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Book Review – Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good tells the stories of Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie, taken from their families as young children to be placed in a church-run residential school. Eventually discharged at different times and sent away on the cusp of an adulthood they are in no way prepared for, their journeys converge…
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Book Review – Cocktail Bar by Norah Hoult
Cocktail Bar by Norah Hoult is a collection of short stories first published in 1950 and, while the language, and social and historical references, sometimes clearly place this in times gone by, there are aspects of the social commentary, and meditations on young love and community dynamics, that could be much more recent. And this…
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Book Review – Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
Based on historical facts, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent is the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland in 1830. Condemned to death for her part in the murder of two men, with no prisons in Iceland at the time, Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to…
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Book Review – Florida by Lauren Groff
Florida by Lauren Groff is a strange, atmospheric, unsettling and absolutely captivating collection of short stories. While the book blurb says it’s the landscape, climate, history and state of mind of the titular American State that binds these stories, the overarching element permeating most of this collection is Florida’s extreme weather, terrain and wildlife, used…
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Book Review – Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Fresh off listening to Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I loved, I downloaded the audiobook of Half of a Yellow Sun, which won her the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2007. This was also read by Adjoa Andoh, who read the last one so beautifully. Half of a Yellow Sun, set in 1960s Nigeria,…
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Book Review – Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
The watchers below pulled in their breath all at once. The air felt suddenly shared. The man above was a word they seemed to know, though they had not heard it before. Out he went. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann is a bold and vibrant novel exploring the lives of eight very…
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Book Review – Falling Animals by Sheila Armstrong
Falling Animals is a novel that reads as a finely woven series of linked stories that are all part of one greater story, a chorus of voices each adding a piece of the puzzle in the mystery of an unidentified dead man who appears on the beach of a seaside town; each character in some…
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Book Review – Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson opens at the beginning of a hot summer that will change everything for our narrator, Stephen, and his friends; school is finished, capturing that moment between childhood and adulthood with all its uncertainty and potential, and the future is both frightening and exciting. By the end of this summer…
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Book Review – A Constant Hum by Alice Bishop
A Constant Hum by Alice Bishop is a collection of short stories that capture the devastation of lives and landscapes, the losses suffered and the voids created, the fear of the immediate future and the hope for healing, following a series of Australian bushfires. The searing heat, the smell of smoke and the taste of…
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Book Review – Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a moving story of a love tested by time, distance and circumstance, but it’s also so much more than that. At 17 hours audio/around 400 pages, this is a sweeping and epic novel embodying so much and exploring so many themes; love, identity and personal evolution, the different relationships…
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The Resting Willow 