Reviews and Comments

Swing Times has many things going for it. I really enjoyed the parts played in London, especially the protagonist's childhood in the estate, and how those bits of the story talk about girlhood, race and class in the UK. I appreciate having a story line that revolves around female friendships more than it does around romance, which would have been an easier way to create tension. It's hard for me to pin down why exactly I didn't 'feel' this book as much as I sometimes do, and felt the protagonist was not really 'alive' as I was reading.

Strange Heart Beating is beautifully written, and reads easily even though the plot is not in a rush of going anywhere. Seb, recently widowed and grieving, embarks on a trip to Latvia to get to retrospectively know his late wife, and the life she shed before moving to the UK. The story is laced through with allusions to mythology and symbolism, which usually annoy the hell out of me, but here felt well-paced and subtle enough. As I was reading, I realised I haven't read many books written by a woman from the perspective of a man. Somehow, I though the portrayal of masculinity that emerges from the book - hurt and restless - was quite perceptive.

I read these stories in a binge, with the help of a long plane journey. Gripping, funny, sinister, elegantly-written... the right read at the right moment, hence the enthusiastic star-rate! The common thread that ties them together is aging + killing. Hard to pick my favourite one. I loved the title story, Stone Mattress,  and also the "Alphinland series", and "Torching the Dusties"...which already brings us to 5 tales out of 9.

A gallery of sociological sketches, an homage to Rome, a commentary on Italy today, and a reflection on contemporary migration, and the experience of being far from home, however you define far and home, all under the pretense of a murder mystery. Though it is not a literary masterpiece, I truly enjoyed it.

Priestdaddy is a memoir centered around the author's dad: an overbearing, right-wing, frequently half-naked catholic priest. It is really, really funny. It is also affectionate, and sad. (Please, do or say something nice, so I can put it in the book - is Lockwood's silent prayer to her father). It is also full of depth, tackling head-on issues like falling out of faith, the church's (luck of) reaction to child-abuse within its ranks, and chemical pollution.

I don't know why I put off for reading this book for so long, having read and loved. Things Fall Apart. Though the two stand independently, I wish I remembered more details about the first book, to tie the pieces together. At any rate, I was not disappointed. Though a sense of doomness runs through it, the book reads itself, so to speak.  The writing is engaging and elegant, which this is especially remarkable given the weight of the themes handled: family and tradition vs individual choice, one's moral duty in a corrupted structure, colonialism and its legacy, the alienation of the protagonist, caught in between two systems of thought...all discussed with such sensitivity and complexity. Really recommended.

I have to stop getting stressed about the right amount of stars each book deserves, but I cannot help feeling that 3 is a misleading number for this one. The Hunger Games is actually almost perfect in its own way: it's a page turner, it has interesting characters that defy (gender) stereotypes, just that little added social commentary that makes you feel there is actually a point to the story, and, in my case, it makes for a great distraction from writing a PhD.

This last one surprised me with a less-than-happy ending. The rhythm is a bit slower than the others, and all the 'good characters' come out of it a little battered. I liked this: individuals can only so much when the overall system is so rigged. Suzanne Collins killed her (our) idol, and I wasn't expecting it.

Sometimes I enjoy a book, but I cannot help the feeling that I have read it before. Usually it isn't that the storyline is unoriginal, but something about the tone, the characters, or the atmosphere. To give Robert Schneider credit, he manages to write something that feels radically new, it seems to me. The story itself (the hopeless love of an ununderstood outsider for 'his' girl) was, for me, not as memorable as its settings: a small village in the Austrian Alps. Being from the "Italian Tyrol", they were familiar to me, and it was an interesting experience to find 'my places' (relatively speaking) in a book: it doesn't happen often. Portraying life 'as it used to be' in small mountain community, Schneider striked an unlikely balance between nostalgic tribute and sinister dystopia.

A novella imagining what would happen if the queen became a passionate reader, thus becoming humane. Ironic and intelligent, adorably British: subtle and understated, but delivering some real satirical punches. Notes: I read this book in the Italian translation by Elena Pavani.