Having previously read Salman Rushdie’s other titles his signature personality runs through this book in just the same way, sometimes almost in an overpowering way. As I first opened this text I really wanted to love everything about it, I felt honoured to be able to read it early and wanted to be able to …
Continue reading Salman Rushdie’s ‘Quichotte’: a jumbled metafiction
If I’ve learned anything during lockdown it’s how versatile my mental health can really be. There’s been days where I won’t accept any positivity from anyone; yet, there’s been others where I’m the one instilling others with clichés, inspirational quotes and pep talks galore. These new circumstances have pushed my limits at times and everything …
Continue reading Mental Health Awareness Week: A couple of lockdown reminders
Without a doubt Cyrus Parker's Coffee Days Whiskey Nights is a significant poetry book to be reviewing during Mental Health Awareness Week. They cover so many topics in such a delicately beautiful way that it's hard to decide where to even start in discussing it but I must start by saying it's a realistic piece of …
Continue reading Cyrus Parker’s Coffee Days Whiskey Nights: a universal reminder to just be yourself
In my family a saying we’ve grown up with is, “you’ve got to laugh, or you’ll cry.” Ricky Gervais’ After Life 2 felt like a true embodiment of that mantra: within the space of ten seconds a single scene had me hysterically crying (and I mean like pet-lip trembling, tears streaming, sob holding cry) and …
Continue reading “Don’t wallow, it’s addictive”: Why You Need To Watch After Life 2
Cathy Rentzenbrink's Dear Reader had me inset with nostalgia from the first chapter. She takes us, the dear reader, on a somewhat whistle-stop tour of her life simultaneously going both from memory to memory whilst taking us from book to book. We feel her confidence bloom from page to page as she goes from being the …
Continue reading ‘Dear Reader’: A Nostalgic Echo of an Introvert’s Love Of Books
Emma Gannon’s debut novel Olive initially felt like she had taken a microscope to look at my thoughts and had wrote her findings in book form. From the recognisable references of using outlets like Instagram as a way to busy your mind and reflect the day you wish you were having, to the ever-bearing new …
Continue reading “Olive”: That childhood novel we didn’t write
Modern day women can feel a pressure to detach themselves entirely from everything they admired about fairytales when they grow up; to feel that striving for a happy ever after is unrealistic and just a product of the world they were brought up in. Andrea Blythe's 'Twelve' is an accessible, enjoyable read that brings to …
Continue reading Andrea Blythe’s ‘Twelve’ and the retelling of the heroine’s fairytale
Like An Open Book 