alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

The Glass Hotel

5.0

Beguiling, haunting prose if you stick with it. It's eerie to read this and watch The Haunting of Bly Manor at the same time.

Food Pairing: a highball and mixed nuts.

The Lover

Marguerite Duras

Luxurious prose, atmospheric and thick with the malaise of the tropics. I drank diet coke while reading this and it felt wrong—opt for wine.

#AlisaReadstheWorld: France

Death in Her Hands

Ottessa Moshfegh

I've seen this book pop up on several lists of books I would like. Literary bodies-in-woods is my shtick. This book is well-crafted and reminded me of [b:Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead|42983724|Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead|Olga Tokarczuk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547225640l/42983724._SY75_.jpg|8099373]: lonely old woman, small isolated village, strange connection between the woman and nature, possibly unreliable narrator that is not telling the reader all she knows... But I always have trouble with unreliable narrators.

Thin Girls

Diana Clarke

Lily and Rose, identical twins who can taste each other's emotions. Lily covers her troubles with food; Rose stops eating.

This book was alright: it wrapped up womanhood, sisterhood, sexuality, and diet culture in a nice package. A little overhyped because the author is "Roxane Gay's protege."

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison

5.0

My first Morrison. It is dense and the narrative is intentionally fragmented to challenge the reader's ease of accepting the story, so I need to read it again. Maybe in time.

Little Gods

Meng Jin

This was just not the book for me.

The Testaments

Margaret Atwood

uhhhh I cannot believe this won the Booker Prize. It would be like if Go Set a Watchman won the National Book Award.

blinking white guy

The Testaments is more action-packed and faster paced, much more explicitly didactic, and... mainstream... than The Handmaid's Tale. I'm not a lit snob, but I am judgey. I had different expectations for this book. At several points I honestly wondered if this had been ghostwritten because of how by-the-book (sorry, couldn't help myself) the plotting and timing was. It seems scripted for TV episodes—like maybe Atwood had written the outline but someone familiar with screenwriting developed it.

First, though I have read a few novels by Margaret Atwood, her strength really lies, imho, in her poetry. Too bad none of her clever wordplay made it into this book. It's very straightforward, functional writing, focused on explaining "why" or moving the plot forward as quickly as possible.

Second, the chapters are all first-person and switch between the perspectives of three different women. Sometimes the chapters end with dramatic pauses and a cliffhanger-structure, but none of the reveals are facts that I didn't figure out from the first pages of the book. I think it would work on-screen, but it takes more work to grab readers with emotional reveals than it does to grab viewers—this is a nature of the medium, not a reflection on the intelligence of the audience.

Third, a few ongoing elements in the book did not actually pan out to bring anything explosive to the plot. It's Chekhov's gun—if the reader's attention is constantly drawn to an element or object, there better be some major plot purpose that happens because of said element. This is fiction writing 101. There's one thing in particular, no spoilers, that I think would work on-screen by adding drama but it only serves the plot a big fat plate of empty air.

To end on a positive note: I liked that a lot happened, never a dull moment in Gilead. And also I liked that RBG is a main character in this book ;)

A Falência

Júlia Lopes de Almeida

Adorei essa história! Me lembrou muito de Jane Austen ou uma autora assim, porque a história é sobre uma família de classe alta e como as pessoas da família têm que usar estratégia nos relacionamentos para manter um certo nível de classe. Os últimos capítulos são bem dramáticos... e melodramáticos também.

The Dutch House

Ann Patchett

This story is kinda like 1000 Years of Solitude but in Pennsylvania. The generations repeat themselves, yada yada yada. I liked the characters but I don't think I would have liked the story itself if Tom Hanks hadn't read it to me.

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