Welcome to Litsy!

A very Booker Prize-ish book - it was a bit tricky. This is a series of stories spanning 1908 to 2025 covering love, both romantic and between parent and child, loss, war and science. What I struggled with was the telling, individual stories moving back and forth in time, the narrative in each story also moving around from paragraph to paragraph. Lovely in parts, but it was harder work than I‘m willing to invest.

“I understood that he was offering me a thread and, if I pulled it, my entire world would unravel.Mother would never live it down.Johanna might never see me again.And if I left the thread where it was, refused to touch it—what then? James would eventually remarry…Andrew would continue to work away as much as he did, and I would be left at Carrick House to stain my fingers with my oil paints and oversee peacocks being stuffed into pies.”
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I would rate this a pick with caution as this is one I would only recommend to the literary reader. It is told from multiple POVs and jumps back and forth through time, often changing to brand new characters. I found it to be very confusing (I wanted a family tree) and it really should be read more than once. That said, the writing is beautiful and very thought provoking, and each chapter held my interest, but I admit I wanted more. 3.5/5 stars.

The DNFs on Blind Date books is 2 for 2.

DNFing this one because I'm not a fan of short stories, and literary fiction tries my patience; the two together are nothing but a recipe for shit reading for me.
#HailTheBail

12/80

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Starting my second "Blind Date" book and hoping for better luck with this one ????

McCorkle is an experienced and talented short story writer. These contained all the elements that should make a great short story. But despite the competent writing, these didn‘t really sing to me. There was nothing particularly memorable or special about them. Low pick.

This #TOBlonglist book actually looks like snarky fun that I would enjoy. But it‘s just not working for me right now. So back to the library it goes!

I really wanted to like this book, especially since it touches on topics like nuclear testing on "uninhabited" sites and the effects of radiation on the land and pregnancy. But the story was very slow, the revelations came late, and it felt unresolved. I thought we'd get some thought-provoking message but it's like the author changed their mind (abt a lot) & decided not to say anything/make it out to be "nothing". It felt disingenuous