imogenrose97's reviews
445 reviews

Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts by Claire Donato

adventurous mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Though this was a short story collection most stories felt like a muddy continuation of the next, dropping dirt crumbles into the next story, leeching themes and a sense of pressure akin to sleeping under a weighted blanket. Though I just read the book I am unable to remember the first half as I grew tired of the sameness, the writing was strong but seemed to be repetitive to me. I do think that this was intentional, it just did not work for me.
I was about to DNF when a new portion began. The second half included a collection from one perspective and writing that took a new form. The descriptions of cooking, particularly the bracketed descriptions of colour or type or even just the feeling that the ingredient gave our narrator. This portion saved the book for me and allowed me to get through to the end.

Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is my second Yiyun Li of 2024 and absolutely my favourite. Exploring loss through language, dissecting suicide of a loved one from the perspective of someone who's felt the same. I couldn't get over how kind the protagonist was to her son through their written dialogue after he took his life at 16, I expected more pushing for responsibility to be taken, more animosity or asking for answers from a son that was no longer there. Instead I was meet with kindness and understanding about making a choice that she didn't even argue against. There was no resistance to why. This book touched so many sore spots and left me devastated but in awe. The empathy between mother and son cradled my heart, I'm not even sure how to explain the feeling. It's so rare to find discussions of mental health that are so objectively written, especially from a mother's perspective. Without blame. So often mental illness feels like something you're carrying around as a huge burden to those around you, like you've done something wrong. It felt gratifying to have someone so close to her son be so forgiving of his choice. To understand that the pain of living was too much and to give voice to the complex intricacies between living a good life, full of joy and good hobbies and strong community around you and the cold empty pain of depression. It's hard for even his mother to fault his choice.
The use of language, words and their origins, was beautiful and a perfect addition to the book.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide and Mental illness

The Third Love by Hiromi Kawakami

dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Hiromi Kawakami is one of my must read authors, her style and focus change dramatically between books and I'm always surprised by her dexterity to do so. Third Love examined the veils that love throws up over first love, how difficult it is to learn who you yourself are inside and outside of an all consuming love, and how love changes over the course of the lives of those involved. This was done in a highly unusual way, through time travelling dreams. This was both very interesting and sometimes a little boring for me. It's probably not my favourite story telling device but I enjoyed how it impacted the characters, how getting to experience more changes the way you love. At the heart of this is the lesson that while you are young you might not understand so deeply the intricacies of relationships. That as time moves forward you learn and reflect on how you have loved and how others need different versions of love to thrive in a relationship.

Blue Horses by Mary Oliver

emotional funny inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

5.0

I've challenged myself to read a book of poetry a month and it has so far been so fullfilling. It's so interesting to explore poetry in different styles and actually try to find pieces I enjoy. Mary Oliver has stolen my whole heart, as I'm sure she has many others. I had to start reading a second book so that I would slow down and get to savour each poem as they deserved. 
I'm struck by how gleefully Oliver writes the world around her, I've never felt so much joy come through nature writing as so often it's tied to climate change, which whole pressing is not always hopeful. I've already bought myself another collection of hers to read this year and I'm so excited to delve in.

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

2.5

Gripped from the beginning I deeply enjoyed the first half of this book. The writing is bold and introspective, and the characters are vivid and visceral. Our main character Joana is rough and independent, not understanding her place in the world as a young woman who follows her whims without a care for those around her. I found the first half to be much stronger writing than the second, the first half was clear and the stream of conscious style worked in conjunction with a child narrator. By the second half, the writing became muddy and convoluted. Strings of words that felt too heavy to bear, I ended up skimming the pages to find my way to the end. I lost the sense of clarity the beginning had held and that unfortunately made the second half of the book a bit of a drag. I'm interested to read some of her other work as she has a clear talent.

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

adventurous dark emotional funny lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

 Both hilarious and gut twistingly tense, Big Swiss holds you over the precipice of a catastrophe coming from too many sides to count. Everyone is either lying, stalking or hiding something from someone else and I couldn't tell which fallout would be the worst.
At face value, Big Swiss is a story of an ill advised affair, though aren't they all, this one to be fair is ill advised on more than one front. I don't think I expected to be so confronted by mistakes I have made myself, mistakes that you aren't told are mistakes until you are too deep to turn back, mistakes I think society should take more responsibility for righting.  I wont go into these mistakes as I think that they'll be too much of a spoiler for the true narrative of the book. The unexplained heart.


I found the discussions around trauma so interesting, "victims say all trauma is equal and I hate that" was a particularly difficult to navigate quote, the space that those who have experienced trauma try to make for those around them to me is deeply beautiful, there is no way for trauma to be measured and something happening to one person could be completely, and validly, interpreted so differently than someone else. I think that Big Swiss was so caught in not letting her experience shape her that she let it become so much larger of an issue. Greta however embodies the victim, she has not processed the trauma that shaped her, she allows it to inform all her decisions. Both responses make perfect sense under the lens of trauma, its what they do with it now that is important. 
 

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

 You spend so much of this book unaware of what CM and X's relationship is like, glimpsing parts of X, and witnessing CM amid her grief. It's hard to get a glimpse of who either are inside of the relationship. I think that this hooked me, I couldn't understand CM's attraction outside of the natural urge to touch a flame burning bright. Which to be fair, is an extraordinarily hard urge to quell. X seemed to be running purely on her feelings in each moment rather than accepting that each action had consequences that would drip long into her future. She made choices that severely impacted her growth, reputation and access not only as an artist and creative but as a friend and partner. It was hard to tell whether she knew that these things would happen or if she blindly walked in the world. What was shown of X was so hard to decipher, we know so much about her actions but due to not ever being inside her head, not ever being able to hear her true thoughts and definitely not being able to trust her actions, words or even her diary entries, we're left with a splintered half person who is reckless and cruel and treats people like they are a cast of pawns to use at her artistic whim.
CM was a whole other kettle of fish, she is fearful, jealous and wary of people who knew X before she did, somehow equating a mysterious past with betrayal of her known relationship and love (though X proves that even a relationship already well established does nothing to quell her thirstless want for more). 
Beyond their relationship the book focused on a fictionalised history of America that intrigued me so much. I thought it provided the perfect backdrop for a messy love and the deeply complexly flawed person shaped by her past. 
 

A Mountain to the North, A Lake to The South, Paths to the West, A River to the East by László Krasznahorkai
Did not finish book. Stopped at 28%.

It got too slow. I wasn't interested in the writing style. I couldn't get into the depictions of nature even though that's very much up my alley. It just wasn't the book for me

Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

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? Yes

4.0

 At first reading was difficult and cringey but I don't read a lot of YA so that makes sense. As I grew more comfortable with the writing style it became just so gorgeous and sweet and toe curlingly gay. By the end I was drawing so many comparisons between Isabel and I and Eloise and my partner Emma. The author wrote everything so incredibly, with flaws and all. I just can't get over how incredibly kindly she wrote the reactions and where I might have used black and white thinking to absolutely fuck one of their rude friends right off out of my life, they were different and it was beautiful 

Valentino by Natalia Ginzburg

funny lighthearted reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Natalia Ginzburg has an incredible power to write basic situations beautifully, with elegance and humility. People who you might have thought might otherwise be intolerable are written with an unexpected kindness. Ginzburg puts people on display and does not judge them for who they are. I think that's what is most striking in her works—the ability to let people be without writing judgment into the story. You are made to decide who they are yourself, you are made to admonish their behaviours yourself without the help of Ginzburg's own opinion. Though the characters themselves judge the others it does not feel as though Ginzburg always agrees.