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She took a law conversion course after finishing her degree and ended up focusing on technology law. “Certainly, throughout my late 20s, it was very much a 24/7 job. That was one of the reasons I started writing. Coming up to my 30th birthday, I was travelling a lot for work, doing incredibly long hours. I started to miss out on the things that made me happy. Taking three months off was partly to recover – I don’t think I was in a wonderful state – but also just to return to this thing I loved, writing, and see what happened.” Here is a petty one. The narrator had a horrible American accent. That would not have been a deal breaker though, or even a star deplete.
Mi viene da pensare a un altro libro, quello di Tara Westover: solo che quella era una storia autobiografica e aveva il sapore della finzione, questa è inventata e sembra vera. Solo che quello era scritto male e risultava noioso, questo invece è scritto bene e risulta avvincente e interessante. A tour de force, beautifully written, richly imagined, and compulsively readable. Add to this its grave sometimes ominous tone, and the result is unforgettable." - Booklist (Starred Review) Dean is “90% incredibly excited, 10% terrified” about seeing her story out in the world. “You spend so long with these characters,” she says. “It’s like a small obsession. I almost think about them all the time. It’s incredible that these people, who have been so real to me for years, will become real to other people. I’ve loved and detested numerous characters in my lifetime of reading. The idea that people will have equivalent feelings about my characters is just wonderful.” Here we have the issue of place as well as time, and an early paragraph finishing like the one below (my emphasis) does not really serve to place the reader in 21st Century Nigeria: Read it because it's long-listed on the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction and I'm trying to read more fiction set in countries outside my own.
mostly and unexpectedly) unemotional perspective of abductee Maryam. It is a harrowing and difficult read, chronicling the devastating story of Maryam from abduction and thereon in. I do not get on with books that set out to teach me something - while I love the power literature has to broaden my horizon and to let me see lives outside my own, paedagogical books irk me. If I want to learn something, I gravitate towards non fiction - and as a piece of non fiction this might have actually worked for me because then the story told would have been just that: authentically mirroring the reality. As it stands, I questioned a lot of authorial decisions O'Brien made here (why is everybody so uniquely awful? Do we really need to only see awfulness?).
Ignorance of the author. There were a few examples but the glaring one I can think of is the fact that a lawyer wouldn’t know what an executor is. I know she was trying to explain it to the reader, but she could have found a more believable way to do so. Writing this point makes me feel like a horrible person, but I would like to have had more meat and potatoes and less ketchup and steak sauce. Most of the book was fluff that I didn’t care one bit about. I want to know what went on in the house and in the minds of those in the house, including the mother. I would like to have had an inside look at Delilah and Gabriel in their room. I want to know what happened after Gabriel was found with the cake. I want to know what happened when the book of myths was discovered. It was alluded to several times but never explained. The rare event that was shown us was when the bed was broken at the hotel and Delilah was punished. I’m sorry but five swats on the butt do not constitute abuse. Was the author too squeamish or afraid of detailing atrocities? Then this shouldn’t be the sort of book for her. I believe there was more interesting stories that the policeman told us than this book. Infidels, thieves, their president, vice president, their police, their parents.... any unbeliever. Owen, James. "The best new thrillers for January 2021 — introducing a new hero, a bomb disposal expert". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 25 January 2021.And then she does something magical: make us twin with the stunned and traumatized Maryam as she reverts to sheer animalistic survival, trying to see her way to the light. There is a certain mixed-up and frenetic quality to this book as Maryam switches from reality to a dreamlike stance, from past to present. Throughout her ordeal, which includes a harrowing account of a woman stoned alive and a gang rape, we—the readers—are forced to bear witness helplessly. A searing, gripping tale of love, loss and survival that exposes the bare bones of humanity and explores how victims cope long after the headlines stop rolling. One of the most compelling novels I've read in a long time." - Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars and The Foundling Escape from the militants doesn’t bring protection and love. Word gets out that the community is sheltering a jihadi bride, and ‘girl’ is effectively pariah among the cowed communities. ‘Bush wives’ are not welcome home. What begins as a propulsive tale of escape and survival becomes a gripping psychological family story about the shifting alliances and betrayals of sibling relationships--about the secrets our siblings keep, from themselves and each other. Who have each of these siblings become? How do their memories defy or galvanize Lex's own? As Lex pins each sibling down to agree to her family's final act, she discovers how potent the spell of their shared family mythology is, and who among them remains in its thrall and who has truly broken free. CHOSEN AS A BEST BOOK OF 2021 BY THE TIMES, THE FT, THE GUARDIAN, THE INDEPENDENT, STYLIST AND MORE!
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