amyvl93's reviews
898 reviews

Kate Atkinson is one of my forever faves and an insta-buy author. I haven't, however, ever read any of her short stories so was intrigued by this collection. 

A series of interlinked stories, <i>Normal Rules Don't Apply</i> is utterly bonkers. Moving from sinister - the first story 'The Void' felt incredibly creepy - to the laugh out loud funny, it contains a true variety of tales. Some of the tales feel like fairytales told through a slightly tilted glass, others feel like they could be thriller entries in the world of Jackson Brodie.

Not all these stories worked instantly for me - but I did really enjoy this collection whist I wait for the next full-length novel.

This was an excellent if very bleak look at cycles of poverty through the lens of those who are evicted from their rental properties. Desmond follows 8 families in particular who live in Milwaukee - all of whom are paying significant amounts of their income on rent - as well as a couple of landlords, one who runs a condemned trailer park and the other, and one who owns numerous properties in poor areas of the city.

Desmond treats all the individuals he features with such empathy, it really felt like you were alongside them. There are moments of great tragedy sitting alongside everyday tragedies. He shines a light on systems that exploit those they should protect - from the incredibly profitable business of filling your properties with those on state support because you don't run the risk of losing rent, whilst not considering whether the properties really meet their needs, to the truly insane practice of raising grievances against landlords when residents call the police (including in cases of domestic abuse) that can lead families being evicted because landlords don't want to be considered nuisance properties. When this happened to one family, who finally appeared to be on the 'up', I very nearly cried out of frustration for them.

Alongside the problems of housing, Evicted also looks at the factors that can tip people what many may refer to as 'chaotic lives'. Drug addiction is a pattern for many of those profiled here - a nurse who loved their job who gained an opioid habit following an injury loses his job after he stole and finds himself in a trailer park. But alongside this is abusive relationships, childhood trauma, limited employment that enables the flexibility that many women raising children need and proximity to crime. The families that are able to find stability are those that are able to finally get themselves into spaces where they can build connections, find stable employment and access support - all of which is underpinned by high quality housing. Desmond very clearly articulates how being stuck in a horrible home impacts the way people feel about themselves; and how a home to be proud of improves people's ways of seeing themselves - which is even more true of the children and teenagers profiled here.

Written in 2016, so much of Desmond's writing and findings feel prescient to today. I'm looking forward (?) to reading his latest book Poverty next.

f you watched and enjoyed Succession, but thought that Logan Roy just wasn't quite vile enough, The Exhibitionist may be for you!

This novel follows the gathering of the Hanrahan family at the family home ahead of the patriarch Ray, one-time famous artist, launches his first art show in many, many years. We are introduced to Lucia, his wife who has put her arguably more successful career on hold; Patrick, his stepson who longs for a life outside of the family home; Jess, his daughter who has fled from London to Scotland to avoid her family and Leah, his (strangely) devoted other daughter. Alongside the core family are Jess' wet blanket husband, Ray's brother and his family, his ex-wife amongst many others.

I was enjoying this to begin with, I liked the nuanced time we spend with Lucia and Jess in particular - the latter grappling with potential motherhood and the former with her sexuality were both interesting. However, it did start to become overly repetitive and noodley with little point. I also struggled to fully understand some of the character motivations here - especially Leah whose character I never felt we really got to understand. Ray's general vile personality also didn't appear to have any nuance - I don't mind unlikeable characters but I like to be able to at least understand their motivations and Ray was just...horrific. I didn't enjoy spending time with him at all.

Whilst an interesting character study, The Exhibitionist didn't quite give me the pay off I wanted it to.

 Uncanny Valley follows Anna Wiener's move from her dead-end publishing job in New York, to the land of opportunity in tech out West. As she moves between start-ups, and as scrutiny of tech companies increases, Wiener herself begins to become increasingly disillusioned with her work and the industry as a whole.

This started as a really engaging listen, the juxtaposition between Wiener's life in New York and her move into tech was really well described. However, it did feel a little overlong and felt like we repeated a lot of the messages around sexism and excessive wealth in the organisations. I will say this may have been exacerbated by having to take a pause in listening to this because of my Spotify credits; though if you read a fair bit about the tech industry I'm not sure this would necessarily offer anything new.

 

 Important is a word that feels overused when it comes to non-fiction. However, when it comes to the poet Lemn Sissay's memoir My Name is Why it feels like the best one to use, especially for anyone who works in and around social care and government.

My Name is Why follows Sissay's childhood in care. He is born in 1967 to an Ethiopian unmarried mother, who was in England to study and was sent to a mother and baby home and practically forced to give up her child. He was given a new name and put into foster care with a white family he saw as his family, and is wrenched away from the only home he has known in his early teens into increased institutionalisation.

