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viragohaus's reviews
237 reviews
After the Fall by Kylie Ladd
4.0
After the Fall's narrative cycles almost entirely around the voices of four people, two couples. Kate & Cary, Cressida & Luke.
Initially friends, a mad insistent need draws Kate and Luke out of companionship into infidelity.
Displaying remarkable skill, Kylie Ladd has a different character narrate each chapter, intensifying a reader's reaction to each, as well as managing to weave the plot beautifully amongst the perspectives.
This close ear to each character's voice is key as it draws on an important impulse behind reading; the need for the familiar.
People and events in novels feel true because -perhaps in some previously unarticulated way- we know them.
Ladd's tremendous strength as a novelist is to realise that this form of identification is merely an invitation.
Start on this road but do not be sure of where you'll end.
A wronged partner is an easy character to sympathise with and their forgiveness welcome, but what if their forgiveness alienates something of the love?
The passionate, illicit energy that courses through a lover engages the senses in a fantastically earthy way, but what if its collapse hollows out something vital?
Kylie Ladd draws her characters like etching on glass. There's beauty and violence in each stroke.
Initially friends, a mad insistent need draws Kate and Luke out of companionship into infidelity.
Displaying remarkable skill, Kylie Ladd has a different character narrate each chapter, intensifying a reader's reaction to each, as well as managing to weave the plot beautifully amongst the perspectives.
This close ear to each character's voice is key as it draws on an important impulse behind reading; the need for the familiar.
People and events in novels feel true because -perhaps in some previously unarticulated way- we know them.
Ladd's tremendous strength as a novelist is to realise that this form of identification is merely an invitation.
Start on this road but do not be sure of where you'll end.
A wronged partner is an easy character to sympathise with and their forgiveness welcome, but what if their forgiveness alienates something of the love?
The passionate, illicit energy that courses through a lover engages the senses in a fantastically earthy way, but what if its collapse hollows out something vital?
Kylie Ladd draws her characters like etching on glass. There's beauty and violence in each stroke.
Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan
2.0
'A non-fiction book does not absent the author from the craft of storytelling.'
What the editor should have told the author.
What the editor should have told the author.
Call Me Cruel by Michael Duffy
3.0
Michael Duffy's considered telling of a young woman's murder lays bare the grief of unexplained absence & the stop-start investigation that eventually convicted the killer.
I couldn't help but wish for Janet Malcolm's icy precision nonetheless.
I couldn't help but wish for Janet Malcolm's icy precision nonetheless.