Matti grows up in a tiny town in the remote north of Sweden in the 1960s and 70s. The chapters in this book are more like little short stories about different aspects of his childhood and adolescence, chronicled with humour and the occasional forays into strange, magical realism-inspired fantasy sequences. The inhabitants of his town and the surrounding areas seem to be either deeply puritanically religious or Communists, not caring for the trappings of religion at all. The gruff and peculiar inhabitants are set in […]
All my fears were unfounded – of course I loved this book
Six days into the first manned mission on Mars, there is a huge dust storm, forcing most of the crew to evacuate, earlier than anticipated. Mark Watney, the crew’s botanist and mechanical engineer is impaled on an antenna and believed to have died. He wakes up alone, stranded on Mars with no way of signalling Earth that he is still alive. The next manned mission to Mars is scheduled in four years’ time, and even if he were able to send a signal to announce […]
Persevere beyond the first third of the book, it gets better
In this clearly Gothic novel-inspired contemporary romance, unemployed and down on her luck Annie Hewitt has to spend the next sixty days in a small cottage on a remote island on the coast of Maine, because of complicated arrangement in her recently deceased mother’s will. Her closest neighbour just so happens to be Theo Harp, famous horror writer and her stepbrother for a time when they were teens. As a teenager, Annie had a big crush on Theo, but he was unpredictable and at turns […]
Don’t go into the Wood. No, seriously, stay FAR away.
Disclaimer! I got this as an ARC through NetGalley in return for a fair and unbiased review.The book is available now. While this remarkable novel by Naomi Novik isn’t actually a retelling of some traditional fairy tale, it feels like it should be. The book moves slowly, thoroughly establishing the sleepy little environment Agniezka and Kasia live in, with the terrors of the slowly encroaching Wood so close by. Once someone disappears in the Wood, they will hopefully stay lost. Should they return, they are […]