Brother, I’m Dying
It’s really a story of two fathers, since it was her uncle that became her father when Danticat was left behind by her parents as they established themselves in America.
Women Authors
Most old books are written by men. These books were written by women.
2024’s Favourites
A New Tradition Maybe? This year the holiday season proved strangely elusive, and then, when it finally felt like it arrived, it was fraught with problems. Wesker had a bad weigh in. First, my lovely spouse was sick, then I fell ill and am still not well two weeks later. There were so many blizzards. […]
Pitch Dark
Time moves in circles in Pitch Dark, just like Ennis is moving in circles in her own mind. And there are no clear conclusions and no ending. This book is a journey.
Hope Against Hope
It is essentially Nadezhda’s account of her own suffering and her country’s under the murderous, oppressive force of a dictator’s relentless purges of all opposition. Of art and culture. Of intellectuals and anyone who got in his way or was inconvenient.
Poems Bewitched and Haunted, Killer Verse, Poems Dead and Undead
The volumes are compact and beautiful, and look great on the shelf — plus the collections are both thorough and accessible for someone who doesn’t read as much poetry as literature.
The Cipher
The Cipher is an interesting story that uses extreme violence to help the narrative. It doesn’t become the narrative.
Dark Tales
The thing I love most about Jackson’s short stories is the way that she twists seemingly ordinary events into strange and unsettling directions. You won’t find ghouls and goblins here, but you will find human monsters and ominous atmospheres that leave the reader wondering how things went so wrong and why.
Siblings
Elisabeth is supposedly fully invested in the GDR and stubbornly sees it as the way to some kind of utopian realization of equality for all. However, her doubts have started to creep in.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Dark academia has become a much-talked-about off-shoot of the spookier genres, and I would say that label fits Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Women Crime Writers
Even the whitest of picket fences can hide a twisting darkness. And that very pressure could itself serve as one of the most complex themes of noir — that of dreams deferred and decisions made with extreme regret.