Reviews and Comments

Adam

ctrlyrown@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 years, 2 months ago

I mostly read and re-read childrens books, but here are the adult books I also read when I get the chance.

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Imogen Binnie: Nevada (New York, NY : Topside Press,) 4 stars

Frustrated by her current relationship, trans lesbian Maria Griffiths decides to change her life by …

Nevada

5 stars

The first few chapters I thought the writing style was pretty contrived...but it ends up really working the more you get to know Maria. Other than that, wow, it's amazing, it's great. I will probably read it again.

reviewed Paradise Estate by Max Easton

Max Easton: Paradise Estate (2023, Giramondo Publishing) 4 stars

So Sydney, so universal

4 stars

Paradise Estate picks up a few years down the road (and on the other side of the peak COVID pandemic years) from where The Magpie Wing left off, following Helen as she endures some major life events in addition to the shitshow that is renting and sharing an anywhere-near-affordable house in a major Australian city.

So many of the characters are looking for genuine connection with each other, if they could only get past their own vices, preoccupations, insecure and unsatisfying work, and inhospitable living conditions.

All the Paradise Estate housemates share a common dissatisfaction with the world at large and have a real desire to make change, which is tempered by their own personal histories of injury and loss, vanity (in Nathan's case), and the jadedness and exhaustion that comes with precarious living and working well into their 30s and beyond.

I've spent most of my adult years in …

Thuận: Chinatown (2022, New Directions Publishing Corporation) 5 stars

"An abandoned package is discovered in the Paris Metro: the subway workers suspect it's a …

Chinatown

5 stars

Thuận's continuous internal monologue style is so distinctive, full of repetitions and multiplications. So different to what I've read lately which was a refreshing change.

Shaun Prescott: Bon and Lesley (Giramondo Publishing COmpany) 5 stars

The slow, mundane burn of end-of-times

5 stars

Shaun Prescott has a knack for eerie mundanity — or should it be mundane eeriness? Like The Town, Bon and Lesley is set in a disappearing central western NSW town, but instead of the town literally disappearing, the town of Newnes is being vacated, abandoned and burned as a result of a widespread end-of-times scenario.

Bon and Lesley are two train passengers who become stranded in Newnes and form a makeshift family with local brothers Steven and Jack while trying to be better versions of their city selves and Lesley, at least, attempts to construct something to attach her hopes to in a futureless world.

I don't feel like recounting the plot really does justice to the way Prescott ilustrates the absolute averageness of his characters and their inner monologues (so unremarkable as to be quite strange, but so relatable in how they feebly navigate the non-negotiables of life) while …