imogenrose97's reviews
491 reviews

This was my least favourite Ginzburg to date. Though the writing still held the observational style that I so adore, the plot was punctuated by a heavy dread that I couldn't get into. 

This book had everything I want in a book but somehow fell a little short. I was so excited to delve into the artistic pursuit of feeling your pain through the passion of creating and greatly enjoyed all discussions of how the protagonist did so. However I felt there were too many lose ends, too many times that the writing could have explored an experience or a reason that did not end up amounting to sum of the ideas. There was an overbearing anxiety slipped through each chapter and right when I thought it would pay off it was taken away with the tide. Leaving us a neat ending while I was hoping for explosion.

Having recently seen Dracula the play put on by Sydney Theatre Company I was in the perfect place to read Carmilla with a dramatic air. I had been nervous that the age of the text would make the pages a slog but after a chapter or two, it was easy to get through.

This collection had me in tears. I want so badly to give it to friends to read. I want to recommend that anyone who has doubted their strength. To anyone who doesn't believe in themselves. The poetry was expansive, it took life experience and turned them into lessons so beautifully worded I could have lived inside them. I'm so glad this book exists. This is what poetry is for.

Daaamnnnn this book took me for a ride but maybe not in the way I had hoped. I spent the first half telling people that this might be my book of the year and look maybe I jinxed myself but it went so quickly down a path that just was not satisfying for me. Frustratingly I read the blurb of this too close to reading which meant I could remember what it said which meant half of the book was not at all a mystery. This is a huge pet peeve of mine, I just want to be surprised by the plot! I don’t want to be aware of the pivotal moment before it happens. I was getting wafts of similarity between this, My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Saltwater by Jessica Andrews. Both favourites. They share a visceral murkiness that you feel leaching down your spine.  Unsettlingly oozing with choices you wouldn’t make yourself in situations that you are glad to not be living. I couldn’t help but love it. For me, the final third of the book lost the intensity and strength it had possessed. I felt it got tangled in its own skirts, leaving the muddied taste of things left not quite right. 

I really thought I knew what was going to happen in this book. I really thought I had heard enough to know what it would be like. Through the eyes of a hivemind of boys, reminding me of Dizz Tates Brutes. Each boy, named and unnamed breathed stale air into the already cloying space surrounding the Lisbon sisters as I waited with a clenched jaw for the suicides to continue. I waited because that's what it said on the tin. That is what the book told me to do. It forced me to be complicit, I too, was an unnamed boy waiting for a Lisbon to love them. Waiting to find out why they were so special. Waiting in vain for them to be saved.

This collection of short stories was phenomenal, I found each of the characters to be varied and interesting and if you asked me to give defining characteristics I still think I could. The stories were painful and funny. I deeply enjoyed the use of different types of storytelling with the instructional guide on How to Make Love to a Physicist coming first for its interesting style. 

Another 5 star read! What struck me about this book was just how many parts of it were painfully perfect for me. The lyrical writing described horrific images in a way that left you feeling sick with guilt that this is what has been and is still being experienced, and yet was contrasted within a page with human joy which even then contours days of repeated sorrows. 
The story flowed through vignettes that took a theme from the previous vignette's final words, creating a gentle slide from one to the next throughout the book. It felt like sliding down one of those slides with the humps, lifting you up and dropping you back down.
The final perfection for me is the way that were was not really a plot, the themes from the vignettes dipped from one to the next and though the time periods change from page to page I never felt lost or confused about where I was supposed to be and who I was supposed to remember. Themes of family and culture were discussed with grace and curiosity and the people depicted each were vivid and fleshed out despite the shortness of the book. I couldn't recommend it more.
Who should read this:

This one was definitely not for me. I think I need my poetry to be more emotional, less everyday activities and more gripped with the feeling of falling.

I've been reading this book for book club and realized that it's too similar to Vaster wilds which I read this year and I'm just not interested in where the story is going enough to want to slog through the rest of the pages.