing Luke, her ex. What kind of a new start in life is this?
Rachel’s Holiday starts off like the quintessential 90’s rom-com novel (I refuse to call it ‘chick-lit’ and, if you ask me why, I’ll send you my thesis) and it’s got a cookie-cutter plot of a fallen woman (the bildungsroman for the female – bildungsromana, anyone?). Also on display we have the self-deprecating humour which we laugh at but, when those lights go off, we find ourselves identifying with. So, when Rachel Walsh arrives at a rehabilitation centre, a place where she’s convinced she’ll meet celebrities, spend hours by a pool, and eat endless buffets, she discovers she’s made a horrible mistake. And it’s something which she’s angry at herself for.
And yes, as this one started, I found myself feeling disappointed. I remembered Keyes’ writing as the voice of the female. Her stories resonated deep within my soul; yet, here was Rachel constantly bashing her body, behaving childishly, lashing out, hating everyone, while still try so very hard to be liked.
I reflected on Rachel’s character and then, when it finally did hit me… it hit me hard. Rachel is all of us. We do this, us women, we try so unbelievably hard to be liked, desired, and admired; and once I saw this I felt Keyes’ story begin to reveal its true intention. This is a story of addiction, of someone so far gone they’d failed to notice that they were an addict, whose body bashing was an addiction of sorts too. Add to this the binging, the men, the need to never be alone.
Keyes is known for and has talked (and written) about her own addiction to alcohol and so it would make sense she drew on that. Though I don’t know for sure that that’s what happened with Rachel’s Holiday, I like to think this story makes Keyes (her number 1 fan that I am) that much more attainable, more real, more human.
Rachel’s Holiday is a quick read but one populated with those signature laughs which Keyes is famous for. However, once you strip away the humour and those lights go out, watch out for that gut-punch which leaves you face to face with reality and the heartache of addiction and trauma. It’s done so very subtly and wonderfully that you might almost miss it.
So go on, read this one (and why not Keyes’ entire backlist while you’re at it?).
4 out of 5 stars
This review copy was purchased from Exclusive Books. Published by Penguin Random House.
Not only did this particular novel come with a lot of hype, it also left the book world bewildered –see what I did there? On a serious note, the Booker shortlisting of this title really pushed it on all platforms, putting it pretty much everywhere. If you’re anything like me you might feel somewhat intimidated by the Booker shortlist. A list that, in the past, selected books so highbrow and dense that you might have required a membership to a fancy golf club while sporting a moustache. It’s only in recent years that I’ve really started to enjoy reading from the Booker shortlist. Maybe my reading has grown, my intellect sharpened, or perhaps the list has just become more accessible. I’d like to think the latter, as the list is slowly—it’s not there yet—starting to represent more black authors, more female authors and, hopefully, more queer authors as the years tick on. I felt ready for this read and, ultimately, it was everything I wanted it to be: easy, accessible and heart-breaking – oh, so heart-breaking.
 About the Book
A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain….
With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’ most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperilled planet?
Have you ever read a book where you’re sitting there happily, just enjoying wherever it is the author seems to be taking you? Being led on, full trusting—so much so that letting down your guard feels like it might be the right thing to do. Don’t do that with this book.
Richard Powers has this talent where, through his prose, he’s able to lure the reader in. He presents you with a hooded figure in the darkness who, simply because he’s smiling at you, seems deserving of your trust and—oh, boy—once he has that, he proceeds to rip your heart to shreds with his beautiful writing and slow burn story.
Bewilderment absolutely deserved its position on the shortlist. It’s a wonderful story of a father-and-son relationship that delves a tad deeper than your average. Theo is a single dad, just barely hanging on; while his son Robin, fascinated with nature, is slowly trying to grapple with the world around him. Both father and son are coping—but only just—after the loss of Theo’s wife and Robin’s mother and, when Robin is expelled from school, teachers there encourage Theo to put him on psychoactive drugs. Theo, not willing to going through with this, instead enrolls Robin in an experimental treatment that trains Robin on the recordings of his mother’s brain. Robin begins to thrive in this treatment and quickly catches the eye of media—something which Theo didn’t want. All he’s after for his son is a life that’s quiet and protected.
Going in, I thought that this book would be laden with jargon and intricate science, all told at arms-length by a father trying not only to grieve his wife but to get his son to cope in a world that’s failing him. I think what struck me most about this novel was the elegant way in which Powers tells this story of a father and a son trying to survive in a disruptive world, leading life as best they can without the rudder of a wife and mother figure. It seems to be that death slowly follows them around.
Bewilderment is told in segments, slices-of-life and, as it nears the end, your heart is slowly left to dissolve in your chest, leaving you sitting in your reading chair wondering how a book could so beautifully, poignantly show you what you haven’t seen, heard, or done.
Please read this, for your soul and because you should.
