Sections
The debut novel of Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky, blends fantasy with sci-fi, putting witches, magical trees, talking birds, mad scientists, time machines, and doomsday devices all inside the same story, but with mixed results: the fantastical elements can impress us with their creativity, leaving us with a feeling of wonder, but they also end up drawing too much attention to themselves, sometimes hiding the touching love story that should have been the focus of the narrative.
The novel has two main characters, Patricia and Laurence, and starts to follow their point of view when they are just kids meeting each other at school, right after having life-altering [...]
Written by Evie Wyld, All the Birds, Singing is at first a powerful novel that uses its protagonist’s fears and anxieties to work with themes such as misogyny and feminism in modern society. The book, however, eventually starts to contradict itself, abandoning its main themes in favor of an empty twist.
Jake White is the protagonist of the story. She lives alone on a British island, on a farm isolated from society. Her company consists only of a dog, called Dog, and her flock of sheep. During the night, however, the sheep are being attacked by some huge creature that tears them apart. As she tries to unravel this mystery, Jake still has to deal with the traumas of her past and [...]
Written by Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply tries to raise questions about identity, but unfortunately forgets to develop them, deciding instead to focus its attention on a boring group of shallow, static characters.
The story is told through the eyes of three main characters: we follow Lucy’s point of view, a student who ran away with her history professor, George, with the promise of getting rich; but also the young Ray, who discovers he is adopted and, after running away from home, finds his biological father and enters the world of crime; and finally, we have the bitter Miles, who is searching for his twin brother, Hayden, and one day acquires new clues as to his [...]
The Miniaturist is a historical novel disguised as a mystery one: its real aim is not to explore the enigma that the title character represents, but to present and criticize the Dutch society of the early 17th century.
The protagonist is Petronella Oortman, or Nella, a young woman who marries a successful merchant she doesn’t know, named Johannes Brandt, and goes on to live with him in Amsterdam. Her new life, however, is not as she had imagined. Being constantly ignored by her husband and finding in her sister-in-law a hostile figure, Nella only feels comfortable around her wedding gift: a detailed dollhouse that faithfully represents the rooms where she now lives in. [...]
Written by Clare Vanderpool, Navigating Early is a touching novel, whose narrative is constructed by a surplus of parallels and allegories. The frequent mix of fantasy and reality, however, doesn’t quite land, as it relies heavily on bizarre coincidences to work.
The story takes place in 1945, following a trip two boys undertake through a forest in Maine. Jackie, the protagonist, is a 13-year-old boy who has just lost his mother and is put in a military school by his father. There, he meets a weird boy named Early Auden, and a friendship starts. During Christmas, Early invites Jackie to go on an adventure with him. Jackie, feeling alone, accepts.
Although Jackie is the [...]
A tiger never changes its stripes. This is the great problem of flat characters: they do not change, they do not evolve, which may end up giving little purpose to their journeys. They are usually either stereotyped or mnemonic characters, being defined by their one or two notable traits even after the end of their stories. The great sin of The Casual Vacancy is investing in several similar characters, hoping that observing their chores and personal problems is a fascinating proposition. It is not.
The book begins with the death of Barry Fairbrother, a member of the District Council of the small town of Pagford. The fatality opens a vacancy in the city’s council, [...]