Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay

I took a while to start reading this, I think because the word 'essays' put me off a bit. That was completely my loss, Gay's writing is funny, intelligent, passionate and compelling. The essays are completely accessible and cover popular culture, race, sexual assault, politics and personal experience. Her personality shines through the work and she feels familiar by the end. It is a privilege to read something so personal and political and galvanizing. 

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

This is a great dystopian novel, as you would expect from its reputation. It is an idea which I think will always be current, the idea that people are becoming lazier and less interested in reading, critical thinking and 'intellectual' pursuits. It is not a dystopia that comes from the top down, rather it is the government who exploit a 'weakness' in the population. 

I like the way Bradbury writes, it is to the point and the narrative is concise. I did have a problem with the women in the novel though. There is a 17 year old girl who is the catalyst for the 'awakening' of our main character. She is a trope, bright, engaging 'pleasing' in every way to the hero and makes him feel special whilst making him think, she's a bit like a puppy, waiting for him as he goes to and from work and softening his heart. The other women (it is even worse that one of them is his wife) are held in complete contempt by our hero. They are symptoms of the system, in that they fall for all the new, vapid entertainment and have no free thought. The men are all complicit or in control or activists. The women have no agency and the reader is asked to hate them for it. In reality they are victims of a system which, if all the other roles in the novel are to be believed, was built and is maintained by men.  

Love in the time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

I am not sure what I was expecting from this book, but it wasn't what I got. I found it completely distasteful and claustrophobic at times. I am sure the claustrophobia was intentional, and came from the skill of the author in describing the oppressive atmosphere of the city where the characters live as well as the social and personal binds they create or find themselves in. 

In terms of the distaste, I am not sure how we are supposed to view Florentino Ariza. I imagine there are two parallel readings, one where he is an admirable, poetic and heroic figure, and my reading, which was that he is completely insufferable, self delusional and vampiric, feeding off the idea of an idea of a woman his whole life. Having said that I was charmed by the ending of the novel and fully appreciate what García Márquez says about different forms of love and relationships. 

Some of the themes are similar to The Return of the Native; someone falls in love with the idea of a person and the disconnect between idea and reality has a ripple effect. He also talks about marriage and what makes a good one, the role of women and loss of self-hood in marriage, which for the time must have been perceptive. And then there are both long term and short lived affairs, and the idea of loving and being with multiple people at once. There is a particularly disgusting and predatory relationship between the old Florentino Ariza and a teenager, which I think is there to show disillusionment and degradation of old age, but which is awful and marring.

The whole novel is written in such a way that it all, except the first and last chapters, feels like background information, the author seems to be skimming over events whilst giving us details, everything seems to be taking place in fast forward somehow and I am not sure exactly where that feeling comes from. I found it engaging, but could completely understand someone who stopped reading part-way through.

Postcard Stories, Jan Carson

This is a gorgeous collection of very short stories, first written on postcards and sent to Carson's friends. The stories are vignettes, observations and ideas, most both everyday and profound. They are completely delightful. 

It is from fab independent publisher's The Emma Press who publish beautiful, original stories and poetry pamphlets, well worth looking up.