SWIMMING HOME by DEBORAH LEVY

Picture this: a villa in France, a heatwave, two middle aged couples; one rich, one bankrupt, one teenage daughter, one dirty swimming pool, some guns, some poems, the French Riviera and an unwelcome (oft naked) guest. Intrigued yet?

I thought this book was brilliant. I enjoyed reading it so much! It reminded me of Hot Milk by Levy and also The Accidental by Ali Smith. I got all the French villa vibes.

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HOMECOMING by LUAN GOLDIE

HOMECOMING by LUAN GOLDIE What I loved about this book: - it spanned 20 years so you get a good feel for all the characters. - Kenya. I don’t think I’ve read about Kenya before so it was nice to have some new descriptions. - mystery. This is not something I always enjoy in a novel because I’m very impatient, but I found it kept me hooked. - the writer. I enjoyed Nightingale Point so I was looking forward to something else from Goldie. What I didn’t like about this book: - Yvonne - Emma - Lewis - all the extra characters For me it’s very important to connect with the characters. I normally find it intriguing if I don’t like a character, but in this case I didn’t care about the characters. I’m sorry to say that this was not a great reading experience for me but I did get some enjoyment out of it, so no regrets and I would still be willing to read other world by Goldie. What did you think of this?

ANOTHER BROOKLYN by JACQUELINE WOODSON

ANOTHER BROOKLYN by JACQUELINE WOODSON I read this book in the space of a few hours and as soon as I finished I turned back to the first page again. I didn’t read it all again - just that first page and it worked. It’s a cyclical book. It doesn’t need to be read in any particular order. Memories manifest in any way they want to. This book is a series of memories told from the point of view of August; a teenager growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s. She states early on in the book that life would have been different if she’d known about jazz, but all she knew of was the top 40 (white artists mostly). And “it never quite figured us out.” I found that one statement to be huge! It’s a 170 page novel, but that statement to me felt bigger than the messages I’ve taken from 1000 page novels. If we can’t see ourselves represented, how can we see ourselves at all? My own white privilege means that this is something I rarely have to think about, but this book helped me to understand how that...

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