hello!! currently trying out substack as a new place to yap every week, as this blog is on indefinite pause!
Review of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an autobiographical novel based on James Joyce's own life, the protagonist renamed as Stephen Daedalus. The mention of the myth to which Stephen's surname references is often called upon in this novel, an ode to both Icarus and the inventor himself, artist as creator and the consumed.
Review of “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4/5 Stars. I finished reading Americanah on a rainy morning, just before dawn. The world outside was still blue and shadowed, and the shape of buildings slowly emerged from the dark, brick by brick, pane by pane, as the sky lightened. The sound of toads and birds rose up from the twilight silence, their throats defrosted and open with warbling calls upon waking…
Review of “If We Were Villains” by M.L. Rio
To be honest, as I was reading this book, I was prepared to give it, at most, 3.5-4 stars. I wasn't too familiar with the intricacies of the Shakespearean references, and I was slightly put off by how the characters talked - sometimes with the true crudeness of college students, other times pretentious and caricatural. At the same time, the Shakespeare references were perfect, doing exactly what Rio intended: imbuing the actors and readers with the words and feelings of his work in parallel to the novel's events…
Review of “Memory Police” by Yoko Ogawa
As someone who has never been a fan of Orwellian-like tales, this one really wowed me. The translation is very clean; the language is beautiful in its quiet simplicity, lending the novel a sort of empty melancholy in its tone. Overall, I loved what this book represented, and it was the only oasis in this dry spell of books I've been reading…