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2/5 This book was interesting and well-written—it just wasn’t really my thing. It follows two sisters in New York City as they navigate situationships, new jobs, and the complexities of mental health. This would be great for fans of novels like Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Worry is more character-driven than plot-driven (it doesn’t have a defined plot at all), which I sometimes enjoy, but it just didn’t work for me this time. I found the main character to be whiny, self-involved, and mean. She did not grow or change in any recognizable way by the end of…
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When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everythingas a brotherhood and a sisterhood,and I look upon time as no more than an idea,and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a…
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“There is a spot for you in Heaven, but only if you’re willing to open your heart like a door to Him,” Pastor Samuel had said that morning in his East Texas drawl, leaning on his podium. “Open your heart and let Him in.” Susannah was trying. She wanted to be close to Him. She saw the joy in her friends’ eyes when they spoke of their journeys. “I was afraid to let Him in,” Isabella told her, “but when I did, it was like I turned into this whole new person. A whole new me.” Sarah, Susannah’s best friend…
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4/5 I’m a few weeks late posting my review for this one! I read One Last Stop at the beginning of summer, about a month before I left Austin for New York. This book is a romance, time travel novel, and love letter to the NYC public transportation system all in one, and its heavy-handed over-romanticization of the subway system is just what I needed before my big move. I always prefer a romance with a non-romantic primary plot, and the time travel elements of One Last Stop did not disappoint. Jane’s trapped existence on the Q train is just…
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Either you will go through this door or you will not go through. If you go through there is always the risk of remembering your name. Things look at you doubly and you must look back and let them happen. If you do not go throughit is possibleto live worthily to maintain your attitudesto hold your positionto die bravely but much will blind you,much will evade you,at what cost who knows? The door itselfmakes no promises.It is only a door.
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It’ll happen like this: You will scrape the ice off the windshield. Slow, at first, carefully. You will shovel the snow into neat little piles for your kids to scavenge for snowmen after school. You will climb into the mid-size SUV, silver,and wring out your dripping wet jeans. You will turn the key but the car won’t start. The car won’t start. You will sigh, and sit back, and sigh. You will sit for a long time. You will think about the failures that preceded this one and the minor destinies that led you to this episode of the multiverse. You’ll think about your wife, 29, blonde hair, brown eyes, five-foot-five in her kitten…
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3/5? I think? I read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart back in February and managed to put off writing the review for several months. I’m glad I did—this was one of the most perplexing things I’ve ever read, and I feel like six months was the minimum amount of time I needed to stew on it. When I first finished it, it left a sour taste in my mouth, but the further out I get, the more I seem to remember it with fondness. I still don’t know whether I would say I actually liked it, but I do think…
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First, there was the horse. Imagine creatures as majestic, standing. All their lives they stand, withholding. Imagine being tamed. Learning to be still, to be speed. Imagine birds as large as horses. We would be flying, grabbing a majestic creature by its collar. In cylinders of metal, we are four-legged beast-lives of liminal spaces. One time I was so tired of flying I wonderedif I will spend all my life packing then unpacking. A complaint of privilege. We are such spendingcreatures. And when I say we are beasts, is that a metaphor? Metaphor, according to Papastergiadis,is also transportation, between absence…
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The room is painted blue. The wooden bed frame, the quilt, the sheets, the nightstand, the lamp, the doorknobs, the window panes, the slippers by the bed. All blue. She remembers the color before she remembers her own name. Blue. Then, Clara. Is that her name? No, someone else’s. She looks at her reflection in the mirror. No, Clara is someone else. There is a knock on the bedroom door, and the door swings open. A man with a swirled mustache, wearing an early-20th-century butler’s uniform, stands in the doorway, holding a silver tray. “May I come in?” he says.…
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5/5 Here is the whimsy I have been looking for! Gretel and the Great War has one of the most unique structures I’ve ever come across. The stories are organized from A to Z, with each story centering on a character whose title corresponds with the story’s letter (A is about the architect, C is about the choreographer, etc.). The way the stories connect with one another—ambiguously, at first, then more and more clearly with every new character that’s introduced—is brilliant. It makes the novel feel more like a puzzle than a book. I feel like I could read this…
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Emily Vance Brown 