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21
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| 0143136399
| 9780143136392
| 0143136399
| 3.81
| 7,016
| Aug 20, 2020
| Jun 15, 2021
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really liked it
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**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on sexual assault, rape, bigotry, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), domestic violence, mental illness, & others. There is seldom that tickles that delightful part of my brain like an Irish story. The setting is both nostalgic & freckled; a place I have known & yet, not a place I possess in tangible terms. The landscape of this story has all the facets of a tale as old as time, a mystery, a romance, a hero, a monstrous family lineage, & the truth. The mere fact of being able to transport the reader to the place of their softest dreams is not enough. The author who presents the delightfully troubled Irish geography must also ensure his characters are flawed, not tropes of the familiar & overbearing cartoons, but neighbours to the eyes that greedily roam the pages on which they live. As with many of the books that I love, I came across this one by chance. The plot of this story was unknown to me, the synopsis rang an indistinguishable bell & before I knew it, I was devouring the tender beige pages as though the end of the story would be ripe with justice & reprieve. In essence, this is a story about a family living in the Irish countryside. There are two (2) families; the family of wealth & land ownership that allows the family of their workers to inhabit the cottage that sits crookedly on their land. The members of each family intermingle in a devilish dance, at once rivals, lovers, enemies, & friends. Readers find within this book the story of growth, development, despair, & hope. Each character encounters the worst version of themselves through their own choices; their lies colour their skies & yet, the clouds remain white, unscathed by the dirt gripping their thumbs. While reading this story I wondered whether I would recommend it. It would be untruthful to state that I dwelled on this question, rather, it was a passing thought as I quickly stepped through the series of events that took off from the page. Now, as I ruminate, I believe that this book worked its wonders on me because I was unaware of what it was. Sure, I did understand that a mystery was to unfold & a girl ran away from home. I also understood that people kept secrets & they put their noses down. I acknowledge that, if this had been made clear to me, I would have expected something from the story. Instead of going into this book with notions of what I hoped to find, I allowed the author to share his tale. One does not always have the opportunity to follow the piper & in some cases, this musical trust leads to the reader’s disappointment. However, I often enjoy allowing a book to do what it does best, regardless of the outcome; I enjoy being told a story. I find it impossible to touch on each of the characters in a way that would be sufficient. I read this book rather quickly & then when the end was near, I slowed to a deranged limp; I could not go on. Whereas the beginning of the novel saw me intrigued by the economic & social status of Moll’s family, I was rather disenchanted with her son & nearly missed the love that cloistered the conclusion. By incorporating such varying chapters, all via the segregation of the religious texts of these same people, the author both prevented & allowed the reader to find interest & lack thereof, in different sections of his story. Though the beginning held the most intrigue for me with the author’s introduction of Moll’s sudden & unexplained departure, the tone of the story allowed for the mystery of her disappearance to remain semi-unimportant. Certainly, there was value to her vanishing act. However, the reader will find that the scenario that plays the first fiddle in this plot is the scene. The motive of the story is to be alive. No character hounds another for answers though their anger sometimes leads them astray. Readers who appreciate this approach will find themselves in good company. Yes, the characters are flawed & it can be frustrating watching them hover so close to the scene without divulging themselves but, this is the beauty in being told a story, none of which the listener has any control over. Suppose for a moment you had your eyes closed & the soothing voice of your favourite narrator began by describing a small house, a laneway, & a girl who left one morning while her parents slept, without uttering a word. Your eyes might be peeked; your brain eager to piece together the intention & the unfathomable result of such a choice. Such is the result of a good story. I will admit that though I am a great lover of stories, neutral as the receiver of such gifts, my vivid imagination grants me a space among the grass of the laneway & the window panes as Moll got up one morning, earlier than the dawn, & took the bus out of the county, a transit that led her out of Ireland altogether. It is no secret that judgment ensues. Surely, there must have been a serious reason for leaving & I was correct. Moll is in love with the matriarch of the wealthy landowners, & the matriarch is in love with her too. The reader is only given the key aspects of the truth moments before the story comes to a close & I wonder whether or not they find this beneficial or not. Speaking of my own experience, I think this was beautifully done. The purpose of the narrative is not to sit & rumble judgements about Moll’s fit of anger or her having a son with a man she was never in love with (romantically speaking). Neither is it the reader’s role to berate the characters who could not shelter their child nor protect Alexander from the driver who killed him. What is the role of the reader if the author has intentionally kept away the truth? Nothing is more valuable than a listening ear. One did not need to know that Moll loved Alexander for the security he brought to her; the tenderness he showed her in gentle reminders; to understand that love comes in many forms. The reader might be angry & annoyed that Alexander walked Moll home every night without encouragement or that he fell in love with a person who could not give him what he deserved. Yet can the reader say with certainty that this is what Alexander wanted? I find myself unable to truly critique the work I have observed. I reflect on the characters & their transgressions but, not from a perspective of disappointment. Rather, I feel inclined to care about the characters. Reading this book reminds readers of the delight of storytelling. From my personal, & delicately intimate point of view, reading this story reminded me of sitting with my family as they began their tale; once a dark & silent morning, perhaps a rumbling sunny afternoon, within the deepness of night & dreams, a story was weaved & there I sat within the particulars of a movement that swept me away. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 05, 2024
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Jan 05, 2024
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Paperback
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20
| 
| 0765319950
| 9780765319951
| 0765319950
| 3.90
| 19,582
| 2004
| Feb 01, 2007
|
liked it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on childhood illness, substance use, abortion, pregnancy, sexual assault, & others. A story that transpires throughout the spring leaves readers with the soothing greenery of new beginnings. Barry’s introduction feels similar; the dawn of a new adventure, pastures of green grass, the eagerness of a professional endeavour; all the hopes & dreams of the main character present themselves earnestly to the reader. Those who choose to read this book might have done so for similar reasons to myself. A couple of years ago, before my grandma’s passing, I found myself needing to read what she did. It was no secret to me that our time together was coming to a close. I knew that she & my grandpa had read this series & in 2020, I felt that the moment for my commencement was imminent. When I first read this book, I was hopeful. I found myself in Ireland with my family, roaming the homestead & eager to see what Barry chose to do with his career. The characters in this book spoke to me like friends. I admit that I found the essence of the story cheesy. Readers who go into this book will need to know what adventure they are embarking on; one that is not without faults but that does its best to cushion the stumbles of the characters with a warm & cozy ending. Surely, this approach will not work for all readers & upon my second read of this book, it no longer worked for me. Admittedly, I feel that I was generous with my feelings towards this story because a person I loved was going to be lost to me in this life. The plot, tender & forlorn as it was, reminded me of my family in ways that I could not communicate at the time. As I progressed in the series, I found myself repeatedly annoyed with the way that Taylor approached telling the story. However, Taylor is not a storyteller, this is not who he is. He sought to share a tale, one that I am sure he feels passionate about but, the skill of transferring stories from inside the soul & mind so they might travel the ear canal to the brain is a specific talent, one not all writers have. In its essence, this book is about Barry, a twenty-four-year-old medical doctor who spends time with Dr. O’Reilly as his Medical Assistant in a small village in Northern Ireland. The story takes place in the 1960’s, the effects of WWII loom heavily over the villagers & their economic status reflects the shift from sustainable living to the modern age wherein dimes & euros shape the livelihoods of bipartisans. The story explores the reality of Ballybucklebo, the medical field in Ireland, & the quirky events that take place throughout a nearly 400-page book. I was drawn to read this book a second time because I wanted to complete the series. Taylor’s books have been present on the shelves of the readers I have admired most throughout my life though; they will not lie & declare this book to be a marvel of the literary world. Rather, this book & others that follow, are simply books to read when one wishes to enjoy the act of reading & a somewhat escapist moment in their day in the tiny quarters of Ireland. This is not a fantastic book nor is it particularly revolutionary. This book is corny, & cheesy, & somewhat poorly formatted, with characters that I grew to dislike. However, it is also comforting, & calming, & warm. A reader is not meant to like every character in every book they read. Books are mediums to transport art; they hold stories & stories live forever, regardless of the recipient’s enjoyment. Barry is a prime example of this. Within the first moments of his introduction, he reads as a very cautious if not entirely insecure individual. One cannot necessarily fault him for this, he is embarking on an entirely new venture in a place that is strange to him. Readers are likely to grant Barry the benefit of the doubt, multiple times throughout this story. Whereas one would hope to find the main character carry some level of self-awareness, this hope is dashed when Barry meets Patricia. Barry’s instant infatuation with Patricia is cute in the same way a flower in the hair is cute or a chocolate kiss surprise in an Easter basket. Barry meets Patricia on the train & is instantly in love with her. No time passes before readers read about the complicated love affair that sprung out of thin air & the turmoil that Barry feels by proxy of pursuing a girl who has ambitions. Certainly, I am no prude nor am I a despiser of love. However, the main character falls hopelessly for a girl he does not know. I might forgive his boyish eagerness at their chance meeting & I am certainly likely to forgive his unfounded adoration for her in part thanks to her beauty. These things are not enough for me to believe that their love is genuine nor is it enough for me to be invested in their charade. This book’s main issue is its pacing. Whereas readers might rejoice from seeing Barry meet someone who could bring joy & tenderness to his life, the author does not pace out their encounter so that it feels authentic. Their few dates do not reflect any genuine understanding of one another & the conversations they share act merely as reinforcement of their vast differences. Barry is in love with Patricia because she is beautiful—that’s it. He goes out of his way to bid her to skip her course after she expresses having to put in extra effort to succeed in a male-dominated program. He also never actually listens to what she has to say, leaving the reader in a bizarre tango alone. Certainly, had Taylor approached these sequences as a representation of a budding young eagerness to be present in the adult world, they would have felt justified. Barry inserts himself into situations where he does not belong & in which he has no leg to stand & all the other characters allow him to do so; Why is that? After he threw a fit because Patricia was honest with him about her intentions & her goals in life, Barry sulks around the village. I cannot begin to express my shock that he felt the familiarity & freedom to compare his experience with Patricia—his love for this girl he doesn’t know past a superficial level--& Kinky’s beloved husband lost at sea. The story encourages this poor pacing by including an array of characters, some of whom the reader will enjoy, & others who will mean little to the story because they so closely resemble one another. In some sense, this was to the benefit of the story. I enjoyed knowing that the village was comprised of an array of people, & I appreciated Taylor’s medical knowledge to cushion their unique personas. When it comes to adding depth to the story, I was glad for those whom Taylor deemed appropriate to include, & I didn’t much care to wonder who else we would come to meet. That is to say, Taylor’s inclusion of specific characters to encourage the story forward was well done. His ability to incorporate factually relevant details via the exploration of a character’s reality was interesting & pertinent. I did not wonder why we did not meet everyone in the village, nor did I worry about tying in the narrative to every single character. I had faith that the author would do that in due time. Reading this book on both occasions saw me fly through the material. It is not difficult to become immersed in the narrative. I sought to find what I had on the first occasion of our meeting & though I was met with my memories, the calming nature of the story was not the same. I do not wish to place blame; the story is good, it is fine the way that it is & for some readers, it will be a wonderful reading experience. Rather, I found that the joy to behold in the quaintly corny nature of the plot left me behind. Highly analytical readers will feel less inclined to adore this story & will perhaps be less likely to overtly love the plot itself. The medical leniency that it took to alter the fates of those around them & the nasty temper of Dr. O’Reilly will strike many as rude & callous. I cannot rightly put my finger on why I didn’t dislike him. Perhaps I felt rather softened towards O’Reilly because Barry was so much a disaster of a person who revelled in their ignorance, whereas O’Reilly lived in the real world. Of course, this is not a book that will present a tried & true Odyssey to readers. As I have said, this is a book that was written to be consumed for a simple & straightforward enjoyment. For this reason, I feel confident in stating that this was a good book. I felt annoyed at Barry more than I think was healthy & was reminded of why I stopped reading the series four (4) years ago. However, I am willing to give the story another chance. I want to see O’Reilly & Kinky find their love & happiness & I am eager to be within the village again when a twist of fate brings them together. Ultimately, this is not the best book I have ever read nor is it the most enjoyable. The pacing throws off the story to the point at which the reader feels like they are reading while on a roller coaster that stalls & starts. At times, the characters feel like caricatures while also representing the authentically flawed nature of sheltered people & those among us who have lived a thousand years within a select few. The treasure of this story is that it is good-natured & readers may find reasons to dote on it for this alone, & perhaps others because O’Reilly & Kinky warm the heart like a fire on the hearth. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 04, 2024
