#saestrah reviews

[saestrah]

saestrah review — Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson

I read Small Worlds shortly after reading Open Water (by the same author), so I was a little disappointed to see that Caleb Azumah Nelson's second book wasn't written in second person narrative after Open Water executed it so perfectly, but that disappointment was short-lived. Small Worlds captures the reader with a beautifully orchestrated story of community, friendship, family, love and loss, and delivers these themes with a quiet magnitude that I now associate with Nelson's work. The lyrical prose is poetic, leaving me with countless lines and passages that made me put the book down for a moment just to appreciate what I'd just read, and there is always such attention to detail with sentence structuring and rhythm, that this is the kind of novel I want someone to read aloud to me all day and all night. Even without attaching meaning, the texture of Nelson's writing feels like a love story. The plot of this story is well fleshed out and developed, covering an expanse of time from Stephen's teenage years to early adulthood, without rushing the pacing or sacrificing the focus and intensity of smaller scenes that I love in character-focused stories. Small Worlds also delves deep into the Black British experience, covering topics from police brutality, racism, the immigrant experience, and how being Black intersects with grief, gentrification, and depression. While it's not something I have individually had to face, as a white reader, I know how much it has resonated with other readers. This book will be published in the UK in May, and I'm already impatient to get myself a hard copy. I couldn't recommend this book enough.

#saestrah reviews #small worlds #caleb azumah nelson #book reviews #book recommendations

[saestrah]

i'm finally gonna start posting my book reviews on here, including some of the advanced reading copies provided by netgalley in exchange for honest reviews.

possibly going to make it a weekly thing, and if there's a week where i've not finished a new book i'll do a forfeit challenge of sorts? i was thinking of doing fake book reviews of books i've not read yet, predicting what the book's about and how good it is based on the cover and description, but i'm open to suggestions if anyone has ideas about book-related forfeit challenges!

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[saestrah]

saestrah review — The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez

saestrah reviews: a weekly challenge where i’ll review one book a week, and if i haven’t read anything that week i’ll write a fake review for a book i’ve not read yet, predicting what characters i’ll like and dislike, what themes are explored, and how well it’s written, based entirely on the cover and synopsis. feel free to suggest books for me to review by sending me an ask!

Mariana Enríquez’s The Dangers of Smoking in Bed blends horror with the magical realism genre that Latin American literature is often associated with. The stories are left open ended, which invites readers to imagine an even more gruesome ending than the author may have initially envisioned. One aspect of the collection that I loved was the tangential nature of storytelling from the grandmothers and mothers in the stories, who often express their feelings through folktales and suspicion. There's a contrast between these older female characters with the younger female protagonists, as while the collection isn’t one of coming of age tales, the younger protagonists are often new to the world and are exploring things for the first time in their life. I found that in Our Lady of the Quarry in particular, the naïvity of the younger girls and the rush of their first crush on Diego creates a tangible and insidious obsession in the narrative that a more mature and wise protagonist wouldn’t as effectively portray.

read the full review on The Storygraph and find more of my reviews here.

#saestrah reviews #mariana enriquez #the dangers of smoking in bed #book review #bookblr #booklr

[saestrah]

saestrah review — Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

saestrah reviews: a weekly challenge where i’ll review one book a week, and if i haven’t read anything that week i’ll write a fake review for a book i’ve not read yet, predicting what characters i’ll like and dislike, what themes are explored, and how well it’s written, based entirely on the cover and synopsis. feel free to suggest books for me to review by sending me an ask!

Young Mungo will be published in April 2022. I was given an advanced reading copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

read the full review on The Storygraph or below the cut:

Despite already having three other books to read via NetGalley and a small army of library paperbacks on my desk, I was so excited to read Young Mungo that I couldn't let it wait for more than the time it took my phone to download the book. Having studied in Glasgow, the phonetical spellings of Glasweigan English and vivid descriptions of the city submerged me into the city I loved. More than just pointing out street names I walked down or lived on, there's a tangible nature to the setting that makes Glasgow feel like another character in the novel, neither a hero no antagonist, but an omnipresent being that shapes the lives of Mungo and those he interacts with. Speaking of Mungo, here is a protagonist I whole-heartedly loved. He's used to being babied by those around him and I never questioned why: he's incredibly kind, loyal, and has a forgiving nature which could have been written as his downfall but, while it did bring him a lot of grief, it wasn't written as a flaw to overcome. Mungo's softness is something to protect. Although Mungo is the character that leads us through the story, he's not the only narrator and I never found the other narrators as lesser storytellers. Throughout the two timelines of the novel—one being Mungo on a fishing trip with two alcoholics, the other being Mungo in Glasgow with his family—every character is developed enough that each of their decisions makes sense. There is never the feeling of things happening for the sake of a plot, but rather the plot organically growing from the characters' worldview and actions. As for the plot, I was a little trepidatious of another story of trauma and pain, where LGBT characters are used as fictional punching bags and are reminded how much the world hates them. While Douglas Stuart doesn't shy away from writing the cruelty and abuse that gay men face, this coming of age story has as much tenderness as it does tragedy. It definitely gets bleak and depressing at times, but the chosen pacing of the story (switching seamlessly between the two timelines) does offer the reader a temporary escape. As the two timelines begin to come together, a sense of cautiousness develops in the reader as enough hints have been given to explain how Mungo found himself on the fishing trip. We can guess what happens to Mungo and James before it happens, and the knowingness doesn't lessen the blow. Having said that, and without spoiling anything too much, the ending is still optimistic. While there's no explicit future laid out for Mungo's happy ending, there's definitely hope for one. I for one, imagined a 'and they lived happily ever after.' All in all, I loved the characters and enjoyed the writing style. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book (but browse the content warnings beforehand) and while I would like to reread this at some point, I also look forward to whatever Stuart writes next.

You can find more of my reviews here.

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[saestrah]

saestrah review — The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice by Shon Faye

saestrah reviews: a weekly challenge where i’ll review one book a week, and if i haven’t read anything that week i’ll write a fake review for a book i’ve not read yet, predicting what characters i’ll like and dislike, what themes are explored, and how well it’s written, based entirely on the cover and synopsis. feel free to suggest books for me to review by sending me an ask!

I was given a copy of The Transgender Issue via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

read the full review on The Storygraph or below the cut:

It's been a while since I read a non-fiction book that wasn't a memoir, and reading this I thought The Transgender Issue benefited from not being a memoir, instead focusing on trans people as a whole. However rather than becoming a more distant and impersonal record of transphobia in the UK, Shon Faye includes case studies of individuals she met throughout her research, inviting the reader into the lives of trans people without exploiting their stories for shock value and 'trauma porn'. I especially liked that while Faye isn't representative or the authority on all trans voices, she doesn't leave that as a passing disclaimer in the introduction but rather discusses in depth the issues she has not had to face personally but so many of her trans siblings often do. Faye uses her platform to talk about the issues facing trans people in the UK and acknowledges the changes we need as a society won't directly benefit white, middle-class and able-bodied trans people as individuals but rather trans people as a whole. Faye's prose is easy to read and follow, and despite the cruel truth of its subject matter (there is some sort of comedic timing in my decision to pick up this book a few days before I would fill in new employment contracts with my birth sex rather than my gender identity, since the latter isn't legally recognised in the UK), The Transgender Issue is a non-fiction book I read surprisingly quickly and wholeheartedly enjoyed.

#saestrah reviews #book review #lgbt books #book recommendations #bookblr #booklr #trans books