“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”
Tag Archives: Book reviews
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”
THE BOOK OF RECORDS – Madeleine Thien
“It is late and, in these hours, the Book of Records always takes on a new form. The train continues, a sound that blurs into the tide of water against the shore.” “The boy turned the page of his book. ‘I’m counting the hours until we get to the ocean. My mother and aunt sentContinue reading “THE BOOK OF RECORDS – Madeleine Thien”
DAYS OF LIGHT – Megan Hunter
“It was a language, she saw now, the way he touched her.” Megan Hunter’s Days of Light (Grove Press 2025) is very Bookery, and I read it as part of my “get a jump on possible longlisted books” journey. It’s The Safekeep meets Stone Yard Devotional, and while I loved both of those novels, IContinue reading “DAYS OF LIGHT – Megan Hunter”
THE HISTORY OF SOUND – Ben Shattuck
“She wished that she could read music. She might have hummed the melody, or at least understood why this phrase of music was important or original or innovative enough – or elusive enough, at the risk of being forgotten – to require being written out so urgently. But she couldn’t read music, and so theContinue reading “THE HISTORY OF SOUND – Ben Shattuck”
NESTING – Roisín O’Donnell
“Nights like this, she knows this is real, she’s not imagining it. The fear is bright, animal, sure. Pure blue at the heart of a flame.” “But right now, there’s no space for stories.” Rounding out my Booker predictions for the weekend is Roisín O’Donnell’s debut novel, Nesting (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2025 –Continue reading “NESTING – Roisín O’Donnell”
OUR EVENINGS – Alan Hollinghurst
“I lay there for agonized hours as the miracle of being in bed at him was nibbled away by the heat and the hangover and the longing.” This year, I decided to get “a jump” on potential Booker books, and Alan Hollinghurst’s (a previous Booker winner) new novel, Our Evenings (Random House 2024) was aContinue reading “OUR EVENINGS – Alan Hollinghurst”
BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL – V.E. Schwab
“It is easy, isn’t it, in retrospect? To spot the cracks. To see them spread. But in the moment, there is only the urge to mend each one. To smooth the lines. And keep the surface whole.” Toxic lesbian vampires. That’s how V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (2025 Tor) was marketed.Continue reading “BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL – V.E. Schwab”
A Girl Named Tommi 