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Jan 04, 2024
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Paperback
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19
| 
| B01NAGF7TI
| 3.66
| 7,045
| 1914
| Dec 06, 2016
|
liked it
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**spoiler alert** Graphic memories of youth feel similar to raindrops on thirsty skin. Few writers can achieve the delicate balance of reflection in s
**spoiler alert** Graphic memories of youth feel similar to raindrops on thirsty skin. Few writers can achieve the delicate balance of reflection in such an intimate way as Joyce. Readers are met with parables succulent in nectar speaking truth to a life that is mildly well-lived. This story is no exception. The reader cannot pose judgment on the main character—a person they hardly know—as the crevices of an entire life remain cloistered from them as the words drone on. The narrator of this short story is aged; past the years that linger in the mind yet not antiquated, he shares with the reader a delicate moment in time. When he was young, he lived in a house that once belonged to a man who died. Whether or not this is relevant to the story at hand is inconsequential. The opening scene pressures the emphasis that the remainder of the story seems to lack. The tension that the reader feels between the main character & his love interest is all but imaged. Yet, the crude lingering of death remains. I found myself unable to move past the introduction. Whereas I was interested in hearing what the main character had to say, I was not invested in his recollections. He claimed to be in love with a girl who was a sibling to one of his friends. He spent time watching her through the window & sought her out every morning on his walk to school. He promised her the world without having any real understanding of what it meant to live within it. I cannot fault him for his gallivanting fancies; I was young once too. However, some memories are rather more poignant for the person themselves than for any listener. I found the desire to showcase romance & love interesting in so far as they are innate emotions we often see portrayed in various mediums. However, I did not much care about their plight in this story. I cannot rightly say what kept me saddled outside of an emotional connection to this story. Suffice it to say, I do not think that every story will draw out an emotional feeling from the reader. Perhaps, Joyce simply wanted to recount what it might have felt like to live in proximity to beauty or, perhaps he wanted to draw into words the incomparable & ethereal sense of longing that lives inside the heart & mind. Regardless of the reasons for which he wrote this story, the main character broaches the disappointment of adulthood as he cusps the horizon walking into the eve of a new experience. One is certainly able to draw some level of empathy towards our eager narrator. He desires a love that is intangible to him; a tenderness that lives next door. Ultimately, his experiences felt cold & dry to me, whereas this moment in time could have been translated to feel like a wound sliced to the back of the knee. Though, I suppose, this situation isn’t as serious as all of that. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK•. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 17, 2023
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Sep 21, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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18
| 
| 0571382029
| 9780571382026
| 4.01
| 14,487
| Aug 31, 2023
| Aug 29, 2023
|
really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** The minutia of Cathal’s life is like the slow rumbling of an ancient steam engine. In the evenings his cottage-style home is perhaps
**spoiler alert** The minutia of Cathal’s life is like the slow rumbling of an ancient steam engine. In the evenings his cottage-style home is perhaps less earthy & rather more concrete. During the day, his cubicle is shadowed by the memory of the sun that never shines for him. On this day, like every other, Cathal finds himself alone. The day is nearing its end but, at a speed that is too quick. Cathal does not want to go home. The hours of the working clock remind the daylight that it is time to dim; rays of shimmer slowly rebound into the body of the star as the main character must face himself in darkness once more. I came across this story via the « New Yorker: Fiction » Podcast. One night, as I found myself riddled with a familiar dread, the darkness looming like an old dead friend—I searched for a story to be read. It should come as no surprise that memories of stories told to me still help me find peace in the stale air of insomnia. On this evening—deep into the night—I wanted something other than the novel; a pilgrimage over many mountainous chapters. Perhaps it was chance that had us meet in this way, Keegan & I. Her books are among the piles in my home, none of which I have read—all of which carry titanous reputations with them. The main character in this book feels almost too dull to be real. His personality is so tangible the reader might find themselves with the sour taste of copper in their gums. Cathal reeks of mundanity & yet he is so much more. Having listened to this story narrated to me by the author I was able to form a concrete image of Cathal in my mind, & as they say, the faces we meet in dreams are not unfamiliar to us. I am inclined to believe that this image I hold of the man rummaging through trash bags of memories is the face of a person I once knew. Keegan’s writing shapes the characters so that they are real—as real to the reader as the people & places we pass on the street every day. The reader comes to find out that Cathal is stuck in the memory of the past. Once upon a time, he met a woman whom he enjoyed spending time with. Their collective moments are spent in proximity; a closeness that stems from longing. Yet, as all good fairytales do, theirs came to a halt. The mangled maniacal intergenerational bastardization of love ruined Cathal’s ever after. The reader is given an intimate view of the ways in which Cathal was raised; the house he lived in, the family that shaped his reality, & the young person that he was. In truth, Cathal becomes more of a friend to the reader through these instances. Were it as though Cathal was fighting to remain unknown, the reader—living & breathing within the dissociated world alongside the characters—plays witness to the antagonist of the story as he plays the villain to his son’s life, long after death. We come to the part in the story that I appreciated the most. As Keegan recounts the days that led up to the demise of Cathal’s engagement we also see the battle that wages on still water. Though the main character feels rather coy in his absurdities & though his insouciance is ludicrous in its paranoia, Cathal was once just a boy who was raised in a house with a man who treated vulnerability as a desolate performance. Readers are often encouraged to choose a side while reading. One is asked to highlight the villain, name the foe, & classify the obstacle as a worthy cause or a dull consequence. The timid nature of the reader, as a tertiary monolith to Stonehenge, leaves one with bee stings to the behind. Is the reader correct in stating that Cathal should have learnt to overcome the needless aggression of his father? Is an adult meant to forget their childhood’s spending habits? How much empathy is the reader meant to pour into the gullet of the character who reeks of decay? Rather than steady the reader, Keegan allows each partisan the opportunity to remain neutral. The nuanced existence of her character shadows the reader’s reality. I would wager to say that many, if not all, of us, have been in a situation where the cagey goblin of our past sullied the way forward. The outburst of anger one witnesses by Cathal feels rather like self-loathing, a self-inflicted punishment; to be the man his father raised him to be, all along. Though Cathal fights against the stream of expectation & normalization of his youth, he falls victim to his self-loathing. Had he not been so stingy with money—had his father gifted his mother anything other than a curdled snort; maybe things might have been different. Had he not hesitated to share space—had his father lived in a house made home by the loved ones near; maybe things might have been different. What is rather difficult to accept in this story is the repercussions of what can not be changed. That is not to say that one cannot try to be better. However, yesterday is never today, ever so much as we wish it were. The clock’s familiar & constantly numbered hands revisit the hours but we do not. Ultimately, this story explores how a man lost the woman he loved as a consequence of being who he is. One may ask themselves if it’s really his fault that he was raised under the stress of a loveless parentage. Others may easily point fingers to blame, after all, Cathal is a grown man. What one might be inclined to forget is how near our tendencies are to us. Maybe Cathal will get a second chance or maybe he will find someone new. The story leaves off with a locked door & a judgemental man seething solitary in the Irish countryside. Can we blame him or is he, in fact, to blame? What the reader will be met with, alongside Keegan’s ease of prose & tender tension between the tendons that maneuver the man, is a person who treated someone else as if they mattered less than his possessions. Love is not always enough; one can love with all one’s heart & still be left at the door. One can love with all one’s might & still need to keep strength aside for fighting personal demons. The cost of a ring, the shared bathroom counter space, the home-cooked meals & the ideology of marriage & romance; none of these matters as much as the intention to make love worth more than the sterile cup we pour it into. No heart is silent, unabated by the quotidian of being alive. If you would like to listen to this story, please visit The New Yorker: Fiction ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 08, 2023
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Jul 16, 2023
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ebook
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17
| 
| 0374608334
| 9780374608330
| B0BBC9ZBHF
| 4.07
| 5,947
| Apr 06, 2023
| May 16, 2023
|
it was amazing
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on suicide, child sexual abuse, financial insecurity, mental illness, the repercussions of state violence, & others. The sheer force of the social climate leaves Sean stranded. His friends remain tethered to their inabilities. Sometimes they want clarity but, only if it comes with the genteel ability to collect upon a success that was not tallied by hours of work. The circle in which he wades is going in one direction, to revisit the starting point every couple of days when the men realize that their lives are wasting away. There is little room in this group for an alternate reality, for a system clear of substance, & eyes that have remained shut all night long. The reader meets Sean in his apartment. The scene sets the tone for the book yet, it remains practically inconsequential. The room is decaying & it is old. The Ireland of this book has perhaps not so much changed since this story took place. A land of charm & humour, the reality that harbours itself in the homes of the citizens reveals a government that has let its citizens down—disappointed those who rely on its leadership. While not impossible to understand, the rivets of intergenerational trauma have poisoned the water source & see many nuclei of people suffer from the raging violence that is discounted today as simply part of England’s silly quirky history. The sheer will of any Irish citizen to burst free of the cobblestone & green fields is an act of rebellion selfish in its needs. This is not to say that it is wrong. On the contrary, the desire to free oneself from imminent turmoil is beauty shrouded in tears & lacerations. Due to this truth, the characters in the book suffer from redundancy. Again, this is not a bad thing, it simply is a state of being. When one has no money to seek intellectual or social validation, one is expected to do nothing more than what carried them through tedious hours of the day. Sean is stuck in a cycle that sees him biding his time; stuck in a place he has known as home. The beauty of this novel is its ability to maneuver the reader through redundant scenes without them feeling tiresome. Would the reader have rather Sean walked the railway into another country? Perhaps, but, this does not solve the root of the issue. At once a man who is traditionally well-educated, Sean finds himself faced with the torment of knowing too much with little ability to act on said awareness. It doesn’t necessarily help when one is stuck in a bad place, to know that the place is bad. The tools one needs to leave said place are often just out of reach. This is part of the reason why folks say that ignorance is bliss. When the reader takes the time to study the reality of each of the characters one is faced with the sad awareness of a group of people who have numbed themselves to their own lives. I cannot necessarily blame them for that. Sean’s mother exhibits the signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); having lived through a period in Irish history when the British knocked down doors, violated Irish citizens, and stole agency & independence from them—a card trick they seem quite intent on up keeping. All the while, the Irish people in the North of Ireland were meant to die for the land that was their home. The title of this book is certainly not lost on the veteran reader. Danger is often not a thing of strange lands & masked villains but rather the torment found in one’s childhood home, or the street where laughter should have rung freely. This truth makes the introduction of each of the characters difficult to stomach. An ideal study of the intricacies of mental illness is found within Sean’s family. The familiar & quotidian meal of fish sticks in front of the television, the cycle of substance abuse to numb memories, & the deterioration of the physical body to escape a world that has harmed it. So much of what transpires in this novel feels disconnected from the shadowed homes that Sean wanders through. His party lifestyle is not in actuality a deficiency in his healing as much as it is a consequence of his youth & surroundings. If there are no jobs for hire, there is no work & without work, there is no pay. Money might not grant us the ease of a healthy mind but it certainly pays for the products & services that tenderize the devilish pains of existence. When I first met Sean he seemed just like anybody I might have known. His lifestyle was not so different from mine at his age & to tell the truth, the reasons that left us stranded in extroverted casualties were rather similar too. I kept my fingers crossed that the job at the bookshop might pan out or that Sean might find a way to work through the hidden secrets of his lineage. The burden of Sean’s life felt heavy in my hands as I read the book. The author’s intentions in transcribing the Irish reality felt nostalgic, genetic to me & mine; horribly soft in their overt familiarity; vulgar in their slurred words & castrated malaise. The reader is meant to remember that life is indeed quite short. Within a short few generational divides, Sean sees his family torn apart. His mother suffers from insurmountable anxiety & dread, his older brother is drowned by his lived experiences with childhood sexual assault, & Sean’s own father is a child predator. How is one meant to succeed in life when the sun never lights the way? I felt tenderness toward Sean, not because I thought he needed my sympathies—I’m sure he would have felt uncomfortable at the knowledge that someone felt for him. Rather, I hoped that the cycle of his own