I couldn’t put The House with Chicken Legs down. I found it to be such a unique, enchanting story, the type I aspire to write. It left my inner child bursting with joy. Based on Baba Yaga, a supernatural being from Slavic folklore, the House with Chicken Legs focuses, as many fairy tales do, on…More
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Nora Seed is a 35-year old woman who feels trapped and as though she has failed to achieve anything meaningful. At the end of her tether, she attempts to end her life and finds herself in the Midnight Library: Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on…More
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
I really had to put in a lot of effort to finish Ducks, Newburyport. At 1000 pages, it’s four times the length of your average novel, yet made up only of a single sentence. The sentence represents the stream of consciousness of a middle-aged American housewife, with thoughts wandering from school shootings to her pie…More
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
I simply had to read The Vegetarian after coming across this glowing review, in which the author, amongst other high praise, declares it as “the best book I have ever read”. The story is set in modern-day Seoul and follows the reactions of various family members as Yeong-hye, the central character, stops eating meat following vivid, blood-soaked dreams…More
Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith
In her writings from 2016, the Year of the Monkey, Patti Smith, our poetic punk pilgrim, takes us on her travels across many US states. She cuts a solitary figure amongst the backdrop of the country’s increasingly polarising politics, travelling with ghosts of those she loves and the knowledge that she’s soon to lose two…More
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
A Boomer, my lovely Mum, kindly let her Millennial daughter know that Gen Z were raving about the Song of Achilles on TikTok. When I looked into it, I indeed found a myriad of videos with youngsters all expressing how Miller’s 2011 debut had tugged at their hearts. The story’s origins start many many generations…More
Biblio Bambi 