Category Books
The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith: The First Person
I think the title story is my favorite among the pronoun-themed stories in this collection. In it, the narrator is a woman possibly in her fifties in a new relationship with “you” who is a bit younger than herself. Because of her age, the narrator is not sure if she wants to pursue this relationship. […]
Grist Mill Road by Christopher J. Yates
One fateful day in August 1982, somewhere out in the woods in Upstate New York, Patch witnessed his best friend Matthew shooting Hannah with a BB gun forty-nine times. They were all seventh graders attending the same school, but this had been the first time a girl joined in the boys’ excursions – before that, […]
The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith: Astute Fiery Luxurious
In Astute Fiery Luxurious, the narrator who is staying home ill accepts a parcel from the postman before discovering it is a misdelivery. Its address is correct, but no one by the name of the addressee lives in the narrator’s apartment, and there’s something about the parcel that unsettles the narrator. When the narrator’s partner […]
The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie (Book Vs. TV)
It has been a while since I last read a novel by Agatha Christie. Back in 2017, I read the first six books in the Hercule Poirot series and really liked The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Most of the rest were good 3-star mysteries too, but I never warmed up to Poirot, so when I […]
The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith: Writ
I love the premise in Writ! In it, the protagonist is a forty-something bisexual woman. After being passionately kissed by a young woman – albeit a total stranger – in broad daylight in the middle of London, the protagonist comes home to find her fourteen-year-old self waiting for her! Although the protagonist is beyond happy […]
Milkman by Anna Burns
At the time, age eighteen, having been brought up in a hair-trigger society where the ground rules were – if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either, then nothing was happening, so how could you […]
The First Person and other stories by Ali Smith: I Know Something You Don’t Know
I Know Something You Don’t Know is a story about Anthony, a little boy suffering from a mysterious illness. Anthony had come home during lunch hour at school one day four months ago and hasn’t been able to leave his bed since then. His mother, Harriet has taken him to see multiple doctors. But none […]
An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor von Rezzori
An Ermine in Czernopol is an autobiographical novel by the European writer Gregor von Rezzori. Rezzori was born in Czernowitz in 1914, four years before it became a part of the Kingdom of Romania after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So in this novel, which is set right after WWI, Czernopol is based on […]
The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith: The Second Person
The Second Person is another story in this collection where Smith is focusing on the use of pronouns. Unlike The Third Person which has multiple story-lines, The Second Person is based on a single plot where two lovers are imagining what they’d do in a musical instruments store. The narrator pictures her partner (their genders […]
An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
As you may remember, a few of months back I finally gave into the hype and read The Wife Between Us. The first half of the novel had me completely hooked – I was so sure it will be my favorite thriller read for 2018. But then it hit a wall with the second half […]
The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith: No Exit
In No Exit, the unnamed narrator is a woman at a movie theater who witnesses another woman walking through a fire exit during a film screening. The narrator had been to this theater before, so she knows the door the other woman went through is an illegal emergency exit that leads nowhere and locks from […]
The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding by Jennifer Robson
I was beyond thrilled to receive an ARC of Jennifer Robson’s The Gown. I’ve mentioned how much I love The Crown TV show before, so a novel featuring the women who made Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown sounded like it’ll be right up my alley! The Gown begins by taking its readers to post-WWII England. The […]
The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith: The History of History
In The History of History, the narrator is a teenage girl impacted by her mother’s nervous breakdown. About a month ago out of the blue, the narrator’s mother had told her family that she’s done playing the roles of wife and mother, and insisted that they call her by her name, which is Margaret. We […]
Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny
After receiving a mysterious letter from a notary who had been dead for six-months, Armand Gamache, the suspended head of the Sûreté du Québec arrives at a rundown farmhouse in a secluded area on a snowy evening. There Armand finds out that he along with Myrna Landers, his neighbour in Three Pines and Benedict Pouliot, […]
The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith: The Third Person
The Third Person is one of the shorter works in Ali Smith’s anthology, and I feel like it might be related two other stories – The Second Person and The First Person – which I’ll be reading later. The Third Person is written in an interesting format. It’s a bunch of different stories/ moments in […]
