“I’m recalling this as best I can, you understand. The truth is that I only remember impressions – images, sounds, feelings.” (9) Claire Adam’s Love Forms started out strong – a first-person narrative with a lyricism to the storytelling that I enjoyed. It didn’t last. On page 11, she writes: “In the darkness, the fallenContinue reading “LOVE FORMS – Claire Adam”
Tag Archives: Book reviews
PEOPLE LIKE US – Jason Mott
“Even love has been known to decimate.” “Yes sir, yes ma’am, my daughter’s birth made everyone in that room into better storytellers.” “Fuck the red, the white, and the goddamned blue. Fuck it all. I need air. And fuck anybody that wants me to stay in a place that does nothing but suffocate me. IContinue reading “PEOPLE LIKE US – Jason Mott”
FLESH – David Szalay
“The first daffodils arrive in a hostile world.” (162) If Camus’s The Stranger had a baby with Melville’s Bartleby, you’d get Szalay’s Istvan. Unlike Bartleby, who prefers not to, Istvan’s response is “okay.” He goes through life letting things happen to him, around him, with him. The novel opens with a bang – a 42-year-oldContinue reading “FLESH – David Szalay”
SLANTING TOWARDS THE SEA – Lidija Hilje
Current installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re still in the C’s!!! Country: CroatiaTitle: Slanting Towards the SeaAuthor: Lidija HilgeLanguage: EnglishTranslator: N/APublisher: Simon & Schuster 2025 “Back home, all things slant towards the sea.” “I can’t remember the last time someone said I had potential. But the thing about potential is that it doesn’t goContinue reading “SLANTING TOWARDS THE SEA – Lidija Hilje”
THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG – Leila Mottley
“Momma raised me right till she refused to raise me at all.” “They wanted us to be anything but what we were.” “’Cause hundreds of years ago, some pirate ship sunk and spilled treasures all over the bottom of our sea and now the water shines emerald green for us and if that don’t makeContinue reading “THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG – Leila Mottley”
FLASHLIGHT – Susan Choi
“In one hand he holds a flashlight which is not necessary, in the other hand he holds Louisa’s hand which is also not necessary.” (3) “Up and down with their flashlights: one carries the flashlight, the other carries the gun.” (378) Susan Choi’s Flashlight (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2025) is next up in the BookerContinue reading “FLASHLIGHT – Susan Choi”
AUDITION – Katie Kitamura
“There are always two stories taking place at once, the narrative inside the play and the narrative around it, and the boundary between the two is more porous that you might think, that is both the danger and the excitement of the performance.” (38) First up in the 2025 Booker 101 is a slim sliceContinue reading “AUDITION – Katie Kitamura”
THAT’S ALL I KNOW – Elisa Levi
“Look, sir, here’s your dog. I told you dog weren’t like me, dogs stick around.” “And they’d tell me that if I was going to be so distrustful of the outsiders, I’d end up hating them, and in small towns hatred is more dangerous than guns, the forest, or illness.” With perhaps the most perfectContinue reading “THAT’S ALL I KNOW – Elisa Levi”
JAMAICA ROAD – Lisa Smith
“I’ve missed you too. I’ve been missing you for ages.” Lisa Smith’s Jamaica Road (Knopf 2025) is a heartbreaking debut of a love story that is very much time and place. Set primarily in South London, Jamaica Road opens in 1981 with a young Daphne. Daphne is the only Black girl in her class, andContinue reading “JAMAICA ROAD – Lisa Smith”
THE DREAM HOTEL – Laila Lalami
“Freedom isn’t a blank slate, she wants to tell them. Freedom is teeming and complicated and, yes, risky, and it can only be written in the company of others.” My attempt to “get a jump” on the Booker longlist by reading predictions continues with Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel (Penguin Random House 2025). I’m notContinue reading “THE DREAM HOTEL – Laila Lalami”
A Girl Named Tommi 