Joseph's Updates

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:13:39 -0700

Joseph is currently reading 'Lotería: Stories'

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:13:22 -0700

Joseph is currently reading Lotería: Stories by Cynthia Pelayo

Joseph is on page 169 of 269 of Gotico rurale

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:12:02 -0700

Joseph is on page 169 of 269 of Gotico rurale.

Joseph added 'Days of Light'

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:58:01 -0700

Joseph gave 4 stars to Days of Light (Kindle Edition) by Megan Hunter
In her debut novel(la) The End We Start From, recently turned into a movie, Megan Hunter gave her personal poetic twist to the post-apocalyptic genre, imagining a near-future where waters are inexplicably rising, laying waste to towns and cities. In her second novel, The Harpy, Hunter ventured into “domestic thriller�� territory, with a feminist tale about motherhood and patriarchy, laced with mythical elements and more than a twist of horror.

At face value, Days of Light, Hunter’s most recent literary outing is a “realist�� novel, which follows the life of Ivy, a woman from an artistic, bohemian family, from her teenage years before the Second World War up to her death in 1999. We first meet Ivy on Easter Sunday 1938, a day marked by a perplexing tragedy that signals a watershed in the protagonist’s life. What follows is an intriguing character study, with elements of the historical novel, as Hunter and her protagonist deftly move from one momentous decade to another, each brilliantly evoked.

The novel may be imbued with realism, but the narration has a dreamlike element to it, where the mysterious and the Transcendent are never far away. In fact, Ivy’s story is a journey in search of a destination beyond the self �� an inquiry for the “meaning of life��, perhaps �� which Ivy alternately seeks in abandonment to physical and spiritual passion (which sometimes appear to her as two sides of the same coin).

While the novel makes for a satisfying arc, most of its pleasures lie in individual passages exploring themes of memory, love and faith.

Joseph started reading 'The Holiness of Ordinary People'

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 05:29:00 -0700

Joseph started reading The Holiness of Ordinary People by Madeleine Delbrêl

Joseph wants to read 'Solenoid'

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 05:28:33 -0700

Joseph wants to read Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu

Joseph is currently reading 'The Holiness of Ordinary People'

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 05:27:03 -0700

Joseph is currently reading The Holiness of Ordinary People by Madeleine Delbrêl

Joseph added 'Good and Evil and Other Stories'

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 13:54:33 -0700

Joseph gave 4 stars to Good and Evil and Other Stories (Kindle Edition) by Samanta Schweblin
Argentine author Samanta Schweblin is part of a new wave of Latin American weird, speculative and horror fiction, alongside other authors (including several female and/or queer writers) such as Mariana Enríquez, Agustina Bazterrica, Mónica Ojeda, Giovanna Rivera and Bernardo Esquinca. However, while it is convenient to group authors into one geographical school, this often comes at the cost of losing sight of the idiosyncrasies of the individual authors.

In Schweblin’s case, what strikes me is her ability to create a sinister atmosphere of dread and unease, while barely relying �� if at all �� on traditional horror or Gothic tropes. Her previous collection to be published in English �� Seven Empty Houses �� did refashion, in its own way, the trope of the haunted or abandoned house. However, her latest �� Good and Evil and Other Stories �� avoids altogether traditional monsters, ghouls, and scary settings, and, instead, injects the uncanny into the everyday. In the opening tale, for instance, a young mother tries to kill herself by diving to the bottom of a lake, but then resurfaces to go back to her family, only to feel as if she left a part of herself in the deep waters. In another, a man regularly receives taunting silent prank calls at night, which may be somehow related to his son, with whom he has an awkward relationship blighted by a terrible accident. Elsewhere, two sisters befriend an alcoholic poet at a seaside resort, but their nightly escapades end in tragedy. All six tales in this collection inhabit ‘fever dream�� territory, punctuated with inexplicable happenings, peopled by unnerving characters who flit in and out of the narrative. Ordinary relationships and events are made strange. Family and friends become the backdrop for the horrific. Uncanny elements are often a metaphor for very real and human issues.

The collection is masterfully translated from the original Spanish by the prolific Megan McDowell, responsible for bringing into English earlier works by Schweblin and several other Latin American authors. She authentically conveys the haunted poetry of these magical tales.

Joseph is currently reading 'Sakina’s Kiss'

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 11:21:49 -0700

Joseph is currently reading Sakina’s Kiss by Vivek Shanbhag

Joseph added 'Idle Grounds'

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 13:39:11 -0700

Joseph gave 4 stars to Idle Grounds (Kindle Edition) by Krystelle Bamford
The main storyline in this debut novel by poet Krystelle Bamford is set over one hot June day, in the 80s, in rural New England. A group of young cousins have gathered, with their respective families, for a birthday party at the house of their unmarried aunt Frankie. Left to their own devices, the children explore the house and, from the window of an upstairs bathroom, spot something eerie and undefined, prowling in the grounds of the property. Three-year-old Abi runs down and promptly disappears. For the rest of the day, the children, led by eldest cousin �� twelve-year old Travis �� explore the house and its surroundings, looking for Abi but, by the end of the day, discovering more than they bargained for.

This type of novel �� in which a now-adult narrator looks back to a defining event in childhood/youth �� has become a genre in itself. It takes an original writer to make such a story stand out, and Bamford fits the bill.

What, I felt, makes this slim novel memorable is the idiosyncratic voice of the unnamed narrator. It combines within it the wide-eyed wonder of the child who experienced the day’s events, and the more-knowing style of an adult who, perhaps, is trying too hard to sound like a “literary author��. The result is a narration which is at times eerie and unsettling, surrounded by a magical aura (we never learn what exactly the children were seeing from the bathroom window �� probably a figment of their fertile imagination) and, at others, darkly humorous in an offbeat way. The narrator, for instance, has a knack for convoluted metaphors and irrelevant digressions, but then surprises us with passages of poetic intensity.

Bamford also keeps a tight control over the plot. As the day unfolds and things come to a head, there are several flashbacks and flashforwards which allow the readers to slowly piece together the dark history of this eccentric family, dominated by the matriarchal figure of Grandma “Beezy�� and her mysterious demise. Thus the novel achieves a double-climax �� one happens on the day of the main storyline, but it coincides with our discovery of what actually happened to Beezy. It’s all very clever and well-crafted, turning a now-common trope into a memorable debut.

4.5*