When my daughters turned twelve I initiated them into the mysterious powers. I confess that I have no idea what I've just read or why it has been shortlisted for this year's International Booker Prize. The Witch by Marie NDiaye completely bamboozled me. So I will start with the facts as I know them. NDiaye … Continue reading The Witch | Marie NDiaye
This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself. I woke up two minutes before my alarm went off, like usual. Five fifty eight and bing: eyes wide open, ready to greet the day. I've never had a hard time waking up in the morning. Never used the snooze button, either, not … Continue reading Yesteryear | Caro Claire Burke
You know the song, but you can’t place it. Maybe it’s because you’re inside of a baseball stadium. It isn’t a setting in which you often think about music. Or maybe it’s because the melody in question is being played by an organist, or because it’s hot and you’re in direct sun. It is weird. … Continue reading Violent Femmes | Nic Brown
The orchard, vibrantly green and with adobe walls, backed up against the village at one end and bordered the river at the other. It was an orchard mostly of sweet and sour cherries. The villa, a mixture of rustic and urban architecture, sat in the middle of it. Thanks to NetGalley, Women Without Men by … Continue reading Women Without Men | Shahrnush Parsipur
My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn’t yet missed a day of letting me down. He smiles at me; that terrible smile. He knows I’m coming … Continue reading The Spinning Heart | Donal Ryan
She was a woman in her late twenties, maybe thirty, even, with eyebrows plucked bare and hairline neatly outlined, her face caked in white powder and her lips painted blood-red, like those of a hound that had just eaten a man. The woman they called O-Riki was slender and of average height. Her freshly washed … Continue reading Troubled Waters | Ichiyō Higuchi
A dry, restless sound. Insects, each alone barely audible, covering every branch, large and small, down to the tips in heavy clusters, some slipping to the ground, perhaps a hundred, no, hundreds, fervently gnawing away at the leaves, emitting a sound that builds in layers, a whirlpool, a wave, expanding in ever-widening circles around the … Continue reading Wildcat Dome | Yūko Tsushima
The hands do not belong to me. Lying on the hotel bed in the sun-drenched light of a late September morning, I hold them up for study, turning them in slow circles. Brown and slender, long arms stretch above their parallel shadows on the white sheet. Tapered fingers, imprinted in darkening script, bend and extend, … Continue reading The Flower Bearers | Rachel Eliza Griffiths
We found grandfather lying in the attic. It was a small, six-mat room, dark even during the daytime, its only window about the size of a piece of A4 paper. In the middle of the room, under the naked light bulb that dangled from the ceiling, was the futon mattress I'd left out that morning. … Continue reading The Man Who Died Seven Times | Yasuhiko Nishizawa
Tsuneo Asai was on a business trip to the Kansai region when he heard the news. The shocking news turned about to be the sudden death of his young wife, Eiko, due to a heart attack. Asai worked as section chief in the Staple Food Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. He was … Continue reading A Quiet Place | Seichō Matsumoto
The sun was still submerged in the wintry murk of dawn when Ba, Dadaji, and their daughter, Mina Foi, wrapping shawls closely about themselves, emerged upon the veranda to sip their tea and decide, through vigorous process of elimination, their meals for the rest of the day. My first book review of the year is … Continue reading The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny | Kiran Desai
You knew I'd write a book about you someday. You said once that I'd dredge up the whole hit parade minus you. I'll never know how you would tell it. For me it begins here. Like this. I did it! I've caught up on all my outstanding reviews before New Year! Before Christmas I needed … Continue reading Heart the Lover | Lily King
September 2023 Dear Nell, I never thought we'd go this long without speaking. Every day it shocks me that I don't know where you live, if your freckles have faded or multiplied, if you're happy. Nell and Eve's friendship spans a decade from when they first met in highschool through to their early adult years … Continue reading Chosen Family | Madeleine Gray
The Honourable Phryne Fisher stared moodily out the window of the Bendigo train. It is generally admitted that the Australian countryside has insufficient geography to go around, and the flat basalt plains outside Melbourne to the north and west not a great deal to commend them. My Phyrne Fisher experience began with book 18 back … Continue reading Murder in the Cathedral | Kerry Greenwood
A colony of moss does not speak or think in language. But if such a colony could tell the story of its life, it might say this: Once, we flourished. Our capsules popped and our spores spread far and wide. We drank what we needed from the rain and stored the rest in our spongy … Continue reading Bog Queen | Anna North
