What initially seems like naivety or secondhand confessional turns out to be something far lovelier, and more than worth the time it takes to get there.
Tag Archives: Lovely prose
‘Thornhedge’ Twists Fairy Tale Cozily
At just 128 pages long, Thornhedge is a sweet little fairy-tale snack with some substance to boot.
‘Promises’ a Truly Golden Collection
Whether or not I was Olivarez’s target audience, I found myself profoundly moved by many poems in this collection.
A Dizzy Summer Recounted in a New Light in ‘Tom Lake’
Pachett draws out Lara’s pivotal summer in a haze of stretched-out days that really do feel like the kind of summer that lasts far longer than the calendar suggests.
Friendship at Heart of ‘Tree. Table. Book.’
The moment of the younger Sophie’s realization is a hard one, and the elder Sophie has her own hard moments at present, and in the near future. Yet what does remain simple is the beauty of their unconventional friendship, and how common ground can erase years and miles and practically an entire life between them.
‘Beauty’ a Balance Between Ordinary and Sublime
This is a book of stillness, and a book of contemplation. It’s a book about appreciation, and of change. Life, broadly, is all of those things, and All the Beauty in the World shows the value in recognizing that a little more.
‘Scorpionfish’ a Hazy, Pensive Read
Languid and pensive, Scorpionfish is a story as melancholy as it is dreamy.
‘Milk and Honey’ a Chilling, and Luscious, View of the Near Future
While there is a clear moral to the story in the book’s final chapter, Zhang writes deftly to keep any of her characters from being clear cut. The messiness in turn reveals truth: that when the chips are down, human instinct and that of crabs in a bucket are largely the same.
‘Fire’ a Rich Historical Tragedy with a Glimmer of Hope
The four point-of-view characters do all give us a different view of the disaster. It’s a testament to Beanland’s writing and research that the characters all feel so human, and the world around them so real.
‘Butcher’ a Fairy Tale of Trauma
The trauma at the heart of The Butcher is something wound as tightly around every detail as tightly as ivy on a tree. There’s a difference between surviving something and coming back whole, Veris notes early in the book, and it becomes increasingly clear that she’s the one who hasn’t been the same since.
Ring Reads 