Tag Archives: Romance

August 31, 2020 · 7:33 pm

Big Summer: Uhhhhh. I’m Failing at Instagram

So I have an Instagram account where I post pictures of my kids and follow my friends from grad school. I sort of thought of it as a virtual photo album not fully realizing it’s a whole world of commerce and connection and posturing. Okay, so I do know that I sometimes make my kids do extra cute things for the likes, but I didn’t realize you could monetize that and I know, I know, Luddite, etc. Tbh (to be honest – for you, mum), I don’t know how to use a filter, or how people add the sparkling things like lips and hearts, and I don’t really care to learn. Except if maybe it would make me millions of dollars like the ‘influencers’ in Jennifer Weiner’s Big Summer do. Maybe I could be a mom influencer? I have many ideas for cute snacks that I… never execute.

But really, this book is both a total waste of your time to read because it’s silly and hilariously over-the-top, and also the exact sort of summer candy that will make your beach vacation a blast because of course you are going on a beach vacation because you are fancy and can do just that.

The novel starts out as a somewhat serious exploration of female friendship, online culture and body acceptance. It then takes a radical pivot (in the sense I didn’t see it coming at all) to murder mystery and romance. (Like the kind of romance where you squirm a little because there are A Lot of Details and you weren’t prepared for that kind of reading right now.) And the rest of the novel is something of a whodunnit mixed with a splashy polished fancy rich things catalogue. Like it was almost impossible to stop thinking about how the book was setting itself up to be adapted for HBO.

SOOOO. What? Do you read it? I don’t know. It’s so silly. Even while it’s trying to be Serious and Important with its themes of bullying and fat acceptance. But maybe silly is exactly what we all need right now. Maybe. You tell me! You never do, but still. Maybe if I was a better #influencer you would…

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Filed under Bestseller, Book I'll Forget I Read, Fiction

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January 16, 2020 · 12:32 am

What is Left the Daughter: In which I only realize I read the book before after writing this review and the two reviews are… not the same.

BIG NEWS. First time ever, but I wrote this review and when I was typing in the ‘tags’ realized that I READ IT BEFORE. And REVIEWED IT BEFORE. And I had NO MEMORY AT ALL that I’d ever encountered the book before! AH! My brain! Anyway, When I read this (in 2011) I was ambivalent. Almost ten years later (let’s grant that the intervening decade may be why I don’t recall it At. All.?) I am less easily swayed. If you want to read the earlier review you can find it here. I will say that 2011 Erin was far more impressed by detail. And actually thought this was a book I’d ‘keep thinking about’ LOL.

And now… the review I wrote before I realized I’d reviewed it before!

It shouldn’t be so boring. What is Left the Daughter opens with a dramatic love triangle that renders protagonist Wyatt Hillier an orphan. It has the drama of U-boats and the war and murder! But then it also has tedious descriptions of scones and gramophone recordings and definitions of words.

Ostensibly told as a series of letters from father to daughter (though what letter would ever include Such Outrageous Detail I don’t know) the novel follows the life of Wyatt as he comes to Middle Economy, Nova Scotia, and becomes a… wait. Try to imagine the most boring job you can imagine. Did you guess toboggan and sled maker? You’re right – that falls outside the scope of imagination for most boring, but there it is, all true. He falls in love, but the woman of his affection loves another man. A *gasp* German man amid WWII Nova Scotia. Drama-drama, family-drama. Except… no real drama. Just agonizing mundane exhaustion.

So yeah. I would have stopped reading this one, but I kept thinking it was going to get better. It doesn’t. Don’t. Bother.

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Filed under Canadian Literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction, National Book Award, Worst Books

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May 22, 2019 · 8:59 pm

Pachinko: What Kale is to Reading

So remember when kale was like a Big Deal and it was in your cereal and your smoothies and your muffins and you were like ‘stop talking about kale!  I don’t like it!’ (Or if you’re my mum, you were like ‘Kale?! I don’t even eat lettuce!’)? That’s how I felt about Pachinko. I was like, stop recommending this book to me, world. I get that it’s ‘good’ and ‘great’ and ‘life changing’ but it just looks dull and maybe over-hyped and probably there’s no way it can be anything other than a little chewy.

This is where the analogy falls apart. Because kale really is over-hyped and  (as M. would observe) doesn’t need to be in anything because it’s really not that good. Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on the other hand, is worth every single page of its  400+ brilliance (when did  page count start to matter? In a meeting recently debating how many pages young people are willing/able to read (and our book club has the same talk) and I wanted to have a stomp and yell, because a novel should be exactly as long as it needs to be, and if it’s too long it’s too long because it didn’t need to be that long. I probably felt differently reading Infinite Jest but I DIGRESS).

Right, so Pachinko has the feel of a book that you’re going to read  because it’s ‘important’ and ‘recommended’ (aka: full of brain vitamins) but then… it’s just… great. Like as a story you want to read and not put down. While also – and incidentally! that part is important! –  being  good for your literary life because it’s so well crafted. And in my case good  for my political/historical life because I didn’t know *anything* about the history of  Koreans in  Japan, which… is what the book is about.

Reluctant to tell you the broad strokes of the plot because  you’re likely to be like… Kale. Boring. And it’s not! Anyway, it’s about a few generations of this Korean family living in/being Japanese, but not being Japanese because of bananas rules about Koreans-in-Japan and citizenship. Opening just before WWII we follow threads of gender, class, citizenship and nationality, along  with all sorts of ideas of identity/belonging/passing and family. All layered around romance. Oh and  religion! It really does have it all (haven’t you heard? Kale also makes your farts smell good).

So yeah. Be a better person and read  Pachinko. And I promise this won’t be like interval training or CBD or coconut water [insert other ridiculous fad]. This one be the real deal.

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Filed under Fiction, New York Times Notable, Prize Winner

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December 26, 2018 · 5:17 am

An Ocean of Minutes: Time Traveling Romance

So if you loved The Time Travellers Wife, you’ll probably enjoy Thea Lim’s An Ocean of Minutes, which is probably the last thing Lim wants me to write, and I’m sorry for saying it. Because they’re very different books. This one is beautifully written, with complex characters and a compelling plot: our protagonists are separated in time when Polly jumps to the future in a gamble to save her lover, Frank, from dying of a pandemic flu. The post-apocalypse future of life after the flu is as disturbing as it is resonant.

But the overarching romance of their relationship, the way the mechanics of time and time travel play in to their relationship, the urgency of their reunion, and the gender politics of a woman waiting – forever waiting – to be reunited with her man – echo strongly with the best-known time travel novel.

That said, whether you’ve read Time Travellers or not, or have no opinions about time travel, I’d recommend this read. It’s not like The Best thing I’ve read, but it’s a solid bet and you could do worse for first books for 2019.

[SPOILER FOLLOWS] Continue reading →

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