circumstances might set him free so I found myself softly rooting for him outside the pages. Without knowing how, I am sure that Sean might find himself in a different environment, one day. I don’t know that leaving Ireland entirely would change the facts. People suffer everywhere around the world. Yet, I wonder still if perhaps a quick train ride to a place where communication is stilted might leech the pain from his vernacular; might induce his life with new scents & flavour to encourage the pallet of his existence to thrive in a place that does not chronically remind him of his youth. I am of the belief that one cannot escape what lives in the mind. Things have not worked that way in my life so I am unable to willfully believe that the Irish countryside might grant me freedom from my own thoughts. Yet, I wish for Sean to find himself in a field of green that makes him forget the yellow of dying grass. The premise of this story feels circular in nature as the nights round in on themselves & it appears that all Sean wants to do is go out & party with his friends. It is up to the reader whether or not they are in the mood to delve deeper. With that being said, I can appreciate that this book might feel very numbing to the mind. The characters stay in their own environments. When someone moves away we do not see them there, they reside in the plot only as a sideline when the countryside cautions them back via telephone or tertiary conversation. Within this reality, one can be bogged down by the material. The discussions of child abuse, substance abuse, suicide, self-harm, promiscuity, & poverty, provide a filament environment where no one wins. The prose of this book lies in simple lettering, distinctly easy reading for a story that covets’ horribly tragic lives. I appreciated this approach very much. Though I can certainly get carried away with romantic language, this story deserved the delicate ease of linguistics that it provided to the reader. One need not a thousand words to express one’s hurt. If a reader is looking for a book that goes in-depth on the consequences of violence wherein the normalcy of the character renders the abuse otherworldly, one has come to the right place. So often we view villainy as a principle of the devious antagonist. Art mediums reflect on pain in ways that might make the sufferer feel as though the emotion wasn’t attached to them like a prosaic virus. However, human emotion is, at its core, too big for us to handle. We do not have the vocabulary to excite the depth of feeling nor do we have the transferring ability to settle sentiments into the open palms of another. We rely on stories, proximity, & warnings. To love too much is to lose oneself. To suffer eternally is like a seventh layer of Hell. What of the inferno of human experience? Whereupon the journey of individual experiences does the solitary insight the knowledge to never wander alone? In Sean’s family, no one comes out & says what is happening. Characters play therapist because this is what it means to be related; one is expected to gorge on the morbid experiences of another to lessen the weight carried by the genetic tree. What I loved the most about this story is that it felt like home without the pressures of cement leaning onto my spine. Sean felt like family & he felt like me. It is easy to want the best for a character when one is distanced from them via the pages of the book. This story asks the reader to familiarize themselves with each individual person & feel the fright of solitude that comes with living in a place ravaged by war. Ultimately, I found myself walking the same streets as Sean eager to see him peruse the shelves of the bookstore. I longed for his years to fly by so that he might not feel the calloused pull of red string down his spine; that he might know that life changes alongside the many sun & moon rotations, even though it might not seem that way day to day. This book represents the torment of Ireland’s eternal strength in survival, hope & love. The Irish are charmers of the heart as much as they are carriers of the flame that masks the frost of night. Thank you to NetGalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, & Michael Magee for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 28, 2023
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Jun 02, 2023
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||
16
| 
| 0593535715
| 9780593535714
| B0BGPQCQS7
| 4.10
| 68,939
| Jun 22, 2023
| Jun 27, 2023
|
it was amazing
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on fertility, abortions, financial insecurity, psychological distress, & others. Rachel Murray is a girl on the brink. She meets the reader while sitting at a pub with other members of the Irish diaspora as they celebrate the Christmas traditions that bind them, even all the many miles from home. The trajectory of this story flies the reader through memories & recollections, pausing only to transition the timeline back to the present in the hopes of offering us some reprieve. Perhaps, this time around, the past will not be so painful. Perhaps, now that the occurrences are simple reflections of a time passed, they might offer Rachel their long-kept secrets. At the core of this story, there is Rachel. She is perpetually uncomfortable in her own skin, a bit lost in her own desires, all while trying to simply get by. There are ample aspects of Rachel’s character not to like. She was raised in a family who had ample means of protecting her from the world & yet we meet her after she had spent a lifetime becoming accustomed to the cruelties of reality. This is not her fault & I feel that it would be unfair to fault her for something that she was unaware she would need to be prepared for. Regardless of this, it was sometimes difficult to master the art of patience toward Rachel & her many antics. While Rachel was young, she decided that it was a good decision to dive head-first into the world. Cork was not a place that would cushion her plunge—something she knew—but, she jumped anyways. Perhaps, it was because the people around her were becoming intimately acquainted with the real world that Rachel felt herself drifting apart from the experiences that would lead her to become the person she hoped she could be. Perhaps, she saw the opportunity to live with James as a shot at pretending to be an independent person, for the sake of giving it a fair shot. Either way, Rachel was wholly unprepared for the life that awaited her outside of her parents’ home. When James is introduced to the reader it was tricky to get a real grasp of who he was. His character is presented through recollections into the past, via events that took place over a decade prior. One cannot expect Rachel to have been able to provide a detailed perspective on his person; she was rarely around for the events that caused him the most distress. Her memories of him are, at their core, stilted by her own emotional ties. She wanted him to be kind & thoughtful & caring yet, we rarely read about his involvement with anyone other than Rachel to be able to make a clear deduction on this case. Due to his phantom presence throughout the story, his character became something of an enigma. He was at once the person who understood what was needed of him to succeed in life. He grasped the difficulties that exist in a world where secrets are meant to be kept & the darkness of the heart, is intended for the night. Yet, he roamed in the day with the awareness that he contributed to the pain that other people felt, & he felt nothing. This is perhaps unfair. I cannot say for certain what James felt because this is not a story written from James’ perspective. What if we had been given an earnest view of James? How would the reader have felt towards him as the story drew to a close? He was obviously present & supportive of Rachel in many an endeavour but, I cannot say for certain that this was an innate quality to his person rather, it seemed to me that he appreciated one person at a time, & that was enough for him. This critique teeters on the brink of asking difficult questions. I do not think that it is my responsibility to raise the elephant in the room on stilts to ask readers to name the beast they see. In many countries around the world, women’s rights have been highly politicized topics of conversation, often led by people who are not women. As this story takes place in Ireland, the focus of the narrative remains settled; how were Irish girls meant to maintain agency over their bodies if this was made an impossible feat for them to ascertain? I appreciated the approach that O’Donoghue took toward incorporating a very real & debilitating aspect of reality, into the life of a girl who wasn’t always easy to like. I say this specifically because it ultimately doesn’t matter what I think of Rachel—as a reflection of all women, across the world. It does not matter if someone is nice or if they are mean; they each deserve accessible health care. I was hopeful, beyond reason, that something would work out for Rachel & that she might not be irrevocably harmed in the process. In the midst of this, Rachel graduates from college, she lives with James for one year down a road that does not have the most sturdy of builds; she scrounges for jobs, she tries to find her path in life, & she learns of the difficulties that exist in being a grownup in a world that adults have been inhabiting as she watched with child-like eyes. It is difficult for me to rationalize the actions that saw Rachel lie so easily to Deenie. There must have been a part of her that understood that Deenie was hurting & that she herself had the ability to help guide her via the truth. Yet, this was not her responsibility. Are we meant to find James’ voyage to New York pleasing? Am I meant to be glad that he got what he wanted, after everything that he did? Dr. Byrne will be brain-damaged for the remainder of his life after spending months trying to heal from a parasite that attacked his brain & subsequently lying comatose for weeks. Deenie spent years of her marriage thinking that she wasn’t enough because she couldn’t provide what is expected of a woman. Rachel stands alone thinking of herself while everyone else’s lives pass her by. Once again, I cannot fault her for that. Rachel is meant to keep secret the fact that James & Fred Byrne were having intimate relations, all the while struggling to breach a field that is historically welcoming only to its own kind. I cannot imagine having to maneuver myself through a situation for which I was deeply unprepared. I wonder how James felt towards Rachel, truly, after she told him everything that happened at the diner party or how he felt knowing she was shunned by the community of Cork at large. I wonder if he ever vocalized how important her friendship was in ensuring that he was not ostracized for his decisions. Even with the serious subject matter that was covered throughout this story, I found myself eager to revisit the pages. I read until my eyes fell asleep while my brain remained engaged in the follies of the two young protagonists. I excitedly picked up the story where I had left off, every day, hoping to learn more behind the shock of the announcement that Dr. Byrne was in a coma. I was so glad to have come across this story because it presented me with a story from a friend. As I saw Rachel grow into her own; rooting for her from the sidelines of the margins; I became comforted by her narration. Who would have guessed that through all of their struggles, each of the characters would somehow find themselves at places in their lives where they could feel at peace? Perhaps each reader might regard this transition through time & be reminded that, certainly, there will come a time when they have moved past the impossible mountain that they face, to rest easy in fields of green. Overall, this was simply a wonderful story to behold. The love that moulded & grew between Rachel & Carey was soft & soothing. Certainly, their disagreements & struggles were no small thing. However, I was hopeful that each of them would get to a point in life where they might look back on those situations & find some way to grow forward. Their conversations also acted as something of a backdrop for the entire story. Every single group of people was hiding something. In certain cases, such as Rachel not telling Carey that she was pregnant with his child, the secrets were big. In other cases, people kept their sadness locked into themselves or they pondered the parameters of their sexuality without discussion. Though the story focuses on the friendship that Rachel had with James, her romantic relationship with Carey allowed the story the forward movement that it needed. Without Carey, Rachel became a character that walked the same neighbourhood every day without noticing anything about the area; she simply rounded in on herself. She learnt to properly maintain her laundry because Carey wanted to live an adult life. Rachel wanted to be responsible & save money because she knew that she would reach Carey’s age at some point & that life would not be kind to her if she made no efforts to grow. There are certainly no limits on personal growth. As Rachel meets Carey again in her later years we understand that the small insecurities she harboured remained cloistered in her soul. The same goes for both Rachel & Deenie; their conversations are disconcerted & worried by the plausible turn of events that might find them hurt once more. Because of this—because this story was so innately earnest in its humanity, however gruesome & uncomfortable that was, I loved it. O’Donoghue found a way to welcome readers into the life of a person we will never really know. Rachel will remain who she is. In between our time together she will have done all her musing behind closed doors; we may never understand why she lives where she does or what part of her job brings her joy. Suffice it for us to know that those are the decisions she has made & it is an act of vulnerable intimacy to have her share parts of herself with us. I hope we get to meet again. The approach to recording memories in something of a long transcript was unique in that Rachel never really knew why she was writing, just as we sometimes pick up a book for reasons that we cannot quite pin down at the moment. I would like to think that there was closure in everything that transpired; that the wounds in everyone’s soul were mended. Life has a funny way of moving us around until we understand the role that we play in our own existence. I hope that Rachel experienced reprieve at having finally relinquished the burden of holding on to a love that wasn’t hers to carry. Though, I suppose that was an act of love, in & of itself. Thank you to NetGalley, Knopf Doubleday, & Caroline O'Donoghue for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 13, 2023
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Mar 13, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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14
| 
| 0571361889
| 9780571361885
| 0571361889
| 4.11
| 103
| unknown
| Dec 06, 2022
|
really liked it
|
The moon is high in the night sky & the little baby animal who yawns & stretches needs to go to bed. One thing is missing before they can snuggle into
The moon is high in the night sky & the little baby animal who yawns & stretches needs to go to bed. One thing is missing before they can snuggle into dreams; a goodnight kiss. We first meet a baby crocodile & then a baby tiger, both of whom are siblings in the universe of this book. The family dynamic reflects warmth & inclusion in the various forms that love takes in life. All the animals that these baby animals meet cannot give them the kiss goodnight they need. The reader watches as these other animals provide silly excuses as to why they cannot accommodate the request, ranging from the future to present action & the silly imagining that young readers might connect to—presenting to already be asleep. This feels like a book that will find its place in bedtime routines. It might even be a nice reminder that different animals (people) approach interactions in different ways. For example, the toucans can kiss each other but not others—what might this mean? There are ample ways of approaching this discussion. I always appreciate when little picture books welcome the narrative of reality; encouraging young readers to reflect & be pensive. This is always a wonderful thing. Overall, this was a very sweet story. The illustrations by Polly Dunbar create a landscape of families & friends; one that exists in the world of the reader too. The colour scheme is soft & mesmerizing so that the book can be read during those weaning hours of the evening, allowing a young mind to find repose within the pages of a book. Thank you to NetGalley, Faber & Faber, & Eoin McLaughlin for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 03, 2022
