imogenrose97's reviews
459 reviews

After reading Elliot Page's own memoir he had posted an image of this book on Instagram and I knew that it would be the perfect pick for Inqueering Minds, the queer bookclub I host. A deeply introspective book about the intricacies of identity as a trans gay man, each chapter was beautifully put together in a way that was accessible for anyone to read. I found the language was open and accepting and would allow anyone curious to learn about trans identity, to listen to a human experience and better inform themselves, to step into the heart and mind of someone who just wants to know who they are and is kind enough to pave a new pathway for people to grow and learn. I found it inspiring that because he lacked a guidebook on how to be Nicholas stepped into the role of teacher to provide a piece of work useful to anyone feeling similarly alone. 

Checking off an LBGTQI+ must read. I enjoyed the writing and the story, though, I have to say that religious stories are not really my favourite to read. Most of what I want from reading is either new perspectives or kinship within the story. Coming of age and growing up in a heavily religious household is not something I'm too interested in reading.  

Rachel Aviv paints a well rounded picture of mental illness. Both in the personal stories as well as detailing the myriad of ways society has let down those who are suffering from mental illness.
I really admired and appreciated the range of stories told, with kindness and understanding of how circumstance shape the experience of mental illness. How who you are can make all the difference to how you are treated and whether you come out whole at the end. Specifically I found it important that she was depicting experiences that weren't just white rich people. Discussing how the range of treatments at either end of whatever scale you are on doesn't guarantee healing. 
Through it all is the sense that humans as a whole don't have a very good understanding of what mental health issues are caused by, fixed by or even really why medication works. A terrifying prospect.

Though this was a short story collection most stories felt like a muddy continuation of the next, dropping dirt crumbles into the next story, leeching themes and a sense of pressure akin to sleeping under a weighted blanket. Though I just read the book I am unable to remember the first half as I grew tired of the sameness, the writing was strong but seemed to be repetitive to me. I do think that this was intentional, it just did not work for me.
I was about to DNF when a new portion began. The second half included a collection from one perspective and writing that took a new form. The descriptions of cooking, particularly the bracketed descriptions of colour or type or even just the feeling that the ingredient gave our narrator. This portion saved the book for me and allowed me to get through to the end.

Hiromi Kawakami is one of my must read authors, her style and focus change dramatically between books and I'm always surprised by her dexterity to do so. Third Love examined the veils that love throws up over first love, how difficult it is to learn who you yourself are inside and outside of an all consuming love, and how love changes over the course of the lives of those involved. This was done in a highly unusual way, through time travelling dreams. This was both very interesting and sometimes a little boring for me. It's probably not my favourite story telling device but I enjoyed how it impacted the characters, how getting to experience more changes the way you love. At the heart of this is the lesson that while you are young you might not understand so deeply the intricacies of relationships. That as time moves forward you learn and reflect on how you have loved and how others need different versions of love to thrive in a relationship.

I've challenged myself to read a book of poetry a month and it has so far been so fullfilling. It's so interesting to explore poetry in different styles and actually try to find pieces I enjoy. Mary Oliver has stolen my whole heart, as I'm sure she has many others. I had to start reading a second book so that I would slow down and get to savour each poem as they deserved. 
I'm struck by how gleefully Oliver writes the world around her, I've never felt so much joy come through nature writing as so often it's tied to climate change, which whole pressing is not always hopeful. I've already bought myself another collection of hers to read this year and I'm so excited to delve in.

Gripped from the beginning I deeply enjoyed the first half of this book. The writing is bold and introspective, and the characters are vivid and visceral. Our main character Joana is rough and independent, not understanding her place in the world as a young woman who follows her whims without a care for those around her. I found the first half to be much stronger writing than the second, the first half was clear and the stream of conscious style worked in conjunction with a child narrator. By the second half, the writing became muddy and convoluted. Strings of words that felt too heavy to bear, I ended up skimming the pages to find my way to the end. I lost the sense of clarity the beginning had held and that unfortunately made the second half of the book a bit of a drag. I'm interested to read some of her other work as she has a clear talent.

 Both hilarious and gut twistingly tense, Big Swiss holds you over the precipice of a catastrophe coming from too many sides to count. Everyone is either lying, stalking or hiding something from someone else and I couldn't tell which fallout would be the worst.
At face value, Big Swiss is a story of an ill advised affair, though aren't they all, this one to be fair is ill advised on more than one front. I don't think I expected to be so confronted by mistakes I have made myself, mistakes that you aren't told are mistakes until you are too deep to turn back, mistakes I think society should take more responsibility for righting.  I wont go into these mistakes as I think that they'll be too much of a spoiler for the true narrative of the book. The unexplained heart.


I found the discussions around trauma so interesting, "victims say all trauma is equal and I hate that" was a particularly difficult to navigate quote, the space that those who have experienced trauma try to make for those around them to me is deeply beautiful, there is no way for trauma to be measured and something happening to one person could be completely, and validly, interpreted so differently than someone else. I think that Big Swiss was so caught in not letting her experience shape her that she let it become so much larger of an issue. Greta however embodies the victim, she has not processed the trauma that shaped her, she allows it to inform all her decisions. Both responses make perfect sense under the lens of trauma, its what they do with it now that is important.