Sissay weaves his own memories alongside actual documents from the council (Wigan) that were his 'corporate parents'. This gives a stark insight into how social workers and more senior officers in the council discussed Lemn as a child; including ruminating on how his 'colour' means people treat him with undue additional attention, and by extension that he somehow needs to feel less warmth. As new placements are sought, the difference in opinion between Lemn, his social worker and those with more power is painful to read - the moment an Educational Psychologists judgement is put aside is truly jawdropping, as is the reveal of his mother's contact to the local authority. It is painful to see Sissay continually defined by his worse moments, and not allowed to experience genuine teenagehood.

The book ends abruptly but with a sense of hope, and also urgency that children in the care of the state deserve just that, care.

 

 I so wanted to love this book and series, but this was a bit of a miss for me. Her Majesty's Royal Coven is set in an alternative contemporary UK, where witches and wizards exist and work for the government (sort of) through official covens and cabals which are hidden in plain sight from the 'mundane' population (HMRC - get it). The plot follows four women who were friends in childhood and who are all reeling from a recent magical civil war; Helena who is now the Head Witch of HMRC, Leonie who has established her own more inclusive coven, Niamh reeling from the loss of her husband and living her best vet life in Hebden Bridge and Elle who just wants her home life to stay perfect. They are thrown together again when Helena becomes convinced they are facing a mortal threat to their safety.

In terms of what did work well, whenever we side-barred away from the main plot to information about the world and the witch lore was really well crafted. I could have read a whole novel about the witches history - and to be honest, would have actually quite liked to read the novel about the events prior to this one. I also really liked Niamh as a protagonist, she felt the most rounded of the women whose heads we spend time in and again, a novel just following her using her healing powers to be a vet would have been a wholesome good time.

However, lots about this just didn't work for me. I found the prose to often feel quite juvenile, with the women feeling a lot younger than they actually were. There's so much slang and pop culture references in here, which felt very cringe and already aged the book despite it being a recent release. The teenage characters also didn't feel believable - a lot of their dialogue didn't feel at all recognisable as how teens actually speak to each other.

Many of the characters felt very shallowly defined by their identities with little space for nuance - Helena's villain arc ultimately felt quite a stretch, and Leonie seemed defined by her blackness and her queerness which feels at odds of the message of the book to see people as more than their identities. I agree with the messages that Dawson wants to get across here, but they felt quite heavy handed. This is a shame as there's such a need to challenge transphobic rhetoric, but I'm not sure if someone stumbling across this novel who may have other views would have their minds changed.

The ending also made me so mad it killed any vague notion I may have had of finishing the series...a miss for me; but many love it so may be one to check out if you want a pacey fantasy read.

 

This was a weirdly addictive reading experience for me; is it a masterpiece? Nope. But there's something about Sussman's writing that had me eating Once More with Feeling up.

Loosely inspired (it seems) on Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake; Once More with Feeling is a second-chance romance/enemies-to-lovers story following Kathleen Rosenberg who once performed as teen favourite Katee Rose, before breaking up with her boyfriend Ryan the lead singer of a boyband after cheating on him with Cal another member of the group and being thrown to the tabloid dogs. Many years later, Kathleen and Cal are thrown together again when he signs on to direct the musical that is Kathleen's chance to achieve her childhood dream.

As someone who loves musicals, I was probably pre-disposed to enjoy a book that is set backstage and contains loads of references to musicals and I enjoyed how unapologetic it was in even the most niche references.

It was blindingly obvious how the story was going to work out from the beginning of the novel, and most of the supporting characters aren't hugely well developed but either way I enjoyed myself reading this. I did feel that Cal didn't quite do enough reckoning with the past of his and Kathleen's relationship, however, he was a fairly inoffensive male romantic lead and I liked how into Kathleen he was. I enjoyed Kathleen as a character, her self-assuredness felt quite refreshing.

This was a fun time!

 Praise be to long train journeys as I tore through this novel in a couple of sittings, and so enjoyed it. I'm a huge fan of Dolly Alderton's non-fiction, but found Ghosts kind of forgettable so was a little nervous about Good Material. But I needn't have been.

Good Material follows Andy, a would-be comedian in his 30s, who is reeling from his break-up from his girlfriend of almost five years Jen. The novel follows him over the course of 2019 as he attempts to come to terms with the break-up, what could have caused it, and what life could look like alone.

I just found so much connection to the emotions in this novel. Andy isn't particularly likeable, but I recognised a lot of his behaviour, granted from break-ups in my early 20s rather than now, so was perhaps more tolerant of his actions than others...until we get 200 pages in and he's still unable to do any self reflection. The other characters that we meet feel well-crafted too; Andy's friends embody toxic masculinity in a deeply frustrating way, as the idea of being vulnerable is just the worse possible thing, the women Andy dates are portrayed in a complicated way (that he consistently misses) and I loved his professional sceptic housemate/landlord Morris.