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Dec 03, 2022
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
13
| 
| 1623543355
| 9781623543358
| 1623543355
| 4.14
| 102
| unknown
| Apr 11, 2023
|
it was ok
|
Lola is very excited—her Nana-Bibi is coming to visit. The whole family is excited for her to arrive & together they prepare the room with anticipatio
Lola is very excited—her Nana-Bibi is coming to visit. The whole family is excited for her to arrive & together they prepare the room with anticipation. This story is very simple & would be attractive to very young readers who will have the chance to focus on the illustrations & piece together the flow of the story either from experience—anticipating a visitor—or from the story itself. That said, I could not help but feel that something was missing within this story to add authenticity to the lives we are reading about on the page. Should there have been the inclusion of culture, rather than the hinted notes that Nana-Bibi is coming from abroad—whatever that might mean—I think the story could have worked far better. In one instance, Nana-Bibi is baking her special doughnuts but we do not know why they are special or from where the recipe originates. The story does not need to become complex in linguistics to highlight some valuable cultural markers, rendering the tale one of grounded sophistication. Is this a story for children who will recognize themselves in the illustrations or one for children who might be from a neighbouring country & may not be familiar with the ‘special doughnuts’? There are ample questions to be posed within this story & because of that, I feel it is lacking. Certainly, this book may be appreciated by many a reader. It represents the tender feelings of joy one feels when a friendly & warm individual is coming to see us. However, with all books, one writes & draws for the reader, for their complete & utter appreciation & joy—especially when crafting a story for the young. Thank you to NetGalley, Charlesbridge, & Anna McQuinn for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 04, 2022
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Nov 04, 2022
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
12
| 
| 9781838855
| 3.11
| 4,426
| Apr 07, 2022
| Apr 07, 2022
|
it was amazing
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on disordered eating, eating disorders, sexual assault, physical violence, suicidal ideations, distorted body image, & others. There is so much that goes into a story. However much the written word might hold, it is ultimately the employer of words who holds the power. When I first came upon this book the cover art made me long for it to be one that I loved. I feel a quaint connection with the title; an opening to what proves to be an existential nihilism. It was my luck to come upon this book & I will regard it fondly for all the years of my life. I hope that there comes a time when I might revisit the pages so that I am reminded of where we both have been, since we met, & recall the times when we walked the same paths, alone. Sophie is a 22-year-old university graduate living in Dublin at her childhood home. She has no job & doesn’t know which type of career she is meant to focus on getting; or where to start in the sea of applications, job posters, & opportunities. Every day she wades through life like a reef suckled into the crevices of a rock at the bottom of a lagoon. Nothing matters much to her & one might wonder if this is not partly due to her chronic presence online. Sophie lives both innately & vicariously through her cellular device. That being said, it is not the only screen that matters. Her television, her laptop, & her phone mean the world to Sophie, they are windows to the world she hides within. I find this book difficult to review & there was a part of me that began to dread the moment when I would have to sit with myself & write a reflective piece. This is not to say that I would encourage everyone to read this book because I am certain that we might all have drastically different impressions of both the plot & the writing style. However, this story meant a great deal to me. In an attempt to avoid being too personal within this review, I will simply say that I have stood firmly in the calloused & scabby shoes of the main character. I suppose that this is perhaps the reason I find this piece so difficult to review. We are faced with ourselves in different facets throughout our lives. Whether this is when we look into a mirror or into the eyes of a person who is in love with us; maybe even in the eyes of a friend turned foe. We make our mark within the shapes, sounds, & light flickers of this world even when we are inauspiciously floating through the hours. It is not difficult for me to see myself, I spend every moment of my life with myself—I am acutely aware of who I am. However, it makes me sad to see Sophie. When we are young, as Sophie is when we meet her, the world is enormous. When we are trying to make our way into the river that flows with white foam we become aware that the casualty of life in childhood is gone; there will never be another moment when we might be without control—everything relies on our every move. We must say the right thing & make the best choices, & figure everything out. However much this does not always seem to be true, we are all sitting where we are today because of the albeit, sometimes random, or hopeful, or scary, decisions we made the day before. In Sophie, the reader meets a person who doesn’t seem to want to try. Life is difficult for some folks in ways that are not always apparent to the people around them. Many forget how easy it is to smile into the void. This is where the story becomes tricky as I believe many readers might find the flow of events tedious at best, should they not have lived a relatively similar experience themselves. The reader watches Sophie scroll through social media sites over & over again. Almost nothing happens within this story that does not involve a thumb over a phone screen, refreshing a timeline or a feed. However, this is a very crucial & intimate glimpse into the person that we follow. In all the days of her life, there was no place for Sophie within her family. Her parents seemingly favoured Hannah, her twin, given Hannah’s heightened anger issues & short fuse actions which took a toll on the entire group. Rather than attempt to work through Hannah’s behaviours & crude comments, Sophie’s parents coddled their other child & allowed the abusive tendencies of the one to belittle & degrade the other. This was a difficult part to read about because the author makes these scenes vivid; there is no escape for Sophie, she has nowhere to go. As she is forced to grow to become an adult person, she is never given the care that was needed to know who she was. In lieu of spending time analyzing why she might feel so attached to technology rather than people with whom she might have a tangible & warm relationship, Sophie evades all truths residing in her own body. She degrades herself to the point of believing herself better off dead. It is by lying on the cold tiles of her bathroom floor that she is able to remember that her body can feel things; can connect with more than the terrible things she believes about herself. Though I have placed a trigger warning at the beginning of this review I believe it is important to reiterate the gravity of this particular aspect of the story. Whilst Sophie scrolls, she actions thoughts whose goals are to remind her of how poorly she is at being herself. There is a significant portion of this story which sees severely negative dialogue take place between Sophie against herself. She is someone for whom eating is a disordered practice. I am not a medical doctor nor am I someone who has studied eating disorders but I am someone who is constantly trying to recover from one. Therefore, let me say that for those with similar experiences, be kind to yourselves—no book is worth the torment of a relapse. With the constant hate that Sophie purports for herself, it is not inconceivable to see her pursue relationships with people with whom she might be better off without. Within the opening chapter of this book, I became intrigued by Sophie’s character & wanted to see her experience a happy existence. It was troubling to see her forgive Finn for his disconnect because that is what she is familiar with experiencing. I applaud the author here once again for rendering these invisible relationships so accurate, so real. Every character within this story was as authentic as the people we walk alongside every single day. Within this group of people, we meet Grace, Sophie’s best friend. There is certainly something to be said about the less-than-stellar relationships that Sophie has with the men in her life, it is also interesting to see the spectrum of behaviour & feelings she experiences due to her best friend. I am still unsure how I feel about Grace. Would Sophie be better off without her shadow? It’s difficult to say. Without Grace to bounce ideas, & feelings, & recount events to breakdown moments, where is Sophie? Certainly, our friendships say a great deal about who we are as people. Those with whom we keep company are reflections of ourselves. In this case, I think that Grace is a reflection of who Sophie is to herself. She is often times condescending, & rude, but is ultimately set on seeing something come of all the grunge that takes place on the daily. Grace is simultaneously someone who comes across as being ‘too much’ & ‘not enough’ which is fascinating given that every other character in this book fits snuggly into one only category. Sophie’s parents were never enough, they abandoned their child whilst she lived in their home. Every other member of Sophie’s friend group is too much themselves to be very much of anything for anyone else. Ultimately, this is not negative or positive, it simply is a style of presenting the extremities that exist within ourselves & within the world around us. When we are well-placed we find the world can be a kind place. When we are on the wrong foot, our heels snap & our bones are forever tender to a misstep. With every phrase this story crafts a tale as stark as the ripple in the sky over Ireland. Does anything matter when the world is coming to an end? Can we focus on any one particularly serious matter in hopes that it results in being more than it is? I don’t know if Sophie will ever be whom I believe she can be. I don’t know that that is the point of this story. Just as I cannot say whether or not the world will burn because of the crack in the sky throughout this narrative. I don’t know much of anything at all & that’s okay. It’s okay to wake up & scroll or take a stroll. It’s okay to want to be someone but not know how to get there. It’s okay to have days that are gloomy & sad; it’s okay to be happy too, instead. There is nuance in almost every aspect of our existence & this is what the author has presented to us. Within a crack in the sky, there is light, there is the unknown, & there is everything we told ourselves could be true. Just like our reflections & our sense of self. Thank you to NetGalley, Canongate Books, & Catherine Prasifka for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Oct 26, 2022
|
Oct 28, 2022
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
10
| 
| B00LRXCFCU
| 4.26
| 16,289
| Sep 04, 2014
| Feb 03, 2015
|
really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on abuse, child endangerment, Hebephilia, Pedophilia, death of a child, sexual abuse of minors, physical abuse of minors, psychological distress, mental illness, religious extremism, terminal illness, the suicide of a minor, & others. Alongside the content warning, I would like to highlight that if you are someone for whom reading repeated instances where both graphic descriptions & dedicated insinuations are given regarding the abuse of minors, is overwhelming, triggering, debilitating, or other; this is a book I would encourage you to put aside. The subject matters approached in this book deal entirely with the actions taken by sexual predators as well as those undertaken by others systemically protecting these actions. There is very little of this story that does not impart mental reflection on the realities these minors were forcibly subjected to throughout a great many years. Therefore, please be kind to yourself & do not pursue this book or my review if you are not in a position to be faced with this matter. Odran Yates is a priest in the Catholic Church in Ireland. He narrates a series of events over the course of multiple years in his life which have shaped him to be the man lying face-down on the earth, wondering if things could have been different, had he only been someone else. He is surrounded by people bold enough to put thought into action regardless if these choices are good or bad. The reader meets Odran in a compromising position, one that leaves our roaming eyes with that same reflection; had Odran been anyone else, had the circumstances been anything other than what they are, one might be left with feelings of pity for the poor soul who was meant to drown in the waves that fateful summer day. Yet, I cannot feel anything but anger towards Odran. This is a book that has left me feeling cheated. I feel annoyed at myself for wanting the main character to be a good person, for his actions to have carried through & formed a unified front with his inner monologue. However, time after time, Odran proved to me that he was incapable of being honest, of seeking out the protagonist in himself, the one he diligently wanted me to believe he was. Instead, he was the best friend of a repeated & prolific child predator; a man who wanted to sit in the graces of this child abuser because he couldn’t face himself in a mirror to come to terms with the reality of his position, one of a lonely whimpering, rain-drenched leaf at the bottom of a mildew rotten sunken ship, shot down for the war crimes it sought to inflict. Why do I feel so much annoyance? This is not a question without an answer for I know myself distinctly; understanding that in books I wish to see the change we have avoided in reality. How dare Odran walk back into Aidan’s life after he deliberately allowed someone he knew to be a child sexual predator to roam the boy's house at night? How dare he lie to the face of his own nephew who had to deal with the physical & psychological repercussions of such levels of abuse, only to admit to himself due to the words spoken to him by the perpetrator, that he is also the villain in this story. How dare he. Yet, how like reality this fictional work is, indeed. So riddled with nuisance as to whom we are meant to trust, whom we are to want to see succeed. I can say confidently that I feel no shame in admitting that they should all burn for such unforgivable things, as those that the children have had to endure at the hands of barbarically inept human beings as the adults in this scenario. Why should I feel conflicted about my sentiments towards Odran? He is, after all, the root cause of the abuse his nephew suffered. I should feel more care to see a four-leaf-clover fly away in the wind than to watch him punished in my field of vision for what he deliberately allowed to happen. However, that is not what this story is asking of the reader. It is easy to point the finger, that is all that happens throughout this story. When it mattered to speak out, everyone whispered. When it mattered to listen, the ears of the deaf were more attentive. How can this be? However difficult it is to admit, everyone is part of the problem while many are simultaneously a victim of the system. If one is to take Odran’s experiences as a primary example one might wonder when this character was ever meant to revolt against everything he had known. This