4 stars out of 5
This review copy was purchased from Takealot. Published by Penguin Random House.
This is one of my most anticipated reads for 2022. I wouldn’t call myself an Allende fan but A Long Petal of the Sea changed the way I looked at and read Allende. I was of the small few that thought her writing ‘too big’ for me. A literary giant that I wasn’t qualified to read. It’s obviously nonsense because she is extremely accessible as a writer, and A Long Petal of the Sea showed me just how Allende’s writing was so captivating and expansive. Scenes that were slow-burning needed to be slow-burning and scenes that needed rapid-punchy movement got it without any heaviness.
So with ALL that said, Violeta was a book I really and truly wanted to read.
About the Book
This sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea tells the epic story of Violeta del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century.
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.
Through her father’s prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. . . .
She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.
Told through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.
Set in the form of a letter to her grandson, Violeta tells us the reader (and her grandson) of her very colourful life. From the day she was born, through her life of her love, loss of love, scorn, shame, poverty, wealth, motherhood and the ultimate sacrifice she made as a woman. A slight feminist thread runs through this novel, as it weaves the story of one woman living a woman’s life surrounded by men – some who are good to her, and others not so much. As she watches how the world treats her aunts, her mother, her governess, her daughter; but also how the world treats her brothers, father, husband, lovers and her son.
It’s a wonderful vast novel that wraps around you as you slowly sink into the world, smells, colours and culture of South America – urban and rural. This is the perfect cake and tea novel. Not to dumb it down, or strip it of it’s literary weight, but because it’s a novel you sit down with; have a long read and savour it; you lick the spoon, and gather up the crumbs, slowly and elegantly.
It’s a superb novel. One that I would happily recommend to anyone looking for a read that sweeps you up and makes you forget the world around you.
4 out of 5 stars
Thank you to Jonathan Ball Publishers for this copy.
I am spending some time catching up on my reading (and reviewing). I think I have chosen the one book that was (to be cliché) manna from heaven. We were fresh home from the hospital and after no reading during my pregnancy, I was so ready to put my feet up and just read.
It’s not often you find a book like Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It’s a surprising novel, one I thought would be far too complex for me in the throes of having a new baby – I was intimidated to say the least. Interweaving plots and point of views that all thread together, each knotted together with Greek Mythology, as each meet wonderfully and magically at the end of this 600+ page tome. It is a novel you will get lost in, your world blurring slowly at the edges and Doerr’s writing will be the only thing holding your imagination together.
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About the Book
Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.
Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.
A book like Cloud Cuckoo Land doesn’t come by very often. It’s a wonderful story of a story. Four stories are told through Aethon’s, an ancient story of a man wishing for more than he is dealt. Anna, Omeir, Zeno and Seymour, all having to overcome their pasts, futures, and all in the hopes for something more just like Aethon.
Doerr drives the story back to the siege of Constantinople as young Anna finds a book – a story that keeps her going as she reads it to her ill sister. While Omeir, a village boy, with a face abnormality has been discarded his entire life – a curse. Anna and Omeir’s paths cross. Anna running from the horrors of her home and Omeir part of the army that takes Anna’s home from her. Their friendship and journey through the rest of their lives are held tightly together by the story of Aethon’s paradise. You feel like you are right there holding Anna’s hand as her feet hit cobbled ancient streets, and you get on board with Omeir and his mangled face as his wagon jolts towards the war torn city.
Weaving through the story of Omeir and Anna is the story of Zeno, an eighty-year-old man who studied Greek as a prisoner of war, and Seymour, who is a troubled teen who is insistent on saving the world. While Zeno rehearses the story of Aethon (in the form of a play) with a group of children, Seymour plants a bomb in the shelves of the library Zeno and the kids are in. It’s their stories of hurt, heartbreak, life and love that lures the reader into this seemingly complex story. The story moves slowly forward taking you back to Zeno’s father, the wars that Zeno lives through, the pressure to be a hero but also to find love in the most unexpected place (and I don’t mean this to sound cliché, but it is literally the most unexpected place). Seymour’s childhood is sad and Doerr gives him a humanity that you understand why he is doing what he is doing and while you disagree you somehow feel the justification of it all – he gives Seymour humanity – even if it is misguided.
This story moves quickly and slowly through years of life, love and loss. The story of Aethon holding each of these characters together and guiding them slowly through their lives, as each character takes something away from it. There are parts that will sweep you away from your chosen reading place and have you creeping slowly back to the book for more.  Each character is so beautifully told as Doerr carefully constructs each line, dialogue and plot twist – I found that I got more than enough, that no one character got lost for me in this very expansive story. Cloud Cuckoo Land got me out of my very deep reading rut. The book is lovely. Absolutely, delightfully lovely.
This book is everything and you HAVE to read it.
5 out of 5 stars
Thank you to Jonathan Ball Publishers for the copy of this book.