Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age Book Review

Emira knew that Mrs. Chamberlain wanted a friendship, but she also knew that Mrs. Chamberlain would never display the same efforts of kindness with her friends as she did with Emira: “accidentally” ordering two salads and offering one to Emira, or sending her home with a bag filled with frozen dinners and soups. It wasn’t that Emira didn’t understand the racially charged history that Kelley was alluding to, but she couldn’t help but think that is she weren’t working for this Mrs. Chamberlain, she’d probably be working for another one. – P.187

Blogmas day 5 – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun book review

Those were words she had never heard from him. He looked old; there as a wetness in his eyes, a crumpled defeat in his face, that made him look older. She wanted to ask him why he had said that, what he meant, but she didn’t and she was not sure who fell asleep first. The next morning, she woke up too early, smelling her own bad breath and feeling a sad and unsettling peace.

Ali Smith’s, Autumn book review

‘October’s the blink of the eye. The apples weighing down the tree a minute ago are gone and the tree’s leaves are yellow and thinning. A frost has snapped millions of trees all across the country into brightness. The ones that aren’t evergreen are a combination of beautiful and tawdry, red orange gold the leaves, then brown, and down’

Reading the Booker Prize Longlist #11 – Margaret Atwood’s Booker winning The Testaments

‘The corrupt and blood-smeared fingerprints of the past must be wiped away to create a clean space for the morally pure generation that is surely about to arrive. Such is the theory.

But among these bloody fingerprints are those made by ourselves, and these can’t be wiped away so easily.’

Reading the Booker Prize longlist #10 – Bernadine Evaristo’s Booker winning Girl, Woman, Other book review

‘What if she’s slated by the critics? dismissed with a consensus of one-star reviews, what was the great National thinking allowing this rubbishy imposter into the building?

of course she knows she’s not an imposter, she’s written fifteen plays and directed over forty, and as a critic once wrote, Amma Bonsu is a safe pair of hands who’s known to pull off risks

what if the preview audiences who gave standing ovations were just being kind?

oh shut up, Amma, you’re a veteran battle-axe, remember?’

Reading the Booker Prize Longlist #9 – Salman Rushdie, Quichotte book review

‘This would be the pseudonym he would use in his love letters. He would be her ingenious gentleman, Quichotte. He would be Lancelot to her Guinevere, and carry her away to Joyous Gard. He would be – to quote Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – her verray, parfit, gentil knyght.’

Grand Union – Zadie Smith ARC book review

Thank you to Penguin UK for sending me this ARC and as always all thoughts are honest and my own.

Reading the Booker prize longlist #8 – Lucy Ellman, Ducks, Newburyport book review

The fact that…this book is so overwhelmingly long and I couldn’t bring myself to finish it.

Reading the Booker Longlist #6 – An Orchestra of Minorities, Chigozie Obioma

‘Death will come, unannounced, suddenly, and perch on the sill of his world. It will have come unexpectedly, noiselessly, without interrupting the seasons, or even the moment necessarily’

Reading the Booker longlist #4 – Max Porter Lanny book review

“Then he hears it, clear and true, the lovely sound of his favourite.

The boy.”