is a character who had the deaths of his brother & father diminished to darkness in his memory for the level of traumatic upheaval they caused his psyche. However, they nibbled at him still for how could he completely forget what had happened when he was living in the imposed constraints such a tragedy caused his family, within the actions of his religious extremist mother who threw him at the first religious figure she saw because her son was evoking ‘normal’ teenage emotions. This is not to say that I do not believe that Dissociative Amnesia played a part in Odran’s life, I very much believe that to be the case. However, he was constantly reminded of things he wished to forget — so to say — by the behaviour of his mother. Yet, can we blame her? There was a time when people wanted to trust that religious figures were honest, truthful, & kind people. This is not something we can say is innately wrong for, haven’t we all, at least once, sought in wish or desire, to trust someone? Certainly, we cannot look upon the centuries of religious abuse of power as indicative that these figures of supposed God’s voice, were in fact playthings for the Devil himself, can we? This is a difficult question to answer, just as there may be one rotten apple in a tree, one needs to examine the trunk to determine whether or not the entity is rotten to the core. So too have religions throughout all of humankind been privy to both honest & dishonest, kind & unkind, people. The Catholic Church was meant to protect its believers, it was meant to give them a reason for being; guiding them with chorus & community into the welcoming hands of their Lord. Yet, these same figureheads found themselves riddled to the brim with child predators. Why is that? Again, we find ourselves with an impossibly difficult question to answer. One may say that the victims of abuse at the hands of religious figures were suppressed because it seems impossible that a person who proclaimed themselves vocationally inclined in the field, was at once a man of God & a man who abused children. Therefore, one may note that perhaps this was a field of work wherein such barbaric peoples felt comfortable; felt that they could hide in plain sight for who would ever question a person who said to hear the word of God from the Man himself? However, one might also note that for those same reasons, the Catholic Church has highlighted itself as being the epicentre for child sexual abuse because people cannot believe that this would be the place, of all places, where a predator would feel safe to act on their impulses. By this I mean, we might regard the high number of cases brought to the forefront by those brave children, as being believed because it was impossible that a man of the cloth should be such a horrible person therefore, he should be evicted from the community. Is believing in the goodness at the core of religions bad? No. Is being part of a religion, a community of peers seeking to pray for salvation & grace, bad? No. However, hosting a community of repression & silence, fostering a feeding ground for people who prey on the vulnerability cultivated in wanting to believe in a higher power, is devilishly wrong. 95 Theses & I should think one of them wrung true to the core of the fact. With these questions, we are brought round to the essence of Odran’s story. Who is at fault for his negligence? It is at once his own fault for deciding that he did not have it within his person to face the facts; his esteemed lifelong friend was a sexual predator, & he was a bad man & Odran ignored this because he did not want to experience confrontation. This leads us to the fault that lies at the hands of those who raised Odran to be the way that he was. The people who thumped him into the ground until he was forever quiet, forever silenced. This is the priest who molested him, it is his father who experienced serious levels of anger & violence, & it is his own mother who willfully ignored the world around her for the security she sought in organized religion. Our species have been pondering the question of ‘nature versus nurture’ for centuries, if not longer. As with this story, we could be pointing fingers at others forever. What is troublesome is admitting to ourselves, as Odran had to do at the conclusion of this story, that one is responsible for one's own actions, to an extent at least. How easy would it have been for Odran to randomly break the mould he was fitted for upon his birth? How likely would it have been that he would seek to do this because he could not go on as he was? It is impossible to say because he never did either of these. The reader is faced with the difficult decision as to whether or not Odran should be believed & whether or not it is worth their time to trust that this character is remorseful for his neglect. With that, I will say that this made the reading experience extremely difficult for me. I remain steadfast in my sentiments against those who abuse children; a stance I shall never falter from holding. However, as Boyne wrote onward, I could not help but feel frustrated at his ease; crafting dimensional characters who would be remembered as that kindly, mousy friend, & who would be recalled as the person who unbelievably was the perpetrator of their own experiences on to others. These are the markers of a stellar writer & one who enamoured me in the narrative at once. I wanted to be led through the timeline, I felt intrigued & interested, I wanted to believe that Odran never knew a thing. Yet, just as Tom refused to speak his truth, choosing instead to repeat the offences done to him in his childhood, so too did Odran recycle the actions transferred to him & so, the finger-seeking blame needs to become ten or twenty. Specifically, when children are involved, it is difficult to say that it was in the hands of one person for aren’t we loath to forgive a parent we deem neglectful, a figure we simply couldn’t believe to be abusive, an adult we thought we knew. Every character in this book plays the villain; every person partakes in the final form that these people have become. What I found to be the most troublesome aspect of this book are the questions it has left me with. Boyne’s writing swept me into a world that was riddled with ghouls at every turn yet, I wanted to believe that there would be an archangel come to save the day. How can someone write about reality in such a way as to have me hoping against reason that, this time it will be different? I appreciated the stance the author took at introducing a character who was set apart yet, one who mutilated themselves in their own lies; a character one could be enticed to believe, trust, & hope for. Poor Odran with everyone offering him sandwiches when he wasn’t even hungry. Poor Odran whose father drowned his young brother in a murder-suicide. Poor Odran who finally made a friend only for this person to be a blatant mentally deranged ghoul. Poor Odran who is so like the other passengers on the train so as to melt into the fabric on the seat becoming who he was, no one man at all. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Jun 15, 2022
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Apr 18, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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9
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| 8494429469
| 9788494429460
| 8494429469
| 3.64
| 1,103
| Oct 25, 2016
| Sep 01, 2016
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really liked it
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En un formato de libro ilustrado, el joven lector ve tres conjuntos de animales y sus familias acomodarse para pasar la noche. El sol se acerca a la t
En un formato de libro ilustrado, el joven lector ve tres conjuntos de animales y sus familias acomodarse para pasar la noche. El sol se acerca a la tierra y desciende para dar la bienvenida a la luna al cielo. Sin embargo, el osito no está cansado. ¿Cuántos de nosotros no nos hemos sentido ansiosos para permanecer despiertos y también verlo cómo el día se convierte en la noche? Las horas dedicadas a los adultos. El osito buscó a sus amigos con la esperanza de que siempre quieran seguir divirtiéndose tanto por la noche como durante el día. Sin embargo, el osito pronto se encuentra bostezando grande y fuerte, listo para dormir. Esta es una historia cálida para dormir llena de ilustración impresionantes que creo que dejarán al joven lector con una sensación de calma relajante. Siempre he sido fan de los cuentos para dormir. Hay algo que decir sobre la intimidad que encontramos en el camino cuando alguien nos susurra las buenas noches a través de las historias de un libro. La facilidad con la que se escribió este libro, sin decir demasiadas cosas, lleva al lector a imaginar los colores de la selva donde habitan estas criaturas y a reencontrarse con ellas en sus sueños. Esta es una historia hermosa . ¡Gracias a Edelweiss+, NubeOcho y Chris Haughton por la copia gratuita de este libro a cambio de una reseña honesta! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 24, 2022
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Mar 24, 2022
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Hardcover
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8
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| 1473683106
| 9781473683105
| B08CHHMH12
| 3.70
| 2,275
| Apr 27, 2021
| Apr 29, 2021
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** Jeanie Masterson is thirty-two (32), she is married to her lifelong friend, Niall & they work alongside Jeanie’s parents as Undertak
**spoiler alert** Jeanie Masterson is thirty-two (32), she is married to her lifelong friend, Niall & they work alongside Jeanie’s parents as Undertakers in Kilcross, Ireland. This book follows Jeanie as she wades her way through adult situations without ever investing any ounce of truth, honesty or bits of herself; lest it is the wrong decision. Though the main character is surrounded by family & friends who have doted on her for the entirety of her life, Jeanie continues to evade sincerity in all her actions & reactions; choosing instead to lean on the words ‘duty’ & ‘obligation’ in a hope to validate her inability to be the person that she is. At face value, you might approach my review feeling a bit confused as to why I rated this book so highly if I spent the entirety of my reading experience riddled with annoyance towards the main character. I myself wondered how I might be able to express my reasoning; finding myself working through the pages curious as to why I was enjoying a book that featured a character so polar opposite to myself & truly, a person with whom I felt very frustrated. I suppose I found my way to this rating as I asked myself what it was that I was enjoying; what aspect of a book renders us to fully invest? Does it matter to us if the characters are unlikeable if a story is realistic? In this instance, I found myself invested in the story because I felt that Griffin has successfully created a plot, characters & an environment that made me feel like a fly on the wall. I was peering into the lives of a family who held secrets close to their heart, closer still than the people they loved more than anything in life. I found myself enjoying the aspects which sprinkled sentiments of reality in this story. Though the plot highlights Jeanie as having a supernatural ability to communicate with those who are deceased, this was not a huge part of the plot & I felt as though it was utilized in an appropriate fashion. By this I mean, it didn’t really matter if I believed that Jeanie could communicate with dead people. It didn’t change the fact that the conversations that were shared held more value than the requirement for me to believe in something outside of my immediate understanding of reality. The feelings & emotions that Jeanie explored when sitting beside a deceased person evoked more motion in the advancement of the plot than the simple act of her sitting in a mortuary. Therefore, it didn’t matter whether I believed that a dead person would choose to wait before transitioning into the ether. What mattered was that I read about sentiments we often feel, evoked in a time of high stress & turmoil, from the lips of an imaginary character, into my very real conscious state. Before delving further into other topics of the plot, I want to acknowledge the representation of neurodivergence in Mikey, Jeanie’s older brother. I am not someone who is personally or professionally in a position to make remarks on the authentic representation of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (regarding it wholeheartedly as the spectrum that it is) & therefore, my comments should be recognized as coming from someone who read through this book without personal or educational weight to back my impressions & opinions. I wish we had explored this character a little further, I wish there had been more to him than his deep adoration for all things ‘war history’. However, when I regard any other character, I cannot say for certain that they had thoroughly been developed either. Everyone was second fiddle to Jeanie & her antics. Though I didn’t feel any longing for any further details from any of the other characters, I was left feeling rather sad about Mikey & his circumstances. Having a younger sibling like Jeanie could not have been easy. For the entirety of their lives, she put herself at the forefront of his well-being without ever being able to take care of herself. Are we meant to believe that everyone who is on the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) requires a member of their family to abandon all their hopes & dreams to take care of them? I think I felt so poorly about Mikey because his character was constantly utilized as an excuse; a reason to stay behind, someone to hold others back. Based on the little we know of this person, I can’t imagine that he ever wanted anyone to not be who they were. Therefore reading about Jeanie, vapid underachieving Jeanie, constantly placing the blame of her ineptitude on her older brother felt like a huge cop-out; though, maybe that was the point. My most favoured line of the book is spoken in passing after the horribly lost main character evades responsibilities & lives in the rural countryside of France in the hopes of learning who she really is. When Marianne tells Jeanie that (in different words), places do not matter, the people in them do; I found myself at the core of the story. Though I admit that Jeanie as the main character was hugely flawed I couldn’t help but accept that so many, many, people are indeed wandering through life just as she was. I couldn’t shame Jeanie for not knowing who she was when I very clearly read about her having always been evasive when it mattered to be straightforward. One might even argue that her parents & the lies that they fostered, encouraged her to be less than honest, even with herself. However, I think it was more than that. Jeanie never had to question anything, she never had to wonder ‘what if’ because there were always ample people around her protecting her from a failure that might scare her into making a solid decision. While she was a child on the playground, Peanut defended her honour. All throughout their lives, Jeanie had someone defending her, helping her choose, & leading her by the hand through any confusing moment in time. I suppose one might say that she was luckier than some of us who have had to do it on our own. However, on the other hand, Jeanie was never so alone as she was when it came time to speak on her desires; who was she but the flimsy leaf, grasping for dear life on the bark of a self-sufficient tree. I found it difficult to find it in myself to think kindly or empathetically towards Jeanie. Every time someone in her life asked her, to be honest, to be present, to be invested; she was elusive & asked for time to think. This time to think was always granted & I couldn’t help but feel envious. How many times, I cannot count, might it have been warmly welcomed for me to have been granted time to reflect; time to organize my thoughts & feelings? Jeanie was granted the freedom of independence & she abused it at every turn. How can you be so willfully ignorant as to take advantage of the people who are trusting & loving towards you? How can you take their kindness & understanding at your needing