For me, this book was unexpected and original in its style and tone. It deals head-on with hard issues but manages to entertain the reader at the same time. Quite a feat.
The story explores the history of black lynchings in America, particularly the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, and its unresolved ongoing impact. However, the book unfolds as a clever satire, also comedy caper, also detective novel, also zombie apocalypse genre.
It has cops, academics, witch doctors, wary locals, rednecks and reappearing cadavers. Stereotypes are employed without apology and the dialogue is skilful and hugely entertaining. The injustice reverberates long after the last page is turned, leaving you feeling that this subject needed presenting in this way at this time, and Everett was just the man for the task.
An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone
Percival Everett's The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.
In this memoir about Pawson’s time as a war correspondent in Angola and other periods of her life, things that she thought she knew about herself and situations are re-examined in a patchwork of bite-sized reflections.
Having previously been motivated to encourage others to care about important world events, she now questions the idea of being a war correspondent – is it okay to visit a troubled country and then leave when it suits, who has a right to tell anyone else’s story, what motive do news organisations have, what is the truth of a war anyway? Covering herself in glory is not Lara Pawson’s aim.
She lays bare so much, flitting across decades and subjects, weaving an important, disillusioned, enlightened, interrogative, humorous, self-aware look at her journey so far.
‘Lara Pawson’s This Is the Place to Be is a stark, compassionate and troubling text that summons a fragmentary autobiography, circling experiences from her growing up in England and her time as a reporter covering civil wars in Angola and Ivory Coast. She deals with big questions through an intimate mosaic of lived experiences – the blank, funny, awful, gentle shards that remain in memory years after events have taken place – returning her again and again to the themes of identity, violence, race, class, sexuality and the everyday lives of people across several continents.
I bought this whilst idling in a second-hand bookshop. After finishing it, I read everything I could find by Claire Keegan.
Her storytelling has a timeless quality; it could be set recently or 100 years ago, it’s beautifully ambiguous. Her descriptive style is lucid and spare; simple enough to suggest that nothing is happening but underneath a tension is building until the stakes are very high indeed. It’s masterful. The necessity of this book being written, and written so well, honours the victims of the history being addressed.
The protagonist, Bill Furlong, is a compelling example of the age-old dilemma: will you turn a blind eye or will you help and thus risk your own stability? Having read much of Keegan’s work, I circle back to this as the most powerful.
"A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers
Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him…
Rhona’s candid, messy journey will make you
laugh, cry and remember. Not a typical break-up book, it's much more profound.
Rhona has been casually swapping one job for another while comfy in a long
relationship, until it ends abruptly, and her efforts to adapt to that change
are thrown by unwelcome news...
This
beautifully written, pacey satire about female friendship, heartbreak, career
change, conceiving, and illness will appeal to fans of Fleabag. Join Rhona on a
laugh (and cry) out loud search for meaning amongst the bars, offices, and
clinics of Scotland.
Will her friendships survive the challenges? Will she survive? At once funny and tender, Keep Walking,
Rhona Beech is a clear-sighted look at a generation that was told
they could have it all.
