pickShort stories are not really my thing, always leaves me wanting more when they just end! Maybe never more so than with this book, where some of the stories had me totally gripped! Excited to read Wild Houses now as I think Colin Barrett might just be a bit special.
pickJeez, what a sad roll call this book is. Not sure what I was expecting really. It‘s grim and sad and full of mistakes people make in life. And poverty and hopelessness.
Small glimmer of a light at the end.
pickI loved this, but I didn't enjoy it!!! Oxymoron!? Yes, but hear me out - Keegan's writing is amazing, it brings back the very smell of my granny's kitchen! However, most of these short stories were super unsettling and uncomfortable to read ... So I loved it, but I didn't like it 🤷
pickAn exaggerated portrait of the dark side of new motherhood. It had an archetypal feel to it that didn‘t always resonate with me - a soft pick.
pickIntergenerational loneliness and shame. The surface telling, and the deeper history. Guilt. Truth. Family. Denial. Migrant challenges. Tabloid journalism. Processing trauma. Beautiful sentences. When sensationalized stories become ordinary, but no less painful. 2024
P43 “the only surefire way to reduce a problem‘s importance was to replace it with a new and more urgent problem.”
P113 “Do you know how rare it is to start over?”
pickI loved this quietly sad, unsettling book that on the surface is about a tragic death, but is really about ordinary human failings. Parents failing children and adults failing each other and themselves. And at the end, a small glimmer of hope that felt well-proportioned to the story.
pickHoly. Moly. Exhausting, maddening, visceral, raw. Absolutely astonishing.
pickA dark story about the dead ends of life. Two characters kidnap a teen boy to force his brother to pay a drug dealing debt, stashing him at their loner cousin‘s house. The cousin is a young man who experiences depression and anxiety and is grieving the loss of his mother. The boy‘s girlfriend just wants to escape the town. It‘s a story that doesn‘t offer easy resolutions but brilliantly illustrates the dead ends in some communities.
