Welcome to Litsy!

Another recently finished book. This one sits between a so-so and a pick for me. A difficult and challenging read, I suspect that I would glean more from it on a second read. Set in the present in a norther country, it is a story of historical injustices and the ways that communities avoid facing their past, and personal complicity in those injustices. Not a fun read, but I think there is something worth the difficulty here.

😳 I‘ve been bailing left & right on audiobooks, including the tagged novel, The Wren the Wren, two Toibin novels, among others.

I‘m in an audio drought. 🏜️🌵

On the #Booker2023 longlist

I've been reading the longlists since 2019 and this was a really good year in that small window. I gave five stars to four different books. I really liked that there was a lot of value given to poetic prose, not purple, but poetic and rhythmic, often personal and always generating reflection. Many of the authors are also published poets, and it shows.

I finished last week. My personal rankings are in the comments

I enjoyed this curiosity, found it wonderfully done, found the writing, which focuses so much on the sound, always interesting and terrific, with its own rhythm and life. And I say this even I didn't really get it. (I missed a lot, as I discovered afterwards reading online reviews) This maybe should have won the Booker (and I loved the winner, Prophet Song)

#ShadowGiller2024 @Lindy

She‘s like, “yeah, right” 🙄 But it‘s my next read and I‘m looking forward to it. #booker2023

I feel like there‘s a really excellent, moody, disturbing short story buried in this book. But as a novel, even a short one, it‘s a meandering mess. And yet it‘s a prize winner! Baffling. #tob24 longlist

The reminded me of 'Discomfort of evening' in its depiction of an unsettling narrator within an uncomfortable environment. It is a disconcerting read as we find ourselves possibly considering uncertain sibling abuse as well local folkloric belief in witchraft. The theme of the living with the sins of the holocaust also is implicit. A challenging read + I put it down, scratching my head but wanting to pick up again.

I‘m so torn on this one! I listened to the audiobook quickly; it was over before I could get my bearings. I kept thinking the setting was northern UK in 1666 (where my previous read took place!) but then the narrator would speak about Microsoft Teams! This is somewhat brilliant on the author‘s part: a timeless story, layering experiences of women over millennia of abuse and forced obedience. However, it was a confusing reading experience.

3⭐️/5⭐️

This year's #GillerPrize Longlist was incredibly strong, diverse, intriguing, thought-provoking, and challenging, with many beautiful, engaging stories that played with style while delivering on substance and story. I'm glad other readers are finding more in Obedience than I did.

I highly recommend checking out some of the other titles from the list, especially The Double Life of Benson Yu, All the Colour in the World, and We Meant Well.

After a long week I just couldn‘t do it and I honestly didn‘t even try very hard. Two more books to go on the Booker short list but I won‘t read them in time and I am ok with that since I reading the list was a total impulse.

This one definitely got me out #audiowalking but I‘m not sure what to make of it. Yes, the writing was skilful but things were so freaking vague that it‘s hard for me to get excited about the book.

This was very strange. I went through a wide range of emotions towards the protagonist - very unreliable. Sympathy, incredulity, dismay and disgust. Fascinating.

Nice cover but I‘m skeptical…

Friday Reads September 8: Trash & treasures; Booker & Giller prizes; kids‘ books; Read Across Canada
https://youtu.be/dWLliu8f7zk

Nope. This is the kind of writing style I don‘t care for. This will be a struggle for me. 😬

I am not sure what I just read. A young woman moves in with her brother in the isolated house of her ancestors. She‘s been an outsider all her life and aware of it. The local community blames her for incidents happening to the local animals. The narrator seems to be surrounded by death and decay but why? And what‘s her role, her responsibility? I am not sure what to think. #booker23 7/13

(Photo: Kioni, Ithaca, Greece)

I'm glad other readers have found success with this one, but it did not work for me. I'm glad i read @squirrelbrain 's review before buying it, and decided to borrow instead. This lacked atmosphere, plot, character development, anything. Moments have an almost tragicomic feel that could have worked if pushed into satiric territory. And I think at one point there was some thought given to ideas of accountability vs oppression? (Cont'd)

This is unconventional and unsettling storytelling. Where for some readers, the obscurity of the plot will be alienating, I found this helps Bernstein to build the ‘vibes‘. In a story about an outsider in an isolated community, strong overtones of religious persecution, and unconventional relationships between family members, and with the outside world, this felt like an asset. By no means a perfect reading experience, but thought provoking.

#bookerlonglist #7

This one is definitely bottom of my list so far. An unnamed woman goes to an unnamed country, where she doesn‘t speak the language, to be a kind of housekeeper / carer for her older brother. (And that will give you the ick! 😬)

All of the locals seem to be afraid of her, even before terrible things start happening. There is definitely some kind of undercurrent of anti-semitism but, other than that, I couldn‘t fathom ⬇️

Ominous opening