book reviews
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Mr Salary shows Sally Rooney at her best, or rather, at her most comfortable. She writes about characters in unconventional relationships (echoing the age gaps in Intermezzo and Conversations with Friends), and interrogates the role that wealth and social class play in these relationships (again, echoing Intermezzo and CWF, but more strongly, Normal People). How does Sally Rooney keep getting away with…
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The Bell Jar, published a few weeks before Sylvia Plath ended her life in a gas oven, is her only novel. It is lauded as an American classic and is considered a feminist text, chiefly because of its exploration of gender norms and personal turmoil from the eyes of a young woman. Her confessional writing…
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“My Name is Maame” by Jessica George follows Maddie, a 25-year-old navigating grief and familial responsibilities. She struggles with feelings of inadequacy and isolation. The novel explores deep themes like loss and maturity, leading to a satisfying resolution that redefines her identity.
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Women don’t understand chemistry When you pick a female television host, first make sure she’s beautiful. Not pretty. That’s hollow girl-talk that barely means anything. She must be beautiful. Hot, even. Nothing less. Next, make sure she’s well suited for the male gaze. She should smile and wear frilly dresses so tight they threaten to…
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I hated ‘Half of a Yellow Sun when I first read it. To be fair, I was only fourteen years old and I had just gotten off the Enid Blyton express. To put it simply, my mind was not yet accustomed to mature themes and I could not get around Ugwu’s gauche yet charming interest…
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My first interaction with Coetzee’s work was through a Caine Prize anthology in which his story, “Nietverloren” was featured. From the moment I read the concluding sentence of that short story, I just knew it wouldn’t be the last of that man that I would encounter in the literary world. His writing style carried a…
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I grew up reading books that felt foreign and dishonest, with characters I could not relate to and whose lives I could not quite emulate. From Hans Christian Andersen to Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton, my young imagination was fed by stories of talking mermaids and child detectives, who outsmarted the police and ate cucumber…
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Identity is a central part of human existence and the degree to which it is essential cannot be overstated. So, does Noviolet Bulawayo succeed in communicating the issues that surround contemporary Zimbabwean identity, or is the novel simply an exhausting collection of clichéd issues in African literature? This article will examine the concerns raised in…
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Warning: This review may contain spoilers☺️ Having been pressured into reading the novel on Twitter and TikTok (as one normally is), I decided to give it a shot and see what it was all about. From the onset, I had assumed that infidelity, misogyny and ‘slut-shaming’ would be central elements of the text, but it…
By Augustine 