Reviews and Comments

An all-too-plausible near-future dystopia: borders are militarised, migrants are the enemy, and failure is severely punished. A solid - if dismal and depressing - read.

Lots of different ways to tell stories about murder. An interesting exercise but none of the stories are much good, so it just feels gimmicky.

Written originally in Italian and then translated into English by the author herself, this is an interesting experiment. The nameless narrator belongs and does not belong to the nameless Italian city in which she lives and which also lives around her.

...and frustration, and who has power over whom. Unusually, I liked the book even though it had no likeable characters.

Another of Ali Smith's real time novels, following her quartet of seasons: this time about pandemic isolation and finding connections with other living things, human and animal, whether we want them or not.

A novel about women, power and belief. It's historical, not fantasy, yet contains a lot of magic.

(I read the English translation by Adriana Hunter.)

The premise is fantastical. The novel captures quite well just how people respond to the fantastical: they get used to it and do their best to carry on.

...perhaps too grim. Very similar, to be honest, to Stuart's debut novel Shuggie Bain - with a bit of Hanya Yanagihara thrown in.

I'm a big fan of Janelle Monae's Dirty Computer album and I love the idea of an anthology exploring more of that world. I wish I'd liked the stories more!

A slow, eddying novel about living with change and forgetting the past. Not much happens, but i still found myself thinking a lot about this book and its quiet hopefulness.

Like the previous book in the series, a short and sweet utopian novel: funny and touching and hopeful, all at the same time.