I have to go with my star rating - this was "just okay." I was pretty excited about the novel from the start - there was mystery and intrigue and science fiction and pop culture references to go with it. Murakami loves the details, but for many lengths of the novel he seems to meander in them for no good reason. By the time the third volume came along, I was frustrated. And by the time it ended, it was as though Murakami didn't know where his meandering tale might lead and then just ended it. Because it is sci-fi, there is a suspension of disbelief, but the characters seemed to question so much of what was their plot, I just couldn't believe it. I really was tired of hearing Aomame and Tengo's thoughts about what might or might not be the truth. Not even the evil or supposed villainous aspect of the book was actually confirmed evil or bad... it wasn't tense because I wasn't sure they should have anything to be afraid of. Maybe the Little People? Maybe the cult? But maybe not? Now I'm sounding like Tengo.

Murakami gets points for the first volume, which did intrigue me because the plot moved along and provided mysteries I thought would come to a point by the third novel. It just ended with no impact.

I had a fair amount of prejudice going into this book. I read it because it was shortlisted for the Tournament of Books, and nothing about the author's THE ENGLISH PATIENT pedigree (never read it, but saw the movie) or the book's post-WWII England setting really drew me in. And then, the plot didn't either.

It felt like I was plodding alongside the protagonist as he detailed the mysteries of his youth, often just re-telling stories that were told to him (I think, an exercise in how people remember things a little differently from each other). To be sure, there's a mystery at hand, but I wished to have followed the mother's character rather than Nathaniel. There were a couple of moments of intensity and action, and the writing is gorgeous. Sometimes great writing can overcome a middling interest in the events of a story, but alas.

The story wraps up okay, with most ties coming to a close, but it left me feeling not much at all. Especially as Nathaniel learns a great deal, and then kind of just, tells the reader and goes on with his life. I wanted more of an arc for the guy who was telling me about his life. And by the end, I'd wished we'd seen this story from any other character's perspective.

All I knew about PRIDE was that it was a retelling of Pride & Prejudice. P&P has my favorite romance trope ever (probably due to its very existence and my rereads of it throughout my adolescence and adulthood) in which two characters believing the other to be awful upon first impression and then realizing, welp, I love them. Here's what I didn't know: this is a *YA* romance and the audiobook was narrated by none other than Elizabeth Acevedo, who wrote one of my favorite books of 2018 and whose narration is A+++ and needed in this WORLD. I'm not even exaggerating.

All the decisions Zoboi makes to update P&P into modern day Bushwick are on point. As I was reading, I really loved knowing the turns of the original and being completely whisked away by how Zoboi rededicates them in PRIDE. Elizabeth Bennett is now Zuri Benitez, a Latinx teenager in Bushwick who resents the gentrification she's witnessing in her neighborhood, and especially the boy who moves into the expensively remodeled house across the street, Darius Darcy. The update's strength is the focus on Zuri herself, who has a lot of feelings about everything around her. She channels them mostly through her poetry, which is shared in the pages as well (and if you've never heard Acevedo read poetry, you're missing out!).

This was such a wonderful read, that much like the original, I couldn't put down. I finished it in the span of two days, and I really liked the strong Afro-Latinx-Brooklyn cultural infusion of the text. Zuri is one hundred percent a modern day Elizabeth, but her worries don't lie in being married off to preserve her family's way of living (phew), and instead in college applications, her voice in her family and world, and her love of the rapidly changing neighborhood she's always known as home.

Enjoyed this novel and perspective. Made me cry a few times while reading. Would recommend if you need something with a little heart that isn't cheesy.

Glad to be done with this... though I did kind of like the final slices post-Pinch. At one point I wanted to yell "burn it all, Jing!" and cheer. Full review later.

Oh what a lovely group of poems. In love with Smith's words and her voice reading them.

I've been listening to Tracy K. Smith read me her poems every morning and it's like a little meditation. There is peace but also deep thinking to hear and consider her words.

Attention is exactly what this dark, tense, and sumptuous novel requires. For a book chock full of drama, it takes perseverance to conquer the non-quotation-mark-using prose, to keep one's mind clear on the timeline and the peripheral characters who are sometimes unnamed and slip in and out of the narrative like shadows.

We meet our nameless (and yet many-named) narrator as a successful and famous opera singer in 19th century Paris. Through a conversation at a party which seems lighthearted, she realizes revelations of her past are about to be made public. And so we follow as she tells us all about that scandalous (and operatic, of course) past. It's a long and twisty journey of a girl trying to make her way in a world that would deem her disposable. I liked our narrator, who seemed to go through life with a stiff upper lip, but collapses when faced with beauty, whether it was dresses or an Argentinian composer. Watch out for her brutal sense of self preservation, though.

Chee's ability to take historic figures and give them life and personality is remarkable; I didn't realize this was historical fiction until I understood all the events of France and the figures like the Comtesse and Pauline Viardot were real. It's rare for me to find historical fiction that I don't think is cheesy or check-listy for the things everyone knows about. I must also include: this has one of the best last lines of a book, ever.

4.5

A treat of a read! It's short and quick and devours all your attention, and yet the tale is rich with commentary on so many subjects. I was quite entranced by Braithwaite's concise and direct prose, and the way she told a tale about a killer through the eyes of her sister. Their family dynamics, against the backdrop of Lagos, Nigeria, were engrossing, as Braithwaite weaves threads of the sisters' past with present day.

I think this is not only a highly readable book, but one that could be read over and over again to emerge with different feelings. Braithwaite provides many angles and layers to the proceedings and her characters. At times I was laughing out loud, but it is dark. It's horrifying, but there can be satisfaction in that horror--in seeing these sisters navigate patriarchal society. A clever book, and the author plays a LOT with little details.