mariebrunelm's Reviews (478)

Deux sœurs, Eva et Nell, poussent dans la forêt auprès de leurs parents. Jusqu'à leur adolescence, le monde persiste tant bien que mal, mais il finit par s'effondrer au-delà de la frontière formée par les bois. Face aux dangers et aux crises qui menacent leur solitude, les deux jeunes femmes plongent plus profondément leurs racines dans le sol et tiennent bon. Mais jusqu'à quand?

J'ai trouvé ce roman éblouissant. J'en avais entendu parler et il m'avait intrigué lors de la parution de sa traduction française en 2017, mais sans plus. Finalement, c'est sûrement mieux que j'aie attendu pour savourer d'autant plus la prose sensible, fluide, qui étend ses ramifications depuis le cœur de ses protagonistes jusqu'à celui du lectorat. L'autrice refuse d'élargir le cadre et de nous dire vraiment ce qui se passe au-dehors, pour mieux nous faire ressentir les moindres instants que vivent Nell et Eva. Loin d'être claustrophobe, le récit croît et décroît au fil des jours et des saisons. La chronologie, d'abord confuse, se distingue finalement entre un passé où les épisodes se mêlent et un présent où tout compte et où l'intime et la nature ne font qu'un. Une superbe découverte. 

L'écrivain que j'adore détester est de retour dans ma PàL! Je plaisante. Vraiment? Je n'ai pas eu beaucoup d'affinité avec les livres de Bottero dans le passé, mais c'était principalement une question de goût. Je suis sûre que son lectorat dévoué sera parfaitement satisfait de cette autre trilogie, jusqu'ici sans lien avec La Quête d'Ewilan. Voici certaines choses que les deux ont en commun :

A cela, Le Souffle de la hyène ajoute un complot mondial et une sorte de maison enchantée qui semble sans limites (j'ai adoré cette partie). C'est le genre de livres qui demande très peu d'espace mental, et qui est donc super à avoir sous la main. On n'a pas toujours besoin de personnages sans lesquels on n'envisage pas de vivre, ou d'enjeux qui nous tiennent éveillés jusqu'au bout de la nuit. Je suis toujours gênée par le regard que Bottero porte sur ses personnages féminins, mais ses livres sont parfaits pour se tenir à jour de ses objectifs de lecture. 

1939, a small town in the South of the USA. A handful of characters lend us their perspectives - a bar owner, a young teenager, a black doctor, a newcomer with an alcohol issue, and the mute employee of a jewellery. Together, they draw a complete portrait of this average town in all its intricacies and daily struggles, while each one battles their own demons and nurtures their own longing for something more.
I have to admit it took me a long, long time to get into this book, so much so that I kept wondering if I was right to keep reading for the first 150 pages. Something in the language made it hard for me to read with any fluidity, although there weren't particularly complex words or idioms specific to the time this book was written. Then, without my noticing it, I got attached to these very flawed characters and started to care. They are very different from each other by the author does a spectacular job of giving each one a voice. I can't speak to the disability representation. I'm honestly not sure how well that is done, especially in the first pages where it intersects with fat representation.
On the whole, though the story and characters are rooted in their times, this book has a timeless quality to it given the number of themes that are still sadly relevant today (see the content warnings). There are some really harrowing passages, but they all are quite short and the changes in points of view makes it easier to bear. All in all it wasn't an easy book to read for several reasons, but I'm glad I did. Definitely not a favourite, but one I can tick off my classics' list.

This collection of essays, which I bought half for the author and half for the cover let's be honest, stems from Mary Oliver's deep-rooted love for the natural world. She casts a wonder-filled gaze around here and notices the minutiae of animal & vegetal life with a delight that is quite communicative, and interlaces her observations with thoughts on creativity in general and writing in particular. Some essays are dedicated to writers she admires (Emerson, Poe, Wordsworth, Whitman), blending the factual with her personal reading of their works. I think Mary Oliver could write about almost anything and make it an enjoyable experience, but I did have a hard time with her descriptions of animal pain & death and her reverence for a writer who married his 13-year-old cousin. 

At this point in the series, I entirely trusted the author for delivering a perfect ending, and I got it with The Raven King. It's not often that I read a series until the end. Usually I stop after volume 1. But when I first read The Raven Boys, I knew I was onto something special and so I found second-hand copies of volumes 2 to 4 and waited patiently for the right time to read them a few years later. 2023 was that time.
Evenin volume 4 Maggie Stiefvater weaves the now-familiar with the unexpected. I won't spoil you, but there are snippets of horror in there that creeped me out. And yet they were so perfect for the story. I'm really happy with this last volume in this weird, hard-to-grasp series with such endearing and human characters. I'll be revisiting Cabeswater in the future, that's certain.
Rep: gay character, bisexual character.

What. A. Ride. This book is really intense, and had I known it was horror I might not have had the courage to read it, but I'm glad I did. 

