Tag: book-reviews
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‘We Were Girls Together’; A Review of My Brilliant Friend
Welcome to the last book review of the semester! This week I read My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, and I am so happy this was the last book. It is a coming-of-age book (so on brand for this class) about two girls in a poor neighbourhood in Naples. The story starts with an older…
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Life with No Death? (Or should I say death)
A thought experiment of a book, Jose Saramago’s Death with Interruptions was an interesting read. The book starts on New Year’s Day, just as the clock strikes twelve when no one dies anymore. The novel explores how different systems and industries deal with this problem. The novel explores the social aspect, with the government, monarchy,…
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Money to Burn: The Novel with No Redeemable Characters
Hello everyone and welcome back! This week’s novel had the exciting premise of a bank robbery gone wrong (ooooh ahhhh). Ricardo Piglia’s factual/fictional retelling of a bank robbery in Buenos Aires, Money to Burn started off so strong. I enjoyed the action-packed narrative interspersed with the backstories of the different characters. As the novel progressed,…
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12 Years Isn’t That Bad, Right? – The Lover
By far the shortest and most uncomfortable read at this point in the semester, The Lover by Marguerite Duras is a novel about the clandestine relationship between a 27-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl. The prose in this book is beautifully written, as an autobiography with Duras recalling her time in Saigon. She captures the…
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Suffering and Emotion in Time of the Doves
Hello everyone! Hopefully, you all had a great reading week and enjoyed reading The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda. This novel is a story full of emotion and hurt detailing the protagonist Natalia’s life through the Spanish civil war. The novel is written in a way that folds the emotion into the words…
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What it Means to Have Nada
Nada, or Nothing when translated from Spanish, is a heart-wrenching, dramatic novel by Carmen Laforet that details a family’s life in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Laforet details the class divide, what it means to go hungry, and different kinds of love. We follow Andrea, a student, navigating her strange family and different…
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Family Drama and Relationships: The Shrouded Woman
What may come across as a mysterious book, told from the perspective of a ghost, is a beautiful exploration of a woman’s life and her relationships told in a very interesting way. The Shrouded Woman by Maria-Luisa Bombal is a modernist text that seeks to push the boundaries of what a novel is and who…
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Nadja; Surrealist Dream or Actual Person?
The second French book of the course, Nadja by André Breton is a short surrealist novel. It was a very fast and interesting read but took me a minute to get into. At first, Breton talks about the theatre and his inability to recognize actors. Upon meeting Nadja however, things become much more interesting. Nadja…
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Combray: The Over-explained Little French Town
Hello! I just finished Marcel Proust’s Combray and boy oh boy do I have some thoughts. I adore reading but this book seemed like a chore while I was reading it. This may have to do with the fact I (admittedly foolishly) decided to read it all in one day. However, there is no plot…