The change in perspective we get in the final part of the novel is a lovely twist as Jen gets to take more of a centre stage - again, the decisions she makes felt so true that it gave me a mild existential crisis (as someone who has also been single for most/all of their 20s and entered a relationship in my 30s) but I guess that's a credit to Alderton's ability to really nail those complicated feelings.

Good Material is just that, and I'm glad to have read it as my first truly 2024 read. 

It's always slightly strange to read a book about the industry you work in. I've been a management consultant for a little over five years, working for small boutique consultancies. It's an industry whose reputation has largely been shaped by those that are less ethical, and McKinsey comes top of the list of murky companies who despite scandal after scandal, remain hugely popular with businesss and governments alike.  When McKInsey Comes to Town shines a perhaps unwitting light on exactly why their popularity endures.

Bogdanovich and Forsythe structure their book through several case studies examining the impact of McKinsey on areas ranging from Disney to Saudi Arabia, via post-apartheid South Africa and the NHS. The sprawling nature of McKinsey's business interests is undeniable, and the firm cling to 'internal walls' to justify the fact that they repeatedly work for different competitors, and business regulators and governments. Each case study broadly follows the same structure - challenge identified, McKinsey is hired, makes changes (usually with some negative impact), one (or more) consultant involved has an ethical dilemma and quits...McKinsey moves on unchanged. I get the sense this structure may suit reading more than listening - as it did start to get a little repetitive with time.

However, these case studies highlight just why McKinsey is so popular - they centre the ask of the client above all else. Where a clients wants may have wider impacts, these are simply ignored - meaning (generally) clients get what they want and unsurprisingly continue to hire them. I would have liked a bit more from Bogdanovich and Forsythe interrogating the context that has business and in some cases governments place efficiency and profit above all else. McKinsey may not have many moral qualms in enabling this to happen but the businesses themselves are hardly innocent parties.

The sections in this book I found the most compelling (and damning) were focused on the company involvement in pharmaceuticals, supporting the Saudi Arabian government and designing UK health policy. However, to some extent much of this had already been researched and reporting on prior to this book - and I'd have liked a few more revelations - although conscious I'm quite a niche audience.

When McKinsey Comes to Town is a good introduction to the unethical practices of some of our largest and most powerful businesses, although is light on solutions. It remains to be seen if further negative attention on McKinsey will make any meaningful difference to the company's bottom line.

Babel and RF Kuang as an author generally has been all over social media for the past year, and I finally had to jump on the bandwagon - and I'm really glad I did. Babel follows Robin, a young man pulled from his home in Canton by a professor at a speculative 1800s Oxford to study at the famed Babel Translation Institute. There he meets his fellow students Ramy, Victoire and Letty and they become swept up in Babel and it's famed silver-making. However, when Robin is contacted by the mysterious Hermes Society, he begins to understand that Babel stands for more than just language for its own sake.

Knowing a bit about colonialism but nothing about linguistics, I found a lot of the content of this novel to be very interesting. I know some have critiqued Kuang for not adding anything 'new' to the conversation, but just shining a light on the way languages are connected was of great interest to me - and by extension I could understand how the Babel scholars could be sucked into this world of language and the power that it holds. 

I did find the world building overall to be a mixed picture - Oxford, Babel as an institution and Canton as a location all felt incredibly drawn. It almost feels strange to know that the Babel tower is not a fixture at Oxford; and the descriptions had me picturing the mini-series adaptation in my head. That being said, I found the fantasy or speculative elements to be a little less well developed. I couldn't always quite get a grip on how silver had truly created a difference between the British Empire depicted in the novel, and the British Empire as it is existed in reality. It also felt like we got an awful lot of exposition as if Kuang occasionally forgot herself about the fantasy elements and had to remind us all that they existed. The fantasy of it all comes to the fore more in the final parts of the novel, but I almost feel like the translation element could have been enough in itself. The comparison to Philip Pullman in some reviews had me expecting a little more in world building, especially as this is marketed as an Adult fantasy (which I also think is somewhat unnecessary, and that younger readers could definitely enjoy this too).

Character-wise, the central quartet felt fully realised. Robin, Ramy, Victoire and Letty were all characters I cared about, was frustrated by and their individual journeys all felt authentic (if at times rather heavily signposted). The side characters did at times feel a little more one-dimensional, and there to serve representative points; but that didn't make them any less impactful on the narrative as it unfolded.

So depsite that wobbly word-building, I really enjoyed Babel and look forward to reading more of Kuang's writing in the future.