Weeks 17&18
I’ve mashed these weeks together. Last Wednesday, I felt too exhausted from the heat to pull any thoughts together. By the time I felt better (and had the time), it was a Monday evening. As I sit down to edit this one final time before publishing, it’s been almost a month. I’m sorry!
Those 2 weeks: Celebrated! I went to Mark Hoppus’ book tour and could’ve cried with joy. My PC was fixed and sent back to me, and I’ve been downloading and playing the games I’ve missed these past 3 weeks. Forgot how fucking scary clickers in The Last of Us are (OR BLOATERS???), forgot how much I love League of Legends, forgot that I forgot to back up my Sims 4 saves and generations have been lost to a faulty SSD.
I realise a few weeks ago, I left a book out in my weekly round up. I’ll include that book here but I actually finished it on the 31st March!
Soldier, Sailor by Claire Kilroy - 31st March 2025
This took me a while to read. Soldier, Sailor is a novel written from a mother’s point of view, to her son. She is the soldier, he is the sailor.The beginning felt too lyrical, the prose too beautiful for me to actually understand what was happening. We seemed to skirt around things and I couldn’t grasp if things were happening as I understood them to be happening. The second two thirds of this book picked up and were excellent.
The novel is about the all-encompassing nature of motherhood. Motherhood in an unequal partnership. How her partner could switch off, but she couldn’t. How he could get full nights of sleep, but she couldn’t. How she was made to feel like an inadequate parent, but he wasn’t. But the book doesn’t continue down the scorned mother route, and I really appreciated that!
This was well written, and like I said, the last two thirds were excellent in pacing and prose.
Rating: ★★★★★
This Love by Lotte Jeffs
This Love is the kind of novel I should love in theory. Two characters, forever linked, the story spanning decades. The ups and downs of their lives. Families, friendships, betrayals. This Love follows 2 characters, Mae and Ari. They meet at university in Leeds. They become universally loved, joined at the hip, completely inseparable. And of course, as time passes, their severence begins.
I wanted to be reeled in by this. There were parts that left me hooked, but those were few and far between. Mae and Ari were well fleshed out, thoughtful characters. Ari’s dad, as much as I hated him, was also well thought out. But the other characters, the characters essential to make a book about people flourish, felt flat. I wanted to like them but I couldn’t. In addition, the time shifts felt confsuing and bizarre. I think this would’ve been better in a completely linear format, with a few looks to the past.
☆Rating: ★★★☆☆
May You Have Delicious Meals by Junko Takase
I downlaoded this on my Kindle on a whim because it was 99p. Japanese fiction can always be slightly hit or miss - some things not translated well or the flow of the book lost in translation. This book is about 3 characters - Nitani, a young man working in a supply company. Ashikawa, the girlfriend he kind of hates. Oshio, the girl he works with that also kind of hates Ashikawa.
The characters were so unlikeable! Nitani was boring, Oshio was mean… And not in ways that made me find them interesting or multifaceted or 2 dimensional. In ways that felt needless. Their motivations were explored in the book, but badly done so. Truthfully, I’m glad this book was so short.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Show, Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
I don’t normally love short stories. Show, Don’t Tell is a collection of short stories from one of my favourite authors, Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s because of her that I chose to read this. And I’m glad I did! The stories were all different, with different themes. They were well written, descriptive - they did exactly what Sittenfeld does best. She builds characters and worlds that make you care, that feel enticing. I liked the stories, and liked that some were written about men, some about women. But by the end, I was tired. I wanted real conclusions! I wanted long stories! I was sick of the revolving door of characters. I want comfort and generations and intense depth.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This is Adichie’s debut novel, and I felt it. This is a story about Kambili. She lives under her father’s authoritarian Catholic household. He writes schedules of their day. They must be first in their class. As war begins to impact Kambili’s life, she and her brother, Jaja, are sent to their aunts house. Kambili is introduced to laughter, joy, emotions! And the book continues, the struggle between her aunt’s home and her father’s house.
I really loved reading this. Adichie is so, so good at writing characters that are bad, but good. And characters that are good, but bad. Truly complex, difficult characters that you, the reader, hate but you, the reader, can also understand the love for them. It was obvious as I read this that this was Adichie’s debut novel, but it is an exceptional debut novel. Her novels are usually lengthier, with wider spanning stories - again, doing the thing that I love where we travel with characters through generations. This book was a snapshot of Kambili’s life, but probably the most important one.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Table for One by Emma Gannon
I have loved some of Emma Gannon’s previous work. She isn’t an author I feel I have a lot in common with, and her experiences of privilege are so different to mine that it makes me approach her books differently. Table for One was what I expected, but it isn’r a bad thing. Table for One is about Willow, who should be enjoying her life post-covid - she set up a business in the early lockdowns, it is thriving, she’s doing what she loves with the person she loves, right? But she isn’t - not really. And in one night, her entire world changes. This book takes us through Willow’s life as she adjusts to the change. As part of the change, she takes on a work assignment, shadowing a young influencer whose brand is Being Single. Something Willow has struggled with.
I really love books where characters lives are split open and neatly sewn up again by the end, and this was no exception. But I’m too familiar with Emma Gannon’s work to have been charmed by this. The early chapters of Willow’s comfort were, indeed, comforting, but when you read so much from one author (I loved Gannon’s substack and have read every post!), there are hints of them everywhere and they felt very noticeable to me. I really loved that some of the decisions Willow made genuinely surprised me. I loved the side characters so much, like Willow’s best friends, and the books were very good at painting exactly what female friendships are like.
I’m not sure what I can place that made this book a 3 star novel for me. It was good, but something was missing.
Rating: ★★★☆☆