time before broaching a subject, only for you to leave them hanging for days, sometimes years? You have no right to turn around & feel betrayed when on their death bed, they speak of the people in their lives whom they loved; people with whom they were able to foster an actual healthy relationship. Should I leave a low rating because I thought Jeanie was a spoilt privileged vapid individual who never learnt any lessons in all of her life? Or, should I rate this book highly as it made me truly feel as though this person were real, & as though all the turmoil experienced was in fact truly transpiring? I chose the latter because, though many aspects of this book were annoying, & sometimes frustrating to read about, I appreciated their earnest presentation. It made sense that Niall moved away to finally find himself living sea-side; this was honest & genuine to the complexities of his character. Of course, he loved Jeanie, of course, he adored everything he hoped to build. But, he was also a person who had complex emotions & a deep understanding that though Jeanie had many aspects of her person to love, she was hollow & this does not leave much room for him & his characteristics, to be loved in return. I wished for better for all the secondary characters. Even after the final twist is revealed, that didn’t alter my opinion of anyone involved. Life is not always straightforward, sometimes very simple matters snowball into complicated situations. Regardless of what is right & wrong, I wanted everyone in this story to feel validated & comforted. I cannot imagine what Jeanie’s parents must have been feeling when their daughter ran off to Norway because she had never learnt to communicate how she feels. Though I appreciate that she felt inclined to stay to support her aging parents (as many children feel), she was not in a situation wherein she was not granted the liberty of being her own person with her own path. All this to say that I very much enjoyed this book. It was frustrating & aggravating & sometimes very noisome but, it was honest. It genuinely presented the complexities which lie in a single person’s life, however much they lack substance, there is still very much a whole person inside trying to find their way. I think that this book should be read when one is in the frame of mind to appreciate the enormous flaws of the main character without allowing her tantrums to get in the way of the plot. There were so many other people to like, root for, to enjoy. The paranormal aspect of the story plays such a small role so, if you are seeking to have that at the forefront you might be left wanting. Overall, I am glad that I read this book when I did. Irish novels always remind me of my grandparents & for that, I am left with warm sentiments of home & love. Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, & Anne Griffin for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
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not set
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Jan 17, 2022
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Jan 17, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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7
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| unknown
| 3.70
| 474
| 1914
| unknown
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** It’s so easy to long for green grass. It’s tempting to wander the earth in search of the greenest pasture, a pasture greener & flush
**spoiler alert** It’s so easy to long for green grass. It’s tempting to wander the earth in search of the greenest pasture, a pasture greener & flusher than any you have ever known. More tempting still does this desirous pasture become when you think of the possibility of it being all for you. A lush field of greenery that would render a clover to shy away from the luck which certainly befell every blade of grass. Little Chandler is thirty-two (32), & he works a job that sustains both himself, his wife & their growing child. He lives in a city that is wrought with history, activity & lore. He wanders streets & alleyways which evoke pensive prose in his mind; he is gifted with the hope for every next day, to be a better day. Yet, he is not Ignatius Gallaher & for that he is remorseful. I suppose we might easily read about Little Chandler’s envy towards his friend with distaste. However, that would not be honest. Who among us has not been tempted by a singular thought which has wiggled itself into our absentmindedness; a little worm which renders us to pause & wonder if we really did make the most out of everything? Did we choose the right profession, have we loved the ideal partner, have we resided in the most beautiful city? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, ultimately it doesn’t matter because we would ask ourselves the same things if we had chosen otherwise. Joyce is absurdly talented in his ability to write about a sentiment that has most probably affected all of us at one time. I suppose it depends on where you are in your own life & your own sentimentally towards your decisions but, when the story nears its end & we read about the fear which cradles Little Chandler in its hands as he reads poems that had previously offered him comfort; as we watch a panic instil itself into the place where security & love lay for his family, I felt very sad. Then, I realized how unreliable our narrator was. Perhaps his wife doesn’t hold love for him in her eyes. Or, perhaps she does & her cooing their son back to sleep was simply a scene meant to reflect the insurmountable insecurity Little Chandler feels about the changes happening in his life. Perhaps Dublin is the dullest place in the world. Or, perhaps Ignatius was overzealous in his descriptions because he so longed to feel valid in the esteem of his Irish friends. In the end, all of these things can be true, it comes down to what the story meant to you. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Dec 17, 2021
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Dec 17, 2021
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Collection
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6
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| B01MRUNC2Q
| 3.61
| 2,391
| 1904
| Dec 06, 2016
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** An impending sense of lingering dread follows this story & when the end of the tale is near, a nauseating unease of a familiar sadne
**spoiler alert** An impending sense of lingering dread follows this story & when the end of the tale is near, a nauseating unease of a familiar sadness & oppression is what remains. Eveline is a young Irish girl who has been bolted into the life she leads. People she loves have died; promises she made suffocate her desires; the hope for a tomorrow that is different from yesterday eats away at her. I think what makes this story so powerful is the fact that we have all found ourselves in either Eveline or Frank’s shoes. We have either gotten on the boat or we have been frozen solid with fear & guilt & sometimes, immediate regret. Some people have been in both positions, some still remain in one. This is the aspect of the story which makes it difficult to reflect upon. One can so easily imagine themselves leaning on the railing of the boat, calling for Eveline to step on. I admit to hoping very deeply that she would not be consumed by the familial guilt that restrained her & yet, I completely understood how absurdly impossible it must have been for her to fathom stepping foot onto a boat that would lead her to a new life while the remaining members of her family suffered poverty & distress. This is a short story but one which I think is worth the time it takes to read it. Joyce is a phenomenally efficient writer. Within the first few sentences, I found myself engaged with Eveline’s train of thought & understood the neighbourhood which had been her home since childhood. What a talent it is to be able to convey so much in so few pages. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Dec 14, 2021
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Dec 14, 2021
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Kindle Edition
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5
| 
| 1617738468
| 9781617738463
| 1617738468
| 3.82
| 21,897
| Feb 23, 2016
| Jan 31, 2017
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did not like it
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**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on substance abuse, children absented from guardianship, & others. The concept of a cozy mystery that takes place in a small Irish village does, on the surface, translate as something I would be interested in reading. I had spotted this book at random while wandering the book store & thought that it couldn’t hurt to expand my mystery literature; what better way to cultivate some atmosphere than in a quaint Irish village? Unfortunately, none of what I had hoped to encounter in this story came to fruition. We are introduced to a family of six (6) children who are left in charge of running their family’s restaurant after the untimely death of their parents in a freak automobile accident. This alone was tragic & horrible to read about. Within the blink of an eye, this plot point plays second fiddle to the murder plot which seeps itself into the storyline. It wasn’t enough that children had to bear the brunt of adult responsibilities, worries & burdens. A family friend turned serial killer has decided that he needed to pick the children off one by one & murder them to save face. It was too much. I do not have any desire to read about the overwhelming anxieties of orphaned children trying to find their way in a world that their parents no longer inhabit only for them to have to fight for their actual lives against a grown adult person whom they thought they could trust so that this same person doesn’t kill them. It would have sufficed for the mystery to have remained the perpetrator of the car accident which took the lives of the parents. Had we been introduced to the family as a full unit we would have had an all-around less dreadful plot to work through. The plot was heavy-duty while not offering much in terms of intrigue or reasons for a reader to complete their reading. Everything felt somewhat superfluous. There is the obvious tragedy that these siblings were living through; the jumble of secondary & tertiary characters whom we do not become acquainted with; a briefly explored scenery; save for the vocabulary & character names this story could truly have been taking place anywhere in the world, there was little tying it to Ireland. Had the main characters offered anything resembling intelligence or depth, some of my points of contention could be ignored. I found so many of the choices they made, their inner dialogues & the overall essence of these characters to be irredeemably annoying. Tell me what in your mind, as a 22-year-old would prompt you to wander around town trying to solve a very violent murder? Nothing in your character build-up to date had demonstrated you as being anything close to detail-oriented, calm, collected or observant. Perhaps, being someone who lives in North America I have been acclimated to the ‘safer’ way to approach criminal activity (i.e. not to think myself a member of the Scooby-Doo Gang & leave well enough alone for fear of dying myself). Perhaps because these characters lived in such a rural part of Ireland they had no qualms about investigating things themselves, putting themselves in danger & interrupting a police investigation because they had nothing better to do. I can’t say anything for certain, but that whole part intrigued me. All in all, this is not a book I would count as being memorable, enjoyable or worth the read. There are other quaint mystery books out there that host an array of well-written characters, plots & sceneries. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Nov 13, 2021
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Oct 02, 2021
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Mass Market Paperback
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11
| 
| B00CGHRC06
| 3.61
| 14,927
| 2013
| Oct 08, 2013
|
did not like it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on abuse, child endangerment, death of a child, sexual abuse of a minor, suicide, psychological distress, graphic descriptions of body decay, & others. Eliza Caine is 21 years old when her last remaining parent dies. She is orphaned in a house that does not belong to her, in a city that sees her roaming the streets without opportunity for a welcomed male gaze, working tirelessly in a school for girls. Eliza is something of a lost soul which is ironic for so too is her own father who wanders alongside her in all her future adventures. Coming to a head, the ghost of her father & the ghost of a homicidal mother fight head-to-head over Eliza; lest we forget the two children who wander the grounds of this abode at which Eliza was hired to be their governess but, like Eliza’s common sense, the children’s needs fall to the waste side in this gothic horror style novel wherein ghosts rule the world of the living & the abuse done on to children sees adults more perplexed on the repercussions of abuse than on the safety of the children around them. I learned long ago to keep my expectations low when reading gothic novels. There are very few authors that can do the genre justice & these are outnumbered by those who grasp at the basic concept, once thought to be done right, & reproduce it to no end. Few readers have not become familiar with the plot employed within this book: a young woman accepts a job as a governess to children inhabiting a strange & secluded home. During her time employed at the house, she encounters ghastly things that make her question her sanity & those of the children, for surely young people might also be the demons haunting this house. In all, this is an overdone layout & one that rarely shows the fruits of the labour of writing. While reading this book I found my mind wandering to all the other mediums in which I have come across this same story before. What differentiates this book from others is its disjointed framework, one that left me questioning the seriousness of this work. The primary example I would like to employ towards this point touches on the subject of linguistics. I am certainly not an expert on English, nor am I an expert on Victorian English, however, there was a significant disconnect between all previous works taking place during such a time period & the discourse presented in this book. The use of the word ‘trauma’, specifically, is misused. When Eliza & Mr. Raisin are speaking about a series of abuses that Santina experienced during her childhood they reference that traumas affect us all our lives. However, the word ‘trauma’ was being utilized as a means of expressing distinct physical wounds per its introduction into English vernacular in 1690 & would only begin to be used to reference psychotic, psychological, & undo mental stresses in 1894, this being a total of 27 years after the story takes place. There are of course other such words that are whimsically tossed around & joining these with some of the personal approaches to gender, societal expectations, child-rearing, religion, etc. I could not help but feel put out. This book is not written in an authentic way so as to leave the reader with confirmation of the time period. The plot of this story is seemingly nonexistent. Eliza comes to Gaudlin Hall to care for children & yet spends all her time pestering people for the story of something that does not concern her. Certainly, upon learning that she is the sixth governess in under a year, there might be some explaining that would need to be done but, this story takes place in 1867, people died of bizarre occurrences all the time — they still do — so what would lead Eliza to feel that the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the previous governess’ were abnormal? Truly, one could regard each of the incidents & conclude with justifiable reasoning that they were accidental. That would be the point of having the deaths take place as they did. Yet for all her boasting of smarts & intelligence, Eliza amazes the reader by simply being able to place one foot in front of the other so little is she able to