Morgan Rae
This wasn't a horrible read, it was quick and held my attention. If you read The Hotel Nantucket and wished Alexandra's escapades lasted an entire novel, you'll love this.
This book follows our protagonist (Alex) as she repeatedly attempts and fails to make a singular good choice. Her life unravels of her own doing, and despite having the foresight to know she's about to dig herself into an even deeper hole, she is (again and again) powerless to stop herself. It is something of an homage to being exactly 23, to being ruled by the child-like desperation for power over your own life. It is a testament to what happens when you live as if there is only ever and always tomorrow.
The beginning of the book moves pretty quickly, Alex makes and loses friends in a matter of pages. She falls in and out of peoples lives, convincing herself each time that as long as she can “get through” and make it “to the next thing” she will be okay. And somehow she does ! There's a large, dark subplot that looms throughout the book but never comes to fruition. Or maybe we're supposed to imagine how it comes to fruition. Either way, I felt the vague and menacing threat was sloppy writing – ~ooh she owes someone money and he ? might hurt her? has already hurt her? knows where she is somehow but never actually shows? the repeated calls / texts were effective early in the novel, but the subplot never grew wings or developed any interesting motivations of its own, so I got bored. By the end I was hoping Dom would pop up just for some intrigue.
The most compelling part of this, to me, was that the book seemed to be the memoir of someone battling intense delusions. When Alex is abruptly “let go” by her May-December boyfriend, she seems to believe his break up is actually a soft “talk to me in a few days”. She is essentially homeless for ? two weeks ? as she tries to stay in their island paradise long enough to sneak back into his end-of-summer party. In the last pages of the book, she walks across the island in her silk party dress for what seems to be miles. She throws away her phone. She gets injured. She looks 0% “the part”. And yet she persists, manifesting that if she can only get to the party, he will take her back.
I like to imagine he does, but I guess we'll never know :)
This book is my new number one, it is in a class of its own.
“Held” chronicles several generations of a family as they endure, remain, outlast, love, and lose. It makes plain how little we keep from generation to generation, and how repeatable the lessons we learn are. Each snapshot finds a new way to describe a love so unique, so fated, that it could only come about once in a lifetime, and a loss so profound that to bear it twice would be deadly.
The beginning reads like a piece of historical fiction, but as the book evolves it becomes surrealist; lines blur between fact and fiction, and characters unknowingly winnow themselves into ruts paved by their great, great grandparents, contending with the same questions of spirituality, meaning, life-after-death, what it means to be remembered, what it means to be forgotten.
Michaels stretches and compresses the length of a lifetime, showing how few years any one of us has, even in the best of circumstances, and how impactful that time can be. We also see how slowly science and biological understanding move across generations, and how a lack of education leaves one generation with no more information than the one three or four prior. It doesn't matter if humanity has landed on the moon, or figured out evolution, if it's never communicated to you.
If you read one book this year, let it be this one.
A very slow and winding whodunit situated in rural Ireland. I enjoyed it and found the writing pleasant, but the plot was almost unbearably slow. I'd say the majority of the action happens ~75% of the way in. It also resolves rather quickly which was dissatisfying (though not enough to DNF it). The main plot ties itself into a nice bow at the end, but the sub plots are unresolved.
French is very good at leading the reader to water / showing-not-telling. That said there were several chunks where I had to push myself to keep reading despite massive confusion. French is in cahoots with the characters, and they're having a joke at your expense. The joke is that you don't know what the telltale signs of a meth lab are :)
The writing can also get repetitive, sometimes it feels intentional as our main character is a bit of a bumbling cop type who ~”analyses the world around him for threats”, “is always on high alert”, etc. except for when he's getting ambushed in his own driveway.
It wasn't so scary that I couldn't sleep after reading it before bed, but it does have an eeriness to it. French does an excellent job of giving the scenery its due. You can feel the mist.
Quite good, a masterclass in foreshadowing. It does an excellent job of engaging with moralism without being too religiously motivated.
This reads like the beginning of a longer novel, but ends before it gets too predictable and unwieldy. I wish there was a bit more historical context woven in, as I wasn't familiar with Irish Laundries before this (nor was the wikipedia page on the Magdalene Laundry super detailed). Still, excellent writing with characters that are modern enough to be relatable but unplagued by technology and modern drama. This book has a sense of being removed from time, which I enjoyed.
Read this in one sitting, I was so belligerently hopeful for a twist that I could not put it down. The narration is simple by design, which was a bit grating at first but grew on me as I read.
It checks my “leaves me with more questions than answers” box, which makes it at least 3 stars and I was left wanting more, which makes it 4.
I like Rooney but I wouldn't call myself a super fan. After reading 3 of her works in quick succession, I think this one sticks out for its deep and complex discussion of grief, as well as its delightfully stream-of-consciousness narrative structure.
I wish it ended with more-to-be imagined; it wrapped up a little too neatly for my taste.
Though I liked the storyline well enough, I didn't find it compelling. It was fairly predictable which didn't drive me to pick it up and it took a while for me to get through it.
