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The sellout is very funny and very clever. Too much so: the ratio of jokes and references per page was so high, I had to come to terms with missing about 60% of them. Sure enough, not being a native speaker and having never lived in the US did not help. Not all was lost: the jokes I did get were funny indeed, sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny. Still, I enjoyed the most the parts were the writing got plainer, and I could sink into the plot, and the book's power satire of racism, its victims, its deniers, and its critics. Overall, I'm happy to have read the book, but happier that I've now finished it and can move on.

Atwood's retelling of Penelope's story is very enjoyable and herudite, and if I was more cultured or less self-conscious the word divertissement could very well feature in this review. Having spent a disproportionate amount of school time falling asleep over the Odissey, I was well positioned to appreciate Atwood's allusions and irony. The book explores different plausible interpretation and theories, which were new to me. The feminist perspective, and the search of human traits in the mythical characters were a good touch - too bad there was none of that at school. The novel did not seem 'dazzling' or 'monumental' to me, as some of the critical reviews on the back cover suggest. But that's really the critics' mistake, isn't it?

Quite possibly, I'm being unfair to this book just because I liked We Have Always Lived in the Castle so much, that anything was bound to fall short after that. The Haunting of Hill House is a well-executed horror story (yeah, I know, milestone in the genre, bla bla), thoroughly classic, and perhaps that's why I didn't find as memorable

The premise is that four strangers spend a week in a haunted house, determined to find out what is going on. The start is quite slow-paced, and when, finally, mysterious, creepy things begin to happen, they go hand in hand with the unraveling of human relations, and/or the lucidity of the protagonist (is for the reader to figure out which one of the two)

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.