Early in "Feel Free" Smith describes her writing as the intersection of language, the world, the self: "The first is never wholly mine; the second I can only ever know in a partial sense; the third is a malleable and improvised response to the previous two." It's this improvised Smith whom we're dancing with throughout these pages.
This story is sexy with great verbal contests between two characters who aren’t afraid to say what they think. Their conversations have some intelligence to go with the feisty and are fairly evenly matched. There’s a lot of internal thoughts from both Everly and Tyler that are fun to listen too.
“The Friend” could almost carry a trigger warning for writers, teachers and readers, except that Nunez’s prose itself comforts us. Her confident and direct style uplifts — the music in her sentences, her deep and varied intelligence.
For both novellas, I like that several different countries are showcased though as I mentioned, I’m curious about how easy and quick it would be for Bohdan to begin skating for Australia or Brady to switch sports.
...will likely be doled out in bits as tantalizing as tiny sips from a cup of rich chocolate. If that kind of exquisite agony is for you, give The Burial Society a try, but don't say I didn't warn you about the wait.
Tamara and Caleb fit together well. Tamara falls in love with the girls too – and they with her. I liked where you took the nanny/boss trope. I really did.
As a result, Starlings isn't particularly consistent, and some pieces certainly feel like momentary distractions, preserved for a dubious posterity. But even the fragments are fascinating because of the way they combine keen, resonant ideas with a variety of voices.
“The Great Alone” is packed with rapturous descriptions of Alaskan scenery, which are the most reliably alluring part of it. Hannah remembers and summons an undeveloped wilderness, describing a gloriously pristine region in the days before cruise ships discovered it.
He evokes the boys’ confusion, their tenderness, their fear. But also their hope that they can save their damaged friend and, in so doing, rescue themselves from the guilt that has haunted them since the first of their number took his life, a message that transcends generations.
Davis is a sure and engaging guide to these developments. Beginning with Janeway’s prediction of pattern-recognition receptors, each chapter is devoted to a scientist, or often a pair of scientists...
Overall, this is a great example of a light contemporary. The conflict is relatively low key, and I wanted it to go a little deeper, but I still felt invested in the characters’ relationship and especially in Alexa. For all of the book’s lightness, it felt real, honest, warm and romantic.
Some readers might lose patience with the author’s conflicted feelings about a job he stuck with for years. But if they are interested in life on a border that has recently occupied an outsize role in policy debates, they will learn a lot.
There’s an epilogue and a postscript. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but there are more split infinitives than unsplit ones. But it’s a fine and fascinating read, bolstered by exemplary research and nuanced insights.
Ultimately, This is Not a Love Letter is, in fact, just that — a long, beautiful, heart-breaking love letter to potential and possibilities and hope, to the pain we survive in youth and carry with us into adulthood.
Gone are the maple panelling and art deco fittings; instead the berths offer “a pretty good simulacrum of a prison cell”. A delightful mix of travel writing and cultural history that is not just for train buffs.
Now the reason for the lower grade is an annoying subplot with an annoying character that is continued over the course of the story. A little of this and him went a long way. Mac however, is the cats pajamas.
Yet the biggest thing (almost) left out of Bergman’s book is that targeted killing offers no end to the terrorism. Targeted killings are a tactic, not a strategy.
Building the Great Society is endlessly absorbing, and astoundingly well-researched — all good historians do their homework, but Zeitz goes above and beyond.
So much of what Mailhot is moving toward here still feels nascent — the book wants a tighter weave, more focus. But give me narrative power and ambition over tidiness any day.
