hollyway's reviews
524 reviews

The zany, birds eye view vibe of this novel is just not my thing, but Elif Shafak is such a clever and heartfelt writer that I still got something out of it. If you do happen to like magical realism and a narrator that dances around a myriad of POVs then I would heartily recommend this. 

Trying and failing to find the words to describe this book and the experience of reading it. There is so much being explored here, approached in such a unique way, so distinctly Morrison. The way she paints love as a malevolent force is something I have never seen before and I can tell is going to stick with me. Of course this is both on the surface and at its core, a story about slavery, and is aptly galling and disturbing. This subject matter in fiction is often rife with worn-out tropes and platitudes, but Morrison easily avoids these by creating fully realised, idiosyncratic characters for us to follow. The universal exists in the specificity of these characters and their stories.

This is a novel with shifting points of view and non-linear storylines, two things that I usually avoid like the plague because they keep me at a distance from the characters and their experience. Morrison is one of the very few who can write in such a way and keep me not only engaged but enthralled and aching for the characters at every step, and I honestly don't know how she does it.

There are so many things to say about this novel; about oppression and subjugation, about freedom, about loneliness, about hauntings, about mothers and daughters - about love. More than I can articulate, which is why Toni Morrison did it for me. As unsettling as this was to read, I'm so glad to have read it.

Edit: back a few days later to bump this from 4 stars to 5 as I cannot stop thinking about this book jesus christ

Have been hearing people rave about Leigh Bardugo for years, but the fact is I almost never like YA so it didn't seem worth reading her earlier novels. This novel being an adult fantasy with a promising blurb, I thought this would be a good entry point for me. I was pleasantly surprised! Almost everything in the prose and storytelling was really solid. It was an entertaining and atmospheric read which I would happily recommend to others. There's a big "but" however, which is that I listened to the audiobook and I did NOT vibe with the narrator. Like AT ALL. Audiobooks are not my favourite at the best of times so yeah, it was not ideal. I was still able to appreciate the story but I'm fairly certain it would have been a far more enjoyable reading experience if it had not been filtered through this narrator.

Chanel Miller writes beautifully, and I'm in awe of her courage in allowing herself to be so vulnerable, to draw herself as a messy, whole human in a world that demands victims be perfect. The strength of this book is in its focus; it doesn't try to be an educational manual on sexual assault. Instead it walks you unflinchingly through one woman's experience of sexual assault and the court system, and its power lies in the specificity and detail therein. It feels redundant to say that this is a gruelling read, that I wept throughout, that it's devastating and infuriating. But it's also a beautiful book, an ultimately hopeful book. It feels destined to be a classic, but hopefully only as a relic of how things used to be.

This started out strong but sadly petered out into Just Okay territory. For me, a key issue was the page count. Under 300 pages to convey the scope of centuries. Inevitably this led to a lot of summarising, a lot of telling and not enough showing. This caused the characters and their dynamics to feel a bit flat to me, which is not ideal when you're trying to explore coercive control which is all in the details. But there was no real subtlety in this book, everything was laid right out on the surface from the beginning. There was nothing to draw me in deeper, nothing to sink my teeth into, if you will.

As for positives, the prose was good! Not mindblowing, but fittingly rich and gothic. And I can see why people love this story overall. Basically all the complaints I had are the same things that make it so digestible (it was an incredibly quick and easy read). I just find that a lot of modern novels I read leave me absolutely YEARNING for subtext, even - and sometimes especially - the ones that are obviously invested in exploring an inherently complex, nuanced topic.

First off, let's just be clear that Suzanne Collins remains a master of the page-turner. This was, on purely an engagement/entertainment level, a great read. But as for the nitty gritty of the story itself... I can tell it's going to take me quite a while to figure out exactly how I feel about it all.

I think one of my issues is sort of fundamental, and it's the reason it took me so long to get around to this in the first place: Coriolanus Snow was never a very mysterious figure to me. I never felt as though I didn't understand him. I never wished for any greater insight into his mind than what we got in The Hunger Games. And despite the fact that I love a morally dubious or straight up villainous protagonist, I didn't find his psyche as presented through his POV in this book to be all that compelling. He wasn't a boring protagonist, but he didn't thrill me either.

But the biggest problem is simply this: I made predictions. I didn't mean to. I am not a person who actively tries to guess the plot, because I KNOW it's a recipe for disappointment. But my brain did it all on its own. By the halfway point, I had subconsciously developed my own ending, which seemed to fit so perfectly with the narrative, themes and character arcs that I couldn't shake it off despite knowing it would most likely not play out the way I imagined. And it didn't, cos it never does. But sometimes it's just really hard to abandon the invented plot that felt so right to you and accept the one in print. I have to wait for the real ending to cement in my brain before I can really judge it.

Anyway, I never expected this to resonate on the same level as The Hunger Games, which ensnares my heart as much as my pulse. I don't know that it really enriched my relationship with the original story but like I said, it was an entertaining and easy read and I really did enjoy it. And as I embark now on my Hunger Games reread, I suppose we'll see what Songbirds and Snakes brings to that experience.

*read for book club*

Kazuo Ishiguro is impeccable at what he does - but what he does is just not quite for me. This was my second novel of his and it was very similar in both tone and structure. Excellent, well-crafted books and I understand how they absolutely click for some people, but calculated detachment is still detachment and I tend to need that emotional connection to really care about a story. I'm glad I read this for book club, both because it has cemented for me that although I respect Ishiguro I really don't need to read anything more from him, and because I just know this will be a much more interesting book to discuss than it was to read.

Not quite what I was expecting - but then again, how does one "expect" a book like this which is so utterly singular? Witty, vulnerable, captivating. I am definitely interested to explore more of Jeanette Winterson's work.