by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
★★★
Tag archives: fiction
In the Country
by Mia Alvar
★★★½
The Dark Forest
(Remembrance of Earth’s Past #2)
by Liu Cixin
Reading about an ant painstakingly tracing each character on a gravestone signals the early slog. The flatness of the first two parts cannot be pinned entirely on the alternate translator either. The details are dull and offensive. Women squeal and fuss, and when … Read more
Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
The first third was easily engrossing. It was refreshing to learn about the history of Ikuno and about the Korean diaspora in Japan. The formula of family sagas is difficult to escape though. The older generations stoically live through readable hardship, while the younger generation is spoiled … Read more
Spirits Abroad
by Zen Cho
Zen Cho is my new favourite short story writer. Generally I find magical realism exhausting and irrelevant (García Márquez). Spirits Abroad is the first work I’ve read whose magical elements complement the stories—which pulse with inventiveness and humour.
Wildcard
(Warcross #2)
by Marie Lu
★★★
Warcross
(Warcross #1)
by Marie Lu
I didn’t know I needed this book in my life till I started it. It’s populated with my personal wish fulfilment characters in a rainbow of representation.
Picture Us in the Light
by Kelly Loy Gilbert
** spoiler alert **
The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
★★★
Ayiti
by Roxane Gay
★★★½
My Sister, the Serial Killer
by Oyinkan Braithwaite
★★★★½
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
Kerala and nearly all of the characters expand into three dimensions in a story that weaves between past and present and addresses class and patriarchal structures, colonialism, family dysfunction, and the beats of a butterfly’s wing. It’s cluttered however with poetic turns of phrase that founder and repeat … Read more
Severance
by Ling Ma
★★★★½
An Unkindness of Ghosts
by Rivers Solomon
I liked the big picture of the story and the identities of the characters—women of colour, neuroatypical, queer, non-maternal. The pacing was lurching, however, with some episodes feeling out of place, others unfinished, while others still went on too long, like with the multiple flashbacks of misogynist role … Read more
The Song of Achilles
by Madeline Miller
★★★★
Dear Fang, With Love
by Rufi Thorpe
★★★
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
In place of exploring identity and belonging, or the transformation of tradition, or class privilege, or a human voice, The Namesake is bogged with unremitting descriptions of everything in a room. Across generations the characterisation is flat and, like in Amy Tan’s novels, the American generation is the … Read more
Girls Burn Brighter
by Shobha Rao
The story in Indravalli blooms, unique to the setting, with a persuasive love anchoring Poornima and Savitha amidst poverty and patriarchal oppression. The titled theme however, despite being drummed at the reader, begins to lose coherence after successions of misery are planted along the pages. Savitha especially has … Read more
Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone
by James Baldwin
★★★★½
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
Struggles presented as universal take on a quality of mocking delusion when the excess of protagonists (only male voices) all become famous millionaires at the top of their fields who own fabulous and plural homes and have access to private jets and Alhambra strolls. The decided main character … Read more