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Tag: American cover wins

Review: The Lost Girl, Sangu Mandanna

Eva is an echo. She was created to be the perfect double of a girl called Amarra, insurance against the possibility that Amarra might one day die. Every week, Amarra writes letters to Eva, describing everything she’s learned and seen and done, so that Eva will have all the same memories and all the same knowledge. If Amarra gets a tattoo, Eva has to get one to match it. In her small house in England, hedged about with Guardians to remind her of her duties, Eva chafes against her restrictions and dreams of being free. I wanted to like The…

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Review: 26a, Diana Evans

Okay, it’s official. I have never, not ever, encountered a Nigerian or Nigerian-descended author who has never written about twins. If you have, drop a note in the comments. Twins are permanent residents of the Nigerian imagination. I like this fact. (In case you are not a podcast listener, Nigerians also have more twins. Than anyone else! We don’t know why, but it’s true, and it remains true even when IVF and other such things increase rates of multiple births in many Western countries.) 26a is about a family of four girls, daughters of a British father and a Nigerian…

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The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara

OH MY GOD Y’ALL, THIS BOOK. Don’t let me get your expectations up so high that you can’t enjoy it but like, OH MY GOD THIS BOOK, there are not an adequate number of words in my brain box to describe my feelings about this book right here. The People in the Trees is startling. Not startling in a plot way, but startling in the way that was like I had never read a book before and was reading my very first one right now. The People in the Trees admittedly hits a lot of sweet spots for me: a…

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A Beautiful Place to Die, Malla Nunn

Fwoo. This was dark. Which I guess is what I should have expected from a murder mystery that takes places in a small town in apartheid South Africa. The beginning: British police detective Emmanuel Cooper comes to investigate the murder of an Afrikaner police captain in the small town of Jacob’s Rest. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s a murder mystery where the victim is male. This probably happens more often than it seems to me to happen. I don’t read that many murder mysteries, partly because it always seems to be women getting killed, and I get tired of…

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Review: Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

Note: Whiskey Jenny and I talked about Half-Blood Blues on our most recent podcast — go check it out if you’re a podcast listener! Mumsy is always telling me to write review posts of the books we review on the podcast, so I am giving it a try. The beginning: The first chapter of Half Blood Blues won me over completely. One of my favorite books, Sunshine, begins with the line, It was a dumb thing to do but it wasn’t that dumb, and although that is not an eloquent description of a phenomenon that worries me greatly, it is…

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The Crane Wife, Patrick Ness

The beginning: A man wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a wounded crane on his front lawn. Carefully, he extracts an arrow from its wing so that it can fly away. He tells it his name, George. The next day a woman called Kumiko enters his life, and everything changes. The end (spoilers in this section only; highlight ’em if you want ’em): I predicted this correctly in my brain. I am not familiar with the story of the Crane Wife, but I feel like anyone who has ever read a fairy tale knew what was…

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Review: In the Freud Archives, Janet Malcolm

For my second entry in Ana and Iris’s Long-Awaited Reads Month, I read Janet Malcolm’s book In the Freud Archives. When I discovered Janet Malcolm back in October 2011, In the Freud Archives was the book of hers that appealed to me the most. For one reason or another, I didn’t get to read it until Christmas vacation.; and I think I might have liked it better if I’d read it sooner. I am not exactly disillusioned with Janet Malcolm, but I’m not not disillusioned with her. Her writing remains as beautifully clear and elegant as I ever thought it…

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Review: Lament, Maggie Stiefvater

The beginning: The beginning of Lament (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) is not promising, dear friends. A teenager called Deirdre (Dee) meets a mysterious and handsome boy called Luke at a music festival, and they play a stunning duet together. There is some mysterious magical stuff going on, and then Dee and Luke are madly in love forever. Cover report: Ooo, this one’s tough. Aesthetically I think the British cover is better, but I hate the tagline, and I think the American cover says more about the contents of the book. I’m giving it to the American cover in…

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DNF: Mudbound, Hillary Jordan; or, watch in real time as I lose all heart for reading about racism

The beginning: Hurrah, multiple points of view! (In retrospect, the multiple points of view is probably the reason I added this book to my TBR list in the first place.) Mudbound (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) opens with two brothers, Jamie and Henry McAllan, hastening to dig a grave for their father before the rains start again; while Henry’s wife, Laura, barely conceals her relief at the old man’s death. Then we jump back in time a few years, to the time when Laura and Henry met and married and moved to Mississippi to run a farm there. Laura…

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Review: A Beautiful Truth, Colin McAdam

The beginning: To cheer up his wife Judy, who is saddened by their inability to have children, a man called Walt buys and brings home a baby chimpanzee. Judy and Walt name him Looee and raise him as their own child.   The end (no spoilers you couldn’t guess on your own; but still, spoilers): Not very informative. Looee is no longer living with Walt and Judy, a future we all saw coming. He now lives in what seems like qualified contentment with some other chimpanzees. Maybe a refuge? A portion of the sales profits on this book are going…

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