With just 11 days left until 2023 (say it isn’t so!), here’s the first round-up post to finish the year – covers from books published in 2022 that would have me plucking them off the shelf in a bookshop in no time. We all know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but these are just *chef’s kiss*.
Recent book reviews
Stay True by Hua Hsu: a lyrical and devastating coming-of-age memoir ★★★★½
TW: Murder This perfectly sized memoir is beautiful and devastating. Hua is a college student in California in the 90s: a time of internet chat rooms and mixtapes and Nirvana and zines, a rich social and cultural history constructed through objects and pastimes – many of which are long gone. And given this past which…
A cult classic that lives up to the hype: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides ★★★★
In 1970’s American Suburbia, the Lisbon sisters start to kill themselves. This won’t be of any great shock based on the title, but trigger warnings abound. It starts with thirteen-year-old Cecilia, who after a failed attempt at slitting her wrists in the bath, succeeds in ending her life by throwing herself out of a window…
The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi: a translator discovers a sinister shortcut ★★★½
‘Translation…is highly mathematical. It’s about retaining the feeling, the thing underneath.’ Anisa spends her days adding subtitles to Bollywood movies, when what she really wants to be doing is translating great works of literature. Her Urdu – her mother tongue – isn’t quite good enough, and other than English, she doesn’t speak other languages. That…
NOVELS AND TEACUPS 