Manhattan Beach is dense with research and carefully placed cultural references of the time, and the result is something that’s passable as historical fiction but shallow and disappointing as a Jennifer Egan novel.
Review: Manhattan Beach
The Sun and Her Flowers
“leaving her country/was not easy for my mother/i still catch her searching for it/in foreign films/and the international food aisle,” Rupi Kaur
Review: The Bell Jar
"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days." - Sylvia Plath
The Marriage Plot
“There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.” ― Jeffrey Eugenides
Some Kind of Happiness
“I suppose most things in a person's life are good for a while, even if that doesn't last very long. Maybe that is why, even after something has gone wrong, we spend so much time trying to fix it. Because we remember when it wasn't broken.”
The God of Small Things
If Roy had set her characters into motion and given them drive, they may have given this book movement, energy, and excitement. Instead, it was like reading about an intricate painting that becomes more and more detailed every moment but is still static by the end.
Sex and Rage
“The two girls grew up at the edge of the ocean and knew it was paradise, and better than Eden, which was only a garden.” ― Eve Babitz
Stitches
I read Stitches in under an hour, and though the story of David’s life and his family is filled with a sadness that I felt as I read, the feeling didn’t linger.
October TBR
Here's our fantasy-fueled TRB list!
Persuasion
“My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company," -Jane Austen
Lit Lens 