Originally published in French (in two volumes) as Culottées This was such a great read! I was familiar with Bagieu’s work from back when she had her blog (Ma vie est tout à fait fascinante) but had never read one of her books. Needless to say, I am going to remedy that ASAP. Brazen is a collection of graphic bios of women who refused to live according to the rules imposed by society. Some of them are very famous, some of them have been […]
What would you do if you knew who was responsible for the death of your child?
Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder A little girl is dead. Her mom knows who killed her. She wants revenge. It sounds like a simple enough plot, what could be more straightforward and relatable than a broken-hearted mother wanting to punish those responsible for the death of her child? But this is not a simple story. As the story starts, Moriguchi, a middle school teacher, is telling her students that she is retiring from teaching. Moriguchi has recently lost her 4-year-old daughter, Manami. She […]
“Alice remembered who she was before. She just couldn’t recall what had happened to that girl to make her this girl.”
(Trigger warning for all sorts of extreme violence.) Violent and disturbing but strangely compelling and beautiful in its own twisted way. If you are looking for a dark retelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this book is for you. It should not have been an easy read but for reasons that I don’t completely understand, I found it oddly calming. I have been very anxious and stressed out recently and this book is so dark and violent that it allowed me to completely forget about […]
“Love is the bridge that spans the world above and below, and keeps the wheel of life turning.”
I’ve actually been thinking about how to review this book since I finished reading it almost a week ago and I still have no idea. It’s clearly inspired by the movie Labyrinth (the author says as much) as well as other myths and legends that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with. I’m not an expert on any of these subjects and I haven’t seen Labyrinth in a long time (I tried recently but I couldn’t) so I don’t know if someone who […]