grasp at the straws of the obvious. I understand & appreciate that most gothic-style stories are written with just such a woman at the head. However, the extent to which Eliza’s character was without reason & made absurd decisions was overwhelming. This is a character who declares that she would never leave the children on their own, so much does she love them, while simultaneously running to the village on her first morning at the house to inquire about the whereabouts of the parental figures. She then spends hours in the village, eating scones, talking with people, & bullying others for information, all of which is none of her business. Finally, once she believes that there might be information to garner, she returns to the house to assume the role of a similar caretaker to the children as their own mother, with a little bit less psychosis & a bit more ego. The aspect of this book that I found the most troublesome was the approach to abuse. The sexual abuse done to children was touched on quite a bit as several characters had been made aware of predators in their community & others had begun exploring the topic in conversation, profiting off rumours of such events. However, when it came time for characters to action their intentions, those primarily pertaining to the safety & wellbeing of children, the adults always proved themselves to be incompetent. Why did Isabella have to die? Why did we read an entire story in which Eliza was caring & kind to Eustache but seemingly ignored Isabella — a child who was long subjugated to the abusive tendencies of her mother & would have faced the repercussions of such abuse in the visual formats as her mother violently attacked two people. This poor child is treated like a plague by all those around her & then finally ends up being crushed to death by the foundation of the house in which she grew up, only for the one person she had hope in, to leave the premises happy as a clam that she got to raise Eustache as her own child & be rid of Isabella’s weird tendencies. This is such a travesty. There were so many opportunities for the author to explore some depth of the subject matter as he employed the realities experienced by children so frequently that it left the absence of maturity a gaping hole. Throughout this entire book, we explore how trauma presents itself in various ways. Santina became crazed with the sole caretaker responsibilities of her children because she was worried that they would be subjected to abuse at the hands of others. Isabella was closed-off & emotionally stunted because her mother was oppressive & dangerous. The little girl who was abused by her teacher evoked behaviours of extremism. Yet, all the while Eliza never cared about that. What Eliza cared about was men & their impact on her & within her life. She did not care for the well-being of women nor did she care for their friendship. She spent her time imagining being Eustache’s parental figure; Mr. Raisin’s wife; the loving companion to the male teacher who was a child predator; the list goes on. What did it bring to have her constantly daydreaming about what it would be like to be with a man in a romantic way? It brought nothing. This entire premise brought down the quality of the story significantly & rendered Eliza to be a most unlikeable character — more so than she already was. At the end of the day, there are books of higher quality lining the shelves of libraries & bookstores alike. There are books that see action fulfilled by characters with forethought & depth; events transpiring due to logical series of movements; ghosts performing tricks that impacted those they haunted in dreadful ways. However, I could not find it in myself to care that Eliza stuck her hands into scalding water. I could not believe that there was no twist for surely it was obvious that the ghost of her father was pining for her safety against the attacks done by the obvious ghost of Santina? The trajectory of this story took no turns, held no twists & was just what one assumed it would be but, somehow lesser even than that. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 21, 2022
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May 27, 2021
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Kindle Edition
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15
| 
| 0140437460
| 9780140437461
| 0140437460
| 3.74
| 6,672
| Dec 1864
| Jun 01, 2001
|
it was ok
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on abuse, psychological distress, physical assault, extreme violence, grief, & others. The primary reason for which I write reviews is so that I am able to transfer my thoughts & better analyze my feelings. When one is writing, one is engaging a part of the brain that requires a second’s extra time before the letter becomes a word & that word a series of ideas. I do not write perfect reviews, languages set obstacles in my way; an eagerness to get the thoughts out of my head rushes my fingers; the process as a whole requires patience & time. We all encounter errors & stutter in our mannerisms. Yet, here is an author who had every opportunity in the world not to do that. Le Fanu sat & wrote nearly 500 pages of plot that had nothing of substance to offer but to rid the reader of an annoyance that I cannot rightly name. I do not endeavour to read the Classics in ignorance. I am aware that times have changed & shifted. I recognize that what might have been a truly ghastly tale of horror upon publication may very well be a common occurrence in the society in which the reader lives at that moment. Unfortunately for me, this is exactly what has occurred in my case. I wanted to read this book because it is highly regarded & has been placed on the lists that boast the scariest stories ever told. I find myself once again, disappointed. The reader meets Maud, the main character, as she sits in a gorgeous bourgeois house in the countryside of England. Maud is 17 at the beginning of this story but she is writing these recollections of her youth from an undistinguished moment in the future. Her recollections often include forethought & acknowledgement on her behalf that some of the events that transpired might be viewed differently by anyone else, anyone who had more life experience than she did. I appreciated this inclusion as it allowed both the author & their main character the liberty of exploring the banality of the story. Maud is an heiress to a grand fortune & her entire life up until the passing of her father is filled with blissful ignorance. This story is sectioned into three parts & though this may be used as a proper device to draw the interest of the reader & engage their levels of curiosity, in this case, it did nothing but leave me wondering when the action & bulk of the story might take place. As was likely to happen, I had a favourite part of the three & felt the weight of my disappointment more acutely because I preferred the first part over the second & third. Le Fanu did a phenomenal job of setting the scene in the first section; making life as cloistered & dull as it could be. All the while, the reader is reminded that Austin Ruthyn is a brilliant man of very literary pursuits. This detail is important because it allows the reader to engage with the story as a whole. Austin, Maud’s father, is not hidden from the world like his brother, Silas, because of any forces outside of his control. He remains abreast of society because he does not necessarily agree with everything that happens & the choices those in charge make; never being able to reach the height of their positions. He remains well-respected, simply a person who enjoys their company so much that they do not feel lonely. Maud on the other hand suffers because of this isolation & goes through life completely out to lunch. I find it difficult to reflect emotionally on this story because it wouldn’t have gone anywhere if the main character had any semblance of a clue. It truly wouldn’t have gone anywhere if the legal system that prevailed at the time was worth an ounce. Silas was accused of brutally murdering a man inside his own home, a man to whom he owed a great deal of money. Because the room appeared to be sealed from the inside, the courts deemed it a suicide & not a murder. We are so lucky to have been made aware of the fiendish practices of the unsavoury through the works of Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, & many others. I wonder if they ever chanced an opportunity to read this book & thought the premise a ridiculous crux at which to lean the entire plot. This is where I remain at an impasse. Surely, for its time, this story allows readers to appreciate that the legal system could not be wrong. Who indeed could kill a person in an allegedly locked room? A locked room that was sealed from the inside, mind you. In today’s day & age, with all the literature, film & exposure to the reality that has filled our days since the publication of this book, the concept does not seem as impossible as it might have in 1864. Let us pretend for a second that Silas didn’t actually murder anyone. He’s still a mean person. He remains a brute & someone to whom the gentile side of life does not appeal. Yet, knowing this, Austin still bequeathed his own daughter to his care, assuming that if she were to randomly die, Silas would get the entire fortune. This is a bizarre choice. This decision does not align with the person that we are meant to believe Austin to be. Why would someone so smart, aware, & cautious of details choose to place his child in the home of someone he knew was neglecting his own children? I suppose we all do very dumb & silly things from time to time but, this is a bit extreme. I say this & remember that there is an entire section within this novel that hints at being more than what it is. The evil French governess who roamed the property, tormenting & thieving from Maud felt interminably long to me. So long, in fact, that I welcomed the second section with open spirits because at least then, the book was moving in a different direction. I could not find it in myself to care about the wildly peculiar ramblings of a woman who should not have been hired as the governess in the first place. Yet again I find myself questioning the man who is meant to be smart. Your child is crying & scared & all you have to say is, to get over it. Given the fact that Maud is recollecting these events, it was safe to assume that she survived whatever befell her. Certainly, if she had been abducted by the people on the property her journalling might be indicative of an end-of-life testament. But in all, everything felt too quaint for that to be the case. Silas never read as a great villain. He was dependent on Opium the entire time we knew him & was constantly zoned out from reality because he consumed the drug at leisure & without measuring it before consumption. I failed to find the languid body of someone high on Opium to be as terrifying as it was meant to be. At what point was I meant to look upon the decaying man before me & think that he was some looming demon in the night? We already know he’s capable of murder. I gathered by the brutality of the crime that he didn’t give a lick about committing cruel acts & so it was tedious for me to read through 445 pages of the same ramblings from Maud, trying to convince the reader that her Uncle Silas was a tender & good man. Again, Maud couldn’t grasp the intention of sentences told to her clearly in plain language so I do not put any weight into what she may or may not believe her uncle capable of. Because of this, the story wound around in circles. Maud blushes, she is annoyed, she is studious, she cries all of the time & she wants Milly to be a more posh individual. Nothing really happens which is not necessarily bad but, when I am promised a tale of daring psychological thrill, I expect to find that within the plot, at least once. Unfortunately, this story felt interminably long. I paused quite often to wonder at what might possibly occur that was not already wagered from the synopsis or, to be kind, from the introductory chapter. Overall, I do not begrudge reading this book but it was not what I had hoped for. This was long & drawn out in such a way that made me hope for one of the phantoms of the old houses to come alive in a vampiric way so as to draw some blood from the stone which this plot proved to be. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 23, 2022
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Jan 10, 2021
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Paperback
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4
| 
| 0804173486
| 9780804173483
| 0804173486
| 4.12
| 5,490
| 1945
| Sep 23, 2014
|
did not like it
|
Though this book was not what I was expecting & was pretty bad, I'm more so surprised at myself for finishing the entire thing. I cannot begin to imag
Though this book was not what I was expecting & was pretty bad, I'm more so surprised at myself for finishing the entire thing. I cannot begin to imagine how, & why, this book is so highly rated. This is in no way a romantic story according to today's standards. Lucy develops an acquaintanceship with the ghost that inhabits the house she recently began renting after she decided that she no longer wanted to associate with the family of her deceased husband. She moves her children to the rental after spending the night deep-cleaning. Though she has an encounter (if you can call it that) with the ghost on her first night at the house, Lucy still endeavours to bring her children after making the ghost promise he would never interfere with them. This story follows the style of "The Turn of the Screw"(1898) by Henry James, wherein the reader might interpret Lucy's experiences in two ways. Given the fact that Lucy seems to only hear the ghost in her mind —no sights except for a dream she has after seeing the portrait of the original owner —& almost no one else ever does, one might almost be tempted to say that Lucy is not having conversations with a ghost but with her own imagination. Save for an experience Lucy & a pawn-shop owner share, I would have been tempted to state that this was what was actually happening. However, there's ultimately so little substance to this story that one can't help but feel that, of course, she's talking to a ghost in her mind because what else could possibly be happening in this boring woman's life? Lucy is a very bland character. She always second-guesses herself & her decisions. She rambles about things very frequently & her total lack of personality & backbone really made me not give two cents about her. Her desire to jump into the arms of a random man & agree to give her children away to a family that she didn't trust, or like, made me loathe her. The ghost is annoying, and an overly macho-type of character & truly didn't bring anything riveting to the story. I can't say that there was any particular moment of the story which enticed me to continue reading. I suppose that such a short book might have held a twist or a turn at some point & after having seen such high ratings, I wanted to give it a fair chance. Suffice it to say that you would not be missing out on a Classic if you decided to skip this book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 13, 2020
|
Jun 10, 2020
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||
1
| 
| 0809510839
| 9780809510832
| 0809510839
| 3.86
| 122,192
| 1872
| Sep 05, 2000
|
liked it
|
This was the exact right length for this story. At about 110 pages, Le Fanu is able to lead the reader through a recounting of an experience with a Va
This was the exact right length for this story. At about 110 pages, Le Fanu is able to lead the reader through a recounting of an experience with a Vampire without having long bouts of boring dialogue or events. I cannot say that I found this novella very thrilling or even to be great. However, I do think it is worth the read for the simple fact that it shows how concise writing can leave the reader with just the right amount of story, twist & development.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 10, 2021
|
Jun 10, 2020
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Paperback
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3
| 
| 0141439572
| 9780141439570
| 0141439572
| 4.13
| 1,579,873
| Jun 1890
| Feb 04, 2003
|
it was amazing
