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belinda_chisholm's review
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
shibbyy's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
theverticalbookshelf's review
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
I have had this on my saved instagram posts for a long time. I saw a review from Pauline Is Reading and generally that’s all I need.
This book surprised me, it is character driven and whilst I felt towards the end I needed more, it was engaging and effortless.
The story follows differing cultures, differing life experiences. The real life of living in a share house, where dishes are left undone and cleaning is the last thing of everyone’s list. Trying to understand how everyone lives, in and out during the day and night. LIke ships in the night. Hard to create deep and meaningful friendships. This story beautifully describes the inner-city life. The gentrification, the housing situations, the people. I felt like I wanted to know more about these fleeting characters. Bedford does an incredible job of telling the story of those who sit on the edge of marginalised groups.
Bedford also builds a beautiful emotional journey with the main character and her father. The relationship is strong and just, well, beautiful. It’s true love in all of its glory. It took my heart. HIghly recommend.
turtletats's review
3.0
I enjoyed this cause I grew up in Sydney, but other than that I found it pretty forgettable. For me it didn't explore grief with any depth.
bibliolucinda's review
4.0
“I heard once that you start to feel a kinship for a place when you have lost a loved one in its soil, and so, ashes to ashes, I am bound to this sunburnt land.”
This book follows a group of friends living in Redfern, Sydney, each verging on the cusp of their 30s and processing the anxiety and insecurity that comes with early adulthood. In the midst of dealing with the loss of her father and the changing shape of her relationships with her friends, our narrator is navigating everyday life in the city, alongside her own loneliness and evolving sense of self. She is searching for a connection or anchor to meaning and purpose, in the face of reconciling with her grief, amidst ever transient, shifting surroundings.
“...I think about the jerking woman with all her stretchy cuts, and her glass stare, and how all of us have sea creatures swimming in our heads, and I feel sad that she had no one to talk with, like I did, to make her pain fall away.”
I loved the structure of this book - we follow the narrator across the seasons through individual vignettes that are introspective and lyrical in style. Bedford’s writing and her protagonist’s processing of time, loss and the idea of success felt very relatable. Her meditations on the setting of Sydney also felt very accessible to me, given my own connection to the city. This book considers a life in simultaneous metamorphosis and stasis, the sense of constantly being on the cusp of change or being trapped in equilibrium, a moment in time that all young adults experience.
“The truth about getting older, she says, is you just spend more time watching the same streets and missing people that used to be in them with you.”
Given how tied the characters and story is to the setting of Sydney, I’d be interested to know how readers from other cities / countries have engaged with this one and whether the themes Bedford explores transcend its setting in achieving a universal relatability. It is a beautiful debut novel and great finale for my Aussie April reads!
This book follows a group of friends living in Redfern, Sydney, each verging on the cusp of their 30s and processing the anxiety and insecurity that comes with early adulthood. In the midst of dealing with the loss of her father and the changing shape of her relationships with her friends, our narrator is navigating everyday life in the city, alongside her own loneliness and evolving sense of self. She is searching for a connection or anchor to meaning and purpose, in the face of reconciling with her grief, amidst ever transient, shifting surroundings.
“...I think about the jerking woman with all her stretchy cuts, and her glass stare, and how all of us have sea creatures swimming in our heads, and I feel sad that she had no one to talk with, like I did, to make her pain fall away.”
I loved the structure of this book - we follow the narrator across the seasons through individual vignettes that are introspective and lyrical in style. Bedford’s writing and her protagonist’s processing of time, loss and the idea of success felt very relatable. Her meditations on the setting of Sydney also felt very accessible to me, given my own connection to the city. This book considers a life in simultaneous metamorphosis and stasis, the sense of constantly being on the cusp of change or being trapped in equilibrium, a moment in time that all young adults experience.
“The truth about getting older, she says, is you just spend more time watching the same streets and missing people that used to be in them with you.”
Given how tied the characters and story is to the setting of Sydney, I’d be interested to know how readers from other cities / countries have engaged with this one and whether the themes Bedford explores transcend its setting in achieving a universal relatability. It is a beautiful debut novel and great finale for my Aussie April reads!
jesskuang's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
marrr3na's review
5.0
Are you a millennial living in a big, changing city? Do you want to feel seen in an emotionally painful, almost insultingly accurate kind of way? Read on.
rosa_opie's review
5.0
Relatable, lyrical, and beautifully told, ‘Friends and Dark Shapes’ introduces an unnamed narrator who grapples with the recent loss of her father, leaving her existence divided: she revisits a past in which he lived, yet remains grounded in a present without him. Through sparse yet precise prose, it is not solely a book about grief, it is also a book about becoming; grappling with who you are and who you are growing into being, what you miss and what you desire, the difference between being scrutinised and being seen.
Bedford writes about these themes of identity and transformation, but she digs deeper with her characters surroundings and considers race, class, gender, nature, gentrification, immigration, and the ultimate question of where one belongs. The narrator and her three flatmates inhabit a liminal space: ageing out of youth but without the traditional markers of adulthood like a mortgage, long-term partners, children, or defined career paths- navigating uncertainty, precariously suspended when life is full of change.
Made up of vignettes (<3) which hurt my heart almost every time, ‘Friends and Dark Shapes’ encapsulates the very essence of human experience. It captures the intricate interplay between how we shape our environments and how we are moulded by them, as well as the harsh reality that life sometimes thrusts into places and situations we wouldn’t necessarily choose, which in turn become our entire world.
Bedford writes about these themes of identity and transformation, but she digs deeper with her characters surroundings and considers race, class, gender, nature, gentrification, immigration, and the ultimate question of where one belongs. The narrator and her three flatmates inhabit a liminal space: ageing out of youth but without the traditional markers of adulthood like a mortgage, long-term partners, children, or defined career paths- navigating uncertainty, precariously suspended when life is full of change.
Made up of vignettes (<3) which hurt my heart almost every time, ‘Friends and Dark Shapes’ encapsulates the very essence of human experience. It captures the intricate interplay between how we shape our environments and how we are moulded by them, as well as the harsh reality that life sometimes thrusts into places and situations we wouldn’t necessarily choose, which in turn become our entire world.
_mary's review
5.0
This is an excellent snapshot of the millennial generation. Even though this takes place in Sydney, and I'm in the US, I identified with a lot of it. I also loved her descriptions of grief and how true they felt.