Reading, Writing, and Me

Discontent  by Beatriz Serrano Overview: Marisa has a cushy middle management position in the creative department of a swanky agency. She really doesn't have to do much in her job. This is both great and horrible. Great because Marisa isn't interested in doing much but horrible because this thing that defines her provides no fulfillment as she finds the entire corporate world and everyone in it boring and stupid. Marisa spends the entire novel just hoping to get hit by a bus as she endures the hot August Madrid days going into the office. Overall: 3.5 Characters: 4 I don't disagree with Marisa. I enjoyed her disaffected, snarky voice in general. I did, ultimately, struggle with the fact that she thinks she's so much smarter than everyone else, inherently better than them, but she chooses to continue working at the same horrible company as the rest of them. She's not actually going to do anything about the fact that she hates her life. She's not repulsed enough t...

Sugartown  by Caragh Maxwell Overview: Saoirse leaves London and returns to her hometown in the Midlands of Ireland suddenly. She's twenty-four, has dropped out of her college program and then broke up with her boyfriend who was also her landlord, and has no choice but to go home. She's always struggled with her mental health, and this return home only makes things worse. Saoirse falls into familiar patterns with old friends, drinking heavily and spiraling about her life until one particularly bad night makes her truly reckon with her choices, maybe for the first time. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 Saoirse is headstrong to her own detriment. She's unsure what she wants, but she wants forcefully, creating tension in her life with her family, her friends, her love interest. She's resentful of coming home and of her mother's new rules and new life with her stepdad and three younger sisters that are so much younger that Saoirse hardly knows them. Her best friend Doireann is ...

Oh October, what a whirlwind. I went to three plays, had my parents in town for the week, did tons of assignments as the semester ratcheted up, and went on a number of other social events from the zoo to Halloween. Mixed into all this, I tried to dedicate a massive chunk of my life to both reading and writing since that's what I moved to Ireland to do. I've gotten back into audiobook listening along with podcasts as I've settled into living alone again. I've also gotten into the library hold system, so now I have tons of books coming in with time limits, incentivizing me to read quickly. On top of that, I've read lots of short stories, some for class but mostly for fun.  The Stats In total, I read 13 books with two books I've been reading throughout October that I will be finishing today or tomorrow, making a solid start to my November reading. I read 5 novels (I'm roping Simple Passion in here cause it's more akin to a novel than the other nonfiction bo...

Thirst Trap  by Gráinne O'Hare Overview: Harley, Róise, and Maggie all turn thirty this year. The novel opens as they try to get into a club with a succulent at one of these fabled birthday celebrations. The housemates and best friends are all in the same boat—jobs they don't really love, falling down house, unstable romantic lives, and a relationship to partying that is fueled by their dissatisfaction with life. They're also absorbing an immense amount of grief as the one year anniversary of their fourth friend, Lydia's, passing rolls around. This is the year when they need to make changes, and O'Hare proves with this novel that the coming of age arc is never really over. Overall: 4.5 Characters: 4 I really came to love all of the girls, and I'm impressed at what nuanced, complicated lives O'Hare manages to render on the page for every single character, even Lydia who is no longer physically a part of their narrative. There's messy relationship entangle...

Atavist  by Lydia Millet  Overview: In this collection of short stories, Lydia Millet constructs a Los Angeles neighborhood where each story follows a different neighbor or someone vaguely attached to the neighborhood. The characters show up across each other's stories in surprising ways, filling in a background role where they were once the main character. This creates a rich tapestry and a good reminder of how truly interlinked we all are. Overall: 4.5  Characters: 4 Millet writes about a complex group of characters from many different backgrounds . Some of them are good people trying really hard through bad circumstances. Sometimes they're about awful people who triumph despite it all. There's teenagers and young adults trying to figure out how to be people and parents becoming empty nesters who are thrown back into a similar journey. We only get one point of view story from each character, but they become richer as the collection goes on and they make background appea...

On October 1, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a reading and conversation for Caragh Maxwell's debut novel, Sugartown. I absolutely love attending events at Books Upstairs, and this was made even more interesting by the fact that Maxwell is a graduate of the M.Phil program at Trinity that I'm currently attending. Thusly, many of my professors were in attendance as well, including Eoin McNamee, who was the conversation partner for the evening.  The event began customarily with free wine before McNamee introduced Maxwell to the audience, sharing his story of first hearing Maxwell read a piece in class, knowing she was special. They discussed her extremely successful essay in the Irish Times where she wrote about having cancer in her late teens. This led to heaps of interest in her work, but Maxwell stuck with her degree. That was where Sugartown began to form as her culminating course project. The book received over forty rejections after completion, but just when Maxwel...