Imagine that one day you wake up a changed person. The Vegetarian by Han Kang attempts to answer the question of why. Enter Yeong-hye. When she suddenly wakes up a vegan, her only explanation being that she “had a dream,” her unremarkable life is delineated as something unthinkable. Her meat-loving…
“Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.” In the grand finale of the Poppy War trilogy, R.F. Kuang writes with increased pace and skill. Rin’s journey is more hard-hitting than ever. The circumstances begin to fall into place with her as a truly monstrous yet compelling anti-hero. Rin, now…
Vanity has always been my poorest quality. I hate it in myself, and yet am as plagued with it as I am with needing to sleep or eat or breathe. The most noticeable thing when going into Vladimir by Julia May Jonas is its cover. The titular and attractive Vladimir, a…
I’ve had Boy Parts by Eliza Clark on my to-read shelf for a while now, but I never actually got around to tackling it. But readers know all too well that sometimes we need escape from the romance and fantasy through blunt contemporary works. And how else through the lenses…
The human being is the cause of all evil in this world. We are our own virus. With the emergence of a deadly, incurable virus within animals, humanity has turned to cannibalism to satiate its hunger for meat. Now, the field of slaughtering and domesticating humans is a large one,…
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is often seen as the go-to book for feminist literature. Published in 1985, it makes numerous “must read” lists; upon reading it, I can see why. Offred is a handmaid—that is, her only function is to breed–in the republic of Gilead, an extremely oppressive,…
“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of. So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.” Convenience Store Woman is one of the books whose titles reflect the contents of…
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh is the epitome of no plot, just vibes. Unlikeable characters, an unreliable narrator, and a bizarre, dark type of humor—this book has it all. It’s year 2000, set in the wealthy enclaves of Chicago. Hilarious and sad at the same time, the…
It is an impressive feat to be able to write an unconventional, let alone an unexplored, type of love story as Audrey Niffenegger does in The Time Traveler’s Wife. While the plotline is intricately woven, the premise is simple: Henry DeTamble has a “Chrono-Displacement Disorder”, a genetic condition that causes him…
I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls. Emma Cline, The Girls It is 1969, and 14-year-old Evie Boyd is thrust into a cult-like group of girls. Evie, being the child of recently divorced parents and scurrying for acceptance from her peers, finds herself…