Bonjour Tristesse

Posted 1:18pm Sunday 9th April 2017 by Zoe Taptiklis

I read Bonjour Tristesse on my way back from France during a six-hour layover in Shanghai airport. I was pretty jetlagged. I won’t lie or mislead you; this is going to be an astral quest of a book review.  The Times cover quote reads “funny, immoral and thoroughly French,” Read more...

Milk and Honey

Posted 1:45pm Sunday 2nd April 2017 by Jessica Thompson

As nervous as I am to admit it, I disliked milk and honey.  The majority of people to whom I’ve mentioned Rupi Kaur’s first and only book don’t hesitate to immediately vomit their adoration for the poetry and the woman behind it, leaving me feeling awkward and unable to Read more...

Wide Sargasso Sea

Posted 1:44pm Sunday 26th March 2017 by Zoe Taptiklis

Rating: 4/5 This book lives on my bookshelf, in a case, with a plaque underneath: ‘A Modernist Triumph of Femme Freedom’. In 1969, Jean Rhys published Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel and intervention to Jane Eyre, much like the prequel and intervention of my flatmate telling me I am Read more...

Housekeeping

Posted 2:30pm Sunday 19th March 2017 by Jessica Thompson

"Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them."   Following the lives of Ruthie, the narrator, and her young sister Lucille in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho, Housekeeping by Read more...

1Q84

Posted 1:21pm Sunday 12th March 2017 by Anna Linton

Murakami is known for writing more similar to a corporealized acid trip than contemporary fiction. In 1Q84 (one-q-eighty-four) surrealism and dystopia combine to fuel a fustercluck equal parts modern love and old-fashioned vengeance set against the backdrop of Tokyo. In maintaining the thematic Read more...

When Breath Becomes Air

Posted 1:16pm Sunday 5th March 2017 by Zoe Taptiklis

I might be biased when it comes to reviewing When Breath Becomes Air: my degrees in Neuroscience and English are the same as Paul Kalanithi’s, his favourite books are my favourite books, his fascination with identity matches mine, and his notions of mortality, while far more informed, are Read more...

A Little Life

Posted 12:46pm Sunday 26th February 2017 by Jessica Thompson Carr

Rating: 10/10 Very few books make me cry out loud. Internally, sure, a few have broken my heart, and safe to say I am no longer a whole person after a childhood of Charlotte’s Web and every last book in an epic series, but I don’t remember the last time I actually wept into my pillow Read more...

Dear Amy

Posted 12:39pm Saturday 8th October 2016 by Hayleigh Clarkson

Helen Callaghan’s debut novel Dear Amy is one hell of a ride. Callaghan writes from the perspective of Margot, a teacher at the local college and also the writer of the Dear Amy help column in the local paper. Typically she deals with mundane relationship issues until one day she receives a Read more...

Freedom

Posted 12:42pm Saturday 8th October 2016 by Lucy Hunter

The most unsettling things are the most familiar —the more you know somebody the stranger they seem. And nothing is more familiar than family. Patty Berglund is an ex college basketball star and fanatically perfect mother. She bakes cookies on all her neighbours’ birthdays and never Read more...

Faith (VOL. 1)

Posted 12:50pm Saturday 24th September 2016 by Anonymous Bird

Valiant Comics’ recent volume follows the adventures of Faith, a telekinetic super heroine. She’s a big comic book nerd now living her dream as super lady flying through the air, kicking ass and saving lives. Previously Faith was a part of the supergroup Harbinger Renegades, but has Read more...