Book Review: Good Material
February 20, 2025
Dolly has a special talent for finding unique aspects of relationships, and describing them in a way that will make you go ‘yes, so true!’
Dolly has a special talent for finding unique aspects of relationships, and describing them in a way that will make you go ‘yes, so true!’
Farm life – sweaty days spent sheering sheep, beers on the front porch – is observed afresh and curiously askew through Tama’s imagination.
I love a character-driven novel, and Wilkins is so adept at creating a cast that feels complex, relatable and easy to love.
This is a novel about familial tensions, the desperation caused by poverty and how to be yourself when so much is expected of you.
Kamali’s beautiful prose was the perfect conduit for this tale of friendship & resistance amidst a dangerously shifting political landscape.
This book captured me immediately, with fresh and sometimes very funny prose, and fierce, surprising characters.
You’ll find characters you’ll either deeply love or deeply hate (I had the experience of wanting to slap everyone but also hug them tenderly)
Abandon your preconceptions & prepare for a wild ride. (Spoiler: some of that ride takes place on a broomstick, with a pig riding shotgun.)
I believe that the less you know about it going in, the better! So take a chance on Piranesi if you’re in the mood for something different.
There is darkness in this story, but it’s leavened by Smith’s ever-playful storytelling, and her characters’ capacity for resistance & hope.
Timelines and characters are bound together through an ancient text that changes their lives in incredible and unexpected ways.
McCracken delights in human absurdity and the slippery art of writing about your family – be it fiction or memoir, or both at once.
This is a spare, affecting picture of a young man trying to pin his fragile sobriety to a version of self and future that he can believe in.
The plot moves quickly, keeping the reader engaged. Twists and turns abound, all wrapped up with a fun bunch of characters.
Faintly sinister worlds, detached domesticity, and oddly compelling food writing all combine to produce that indefinable Murakami magic.
The winner of the 2024 Booker prize, Orbital is moving, thought-provoking & short enough you’ll want to read it again the moment you finish.
Thoroughly researched, engaging and confronting, it’s one of Evaristo’s more unusual books, but no less enthralling.
This was a luminous read – descriptions of the natural world, history, and character’s inner voices are related with sensitivity and vivacity.
Jacqueline Harpman has managed to convey a beautifully brutal balance of life and death, love and loneliness.
Almond broadened my understanding of what it means to be an emotional being and made me question; what is it, to love, to feel, to act?