Vern is alone in the woods, but not for long. In the first line of the book, she gives birth to her twins while on the run from a cult-like community. It's a story of survival, of evolution, of finding one's worth beyond what one has always been told and snapping free from years of lies. Vern is young, yes, but she's determined and stronger than she looks or even feels. Weirdly stronger.

Rivers Solomon barely lets the readers breathe throughout this modern Gothic novel. When it's not an external threat, it's either the newness of finding / founding a new family or the experience of otherness coming from Vern's own body. Add in there disturbing hauntings, precious twins growing like the best weeds and lesbian love, and there you have a tremendous book.

Rep: Black lesbian albinos genderqueer MC with nystagmus (visual disability), Lakota secondary character. 

The house is in the woods. You are in the house. Welcome to Catherine House, an elite school that is completely free to the lucky ones selected to attend. In exchange for three years of intense studies and a lifetime of alumni emulation, you must leave your past behind you and get ready to start afresh. Three years, no contact with the outside world. That sounds perfect for Ines, who is on the run and could use a place to be forgotten. She doesn't really pay attention to the studying part when she gets accepted, but she soon discovers that the more-elite-than-elite program that made the reputation of Catherine might, you guessed it, cast an uncomfortable shadow.

I kind of wish I'd written this book. It's right up my alley with its secrets, fierce protagonist and eerie atmosphere, all done in the quietest manner. This is not a loud book moved forward by stunning revelations and huge tensions. It's one that crawls its way under your skin without you even completely realizing it. I love that the eeriness never falls into trigerring territory and that it keeps you wondering all the way to the end. In an interview reproduced at the end of the book, the author describes it as a "Gothic literary suspense novel set at a cult-like college" and explains how she took inspiration from Bluebeard, which I hadn't realised but makes complete sense. I'll let a bit of time go by before I decide if this one is a new favourite, but I'm pretty sure it is.

Last note: this book could be described as a much, much less weird version of Vita Nostra. 

Rep: black, bisexual, aromantic main character, various queer & diverse secondary characters. 

Roman familial assez classique mais bien tourné, j'ai lu Le Goût du temps dans la bouche pour un prix du premier roman adulte organisé par ma médiathèque municipale. Comme les autres romans du prix (La Tour de Doan Bui et Les Nuits bleues d'Anne-Fleur Multon), je ne l'aurais probablement pas choisi par moi-même, et c'est pour ça que j'aime ce genre d'occasion.

Le roman de Séverine Vidal est très bien exécuté. La prose est d'une limpidité qui fait tourner les pages à toute vitesse, avec une quantité de virgules qui ne font qu'accélérer le rythme de lecture. Les personnages sont assez attachants dans leur humanité parfois désemparée, parfois obstinée. J'ai aimé la présence de personnages LGBTQIA+ : une mamie lesbienne extrêmement sympathique (mais pour en avoir déjà écrite une, je ne pouvais qu'applaudir des deux mains) et un personnage secondaire (voire tertiaire) de femme aromantique, dont l'identité est clairement établie sans que ça ne soit artificiel ni le trait principal de son caractère.

Le récit est interrompu par de courts chapitres en italiques dans lesquels résonne la voix d'un mort. Qui? Dans quelles circonstances a-t-il perdu la vie? J'ai apprécié le procédé mais cela m'a déçue de comprendre très vite de qui il s'agissait et les raisons de son décès. Cela étant dit, son mystère tenait une place certes importante, mais pas plus que les relations entre les membres de la famille qui font le sel de ce roman. C'est d'ailleurs ce dernier point qui m'a posé beaucoup de problèmes, car j'ai été déroutée par le nombre de personnages, dont certains ne sont pas décrits suffisamment pour qu'on les identifie réellement à chacune de leur intervention. Je me suis perdue dans les différentes générations, si bien qu'un arbre généalogique aurait grandement amélioré mon expérience de lecture. A force d'essayer de retrouver qui était qui, je n'ai suivi l'histoire que d'un œil. Cela reste un problème purement personnel, lié à la mémoire immédiate.

Rep : personnage lesbien, personnage aromantique. 

Maggie Stiefvater still nurtures that delightfully strange atmosphere, quite mysterious, with a touch of nostalgy. Contrary to the previous volume which was focused on Ronan, this one lets each character take the spotlights in their turn while they keep making progress in their modern-day quest. So far this series has an insubtantial feel, in that as soon as I finish a book I can't quite tell what I've read, except that I've really enjoyed myself. The author has a way of talking about things without talking about them which is quite delightful but make things impossible to paraphrase and summarize. Just read it, because it's absolutely worth reading, and judge for yourself. 

I remember wanting to read this one after watching the cute Christmas mini-series "Dash and Lily", for no other particular reason. But the thing is, I have a very low tolerance for very chatty people, they just tire me out. So you might imagine how I felt about Salinger's stories about people who talk *so* much. No, I was not amused. I barely finished the book, to be honest. I suppose it's really great dialogue and characterization, but I'm sorry, I won't enjoy a dialogue just for the sake of dialogue.