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on violent crime, suicide, hunting for sport, death, & others. The epitome of beauty leans forward to bask in shadows. The mind of the reader may struggle to describe what this ideal Adonis might boast of in features all too human to be real. The serpent of idolized youth is primitive in ways we often shy away from in casual society. Yet, when we reflect on the yesteryear of our experiences our bones ache & we wish to be where we were, even though we despised it in the moment. Our inability to structure the world of appearances, scents, & feelings leaves us perpetually disadvantaged. The debonair flair of Dorian Gray masquerades throughout society as a prince might have in the stunning analysis by Machiavelli. However, his charmer’s tune falls on deaf ears. Reviews of this story are cruel. Early criticisms functioned as a superimposed moral superiority against Wilde as his personal life came to the forefront of his career endeavours. Romance reigns true within this plot & yet it is just enough out of reach to swim away from the reader as they convince themselves that they are civilized enough to understand that love can be but a passing neutral fancy. Having read this book twice I find myself seated in the same cushioned position two times over. The talent that is required to speak freely while metaphorical springs flow through the letters, is an art I shall never fail to admire. Wilde is a writer who speaks from someplace few people reach in their own person. The tenderness to select words that brim close to the surface of the cool river water in the hopes of being heard by the intelligent reader lingers too far out of reach for the barbaric tendons of the shallow mind to absorb. This introduction might seem cruel—as cruel as early reviews & as dull as modern readers who employ the term ‘boring’ to categorize such a book. My intention is not to appear pent like the calloused spines of the uninteresting minds that do not seek to un-riddle the simple prose of this book. Rather, reading this book twice has heightened the level of empathy I feel toward a man I will never meet &; ultimately, toward a man I will never actually know. When I read this book for the first time I was stunned that such a beautiful story existed in the world. Since our first meeting, I have come upon many readers who speak less favourably about their experiences, some of whom abandoned the book altogether before making their way to its end. Do not mistake me, some of my favourite people in the world despised this book. I am always in favour of differing opinions, primarily when the individual is able to detail their rationale. To a particular friend of mine who might wholeheartedly disagree with this review; your insightful commentary & capitalized differing opinions are a joy to behold. After all, what good might be committed if we were not able to understand the sharp edge of the stone we intended to roll? Should I be asked which part of this story felt the most valuable to me—rather this seems like the purpose of my critique—I should say the start. I was not very moved by Dorian’s downfall & so found myself less than thrilled by the second half of the book. The beginning purports the slow & soft love that develops from a romantic view one might hold of people one does not yet know. I appreciated the introductions to characters whose personalities the reader sees shift from superbly pompous, crass & existential, into the person who suffers the same plagues that malaise the species in rather less obvious ways. What is most interesting about this story is how, at its core, nothing much happens at all. Readers who do not mind philosophical ramblings or brightly painted social commentary will marvel at the story. While the tight-knit group of characters speaks to one another about the understanding & value of high society; what it means to lose oneself in a loveless marriage; the promises of freedom; the lack of understanding we have of one another; the unambiguous dread of aging; the suffering experienced at the hands of the cruel; the erasure of life itself; readers might find their eyes glaze over as dialogue morphs into monologues of the capitalist evolution. This is not to say that the approach that Wilde took was a mistake. Readers who appreciate the value of philosophy in modern art will revel at depictions of nihilistic tendencies & marooning liberalism, tied neatly into reflections on a single character’s marriage to a woman who seems too intent on ignoring social faux-pas & an artist who clearly loves someone who has yet to understand his own role in society. The rather morbid undertone of all of this may lead readers to conclude, as mentioned above, that the garden variety greenery of the reflections is nothing more than the plight of the suppressed. Basil’s artistic reputation lingers at the forefront of this entire story. Rather than believe that Dorian is the main character, readers are encouraged to remember the man who loved him first—arguably who loved him the most—is the protagonist of this story. In the end, Dorian kills the person who showed him to himself. The essence of their relationship is terribly sad & easy to misunderstand. When I first read this book I did not read into the love & admiration that Basil claims to have toward Dorian. I was more inclined to accept that this person appreciated Dorian’s innocence & pure beauty. So much the more ignorant stance, it seems, Basil’s love for Dorian is nothing if not profound. Yet, one cannot help but wonder why he feels this way. Dorian’s introduction to the story is nothing special. If anything, his character reads as rather trite & not a little bit stupid. His conversation with Lord Henry Wotton reveals Dorian’s inexperience with the world at large. He is curious & ashamed & also, completely aghast at the complexities of human experience. I suppose that to someone like Basil, who sits in front of mirror images set to reflect the world around him, the legitimately pure innocence of a person who is not so accustomed to pessimism & dreary reflections, might speak to the essence of his own person. Their relationship never evolves. Eventually, Dorian begins to move away from Basil & finds himself in graphic exchanges with people who spectre themselves over the dice that roll over the roulette. His infatuation with Sybil & her talent to possess the forms of other people without ever leaving the confines of her life, leave Dorian feeling perfectly in love. Her humanity is ultimately what ruins the rosary of holy young love. I do not know if the reader is meant to feel sadness for either of these characters. Sybil’s suicide is a rash decision though; she is ultimately performing the role that Dorian wished her to. After this first love affair, I found Dorian’s story to wane in intrigue. Though I can appreciate the neutral stance that a reader might undertake to observe the life of another person, we all experience existence to some similar degree. Why were people so frustrated towards Dorian for their own faults? Maybe the moral of the story is that beauty chiefly belongs to the eye of the beholder & one should never attempt to rob such individual joy for selfish purposes. Perhaps, had each of these maddening tertiary characters had more to offer the narrative as a whole than rude words about a man the reader didn’t even come to know, the value in what they were saying would have been better understood. The story holds fast to its pacing. At times, Dorian dines with friends & acquaintances who chuckle & tease him for his views—views that seem to be more Lord Henry Wotton’s than his own. Meanwhile, the reader loses their nerve. Why should the reader care about the opinions of the random background characters? I for one did not care to linger on the subject of names & titles, by the second time around everyone melded together; their purpose felt rather like listening to the Mona Lisa speak, enticing for a time but, one also needs fresh air to brighten the mind. With such criticism, it might be confusing to accept that I did in fact love this book. I do not fancy this a book that I believe every reader should possess or invest their time in reading. I have read Wilde’s non-fiction “De Profundis” (1897) which tattles on his inner turmoil as he rotted in jail, convicted of a crime that affects no one & which is not actually a crime but a way of living differently than the creepy crawly goons of the moors, the likes of which Heathcliff would guffaw at. I will not shy away from saying that I have a soft spot in my heart for Wilde. In many ways, this is a story for the reader. It’s written as though the reader had something to gain in reading about love & intimacy. It’s also written as though the reader were antiquated & new to the world, in tandem. The premise waddles along an English countryside as the wind bristles with undisturbed grass; the reader is marooned under a tree waiting for a picnic that has yet to be packed. Much of my appreciation of this story can be attributed to Wilde’s writing & his style of prose. The cool autumnal feel of the pacing adds intrigue as it allows the reader time to dwell on what is being said & by whom. The unfortunate deaths that litter the story act as reminders of terminal mortality. No rose is exempt from the possibility of wilting petals. Dorian’s faults lie acutely in his exposure to life. Perhaps, had he been brought up in a home where truth reigned or where tenderness to the elements was incorporated in his upbringing, he might not have been so shocked—nearly beyond reason—to learn that the world is in fact unkind & without fault, neutral in its comings & goings. I do not know if one can fault Dorian for wishing for beauty & youth. I do not know that our society fosters a sense of life ever being enough of what it is to satiate the livers. There is always the need for more time, more opportunities, more raving laughter & profound feelings. The extension of time in youth does not equate to a beneficial time. The protagonist who loved someone for their untainted experiences in life found himself marred by the most tormented soul of all—the one of the man who cannot begin to know himself & the ways in which the world around us is shaped by our own actions, by our very own hands. Certainly, one does not have the power to wake the sun or set the sea at peace. Yet, the oil & sludge of motors & the peeling skin of lotions & malevolence illustrate the essence of humanity with far more vivid colours than might the astoundingly swift tools of innocence & youth. That is to say, this book is among my most treasured. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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not set
not set
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Aug 07, 2023
Jul 02, 2020
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May 26, 2020
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Paperback
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
21
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| 3.81
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really liked it
|
Jan 05, 2024
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Jan 05, 2024
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20
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| 3.90
|
liked it
|
Jan 04, 2024
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Jan 04, 2024
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19
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| 3.66
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liked it
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Sep 17, 2023
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Sep 21, 2023
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18
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| 4.01
|
really liked it
|
Jul 08, 2023
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Jul 16, 2023
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17
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| 4.07
|
it was amazing
|
May 28, 2023
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Jun 02, 2023
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16
|
| 4.10
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 13, 2023
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Mar 13, 2023
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14
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| 4.11
|
really liked it
|
Dec 03, 2022
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Dec 03, 2022
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|||||
13
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| 4.14
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it was ok
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Nov 04, 2022
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Nov 04, 2022
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12
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| 3.11
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it was amazing
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Oct 26, 2022
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Oct 28, 2022
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10
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| 4.26
|
really liked it
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Jun 15, 2022
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Apr 18, 2022
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|||||
9
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| 3.64
|
really liked it
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Mar 24, 2022
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Mar 24, 2022
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|||||
8
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| 3.70
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liked it
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Jan 17, 2022
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Jan 17, 2022
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7
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| 3.70
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it was amazing
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Dec 17, 2021
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Dec 17, 2021
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6
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| 3.61
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it was amazing
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Dec 14, 2021
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Dec 14, 2021
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|||||
5
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| 3.82
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did not like it
|
Nov 13, 2021
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Oct 02, 2021
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|||||
11
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| 3.61
|
did not like it
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Jun 21, 2022
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May 27, 2021
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15
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| 3.74
|
it was ok
|
Dec 23, 2022
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Jan 10, 2021
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|||||
4
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| 4.12
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did not like it
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Dec 13, 2020
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Jun 10, 2020
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|||||
1
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| 3.86
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liked it
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Jan 10, 2021
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Jun 10, 2020
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3
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| 4.13
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it was amazing
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Aug 07, 2023
Jul 02, 2020
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May 26, 2020
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