Reading, Writing, and Me

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...

On the Clock  by Claire Baglin (Translated by Jordan Stump) Overview: I would classify Claire Baglin's book as a novella as it is quite short. It makes the perfect paperback to carry around with you because it's so slim. It's translated from French by Jordan Stump and chronicles two strands of story. The first is focused on a young adult's job working in fast food for the summer. This is interlaced with her father's story of working in a factory. The book examines how these jobs take advantage of their employees without offering a path to advancement or a way out of the intensely labor focused work. The point being mostly that these jobs will chew you up and spit you out, no matter how much pride and diligence you put into the work, how good you are. And in the disillusionment of that particular myth, it succeeds. Overall: 3.75 Thoughts: My thesis on this book is that it would've been an incredible short story made out of the first thirty or so pages but that st...