OK, I’m not really sure where to start with this. Eutopia by David Nickel* is genuinely one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read (in a good way). Thematically it’s about eugenics and creating a super race, but writing that out doesn’t at all capture the story in which those themes are explored. Because this story is just freaking crazy. In 1911, Jason Thistledown’s life is turned upside down when his hometown of Cracked Wheel, Montana is decimated by a nameless plague. Because it’s winter, he has to keep […]
They Didn’t Want to Leave, They Definitely Couldn’t Stay
“I was leaving the South/To fling myself into the unknown…./I was taking a part of the South/To transplant in alien soil,/To see if it could grow differently,/If it could drink of new and cool rains,/Bend in strange winds,/Respond to the warmth of other suns/And, perhaps, to bloom.” – Richard Wright
To many left behind, on this circle round the sun…
(Note any gifs here come from the mini-series I’m not in the habit of inserting random gifs of Mathew Macfadyen into my reviews though I can by request….) How do we measure a life lived? By the sum of all the money we have made? By the people we love and who have loved us back? By the places we have been or events we have witnessed? By all of these things or none of them at all? Any Human Heart is the story of a full […]
Being a Russian Countess seems to help when rebuilding one´s life during the 20th Century
3.5 stars Zoya Ossupov, a young noblewoman, second cousin to the Tsar himself, lives a sheltered life of luxury in St. Petersburg. When the revolution breaks out, Zoya´s grandmother, who has seen which way the wind was blowing, bundles up the many garments they´ve sown jewellery into and Zoya and they flee the country through Finland. Having lost her father, mother and elder brother in only a few days and worrying about the safety of her cousins the Romanovs, who were placed in house arrest […]