Book Review: Bound
October 18, 2025
In a series of short essays based around garments she has sewn, Ballard epitomizes the experiences of those who have an affinity with making.
Rosa like to read memoirs, essay collections, short story anthologies and literary fiction. She likes lyrical books, particularly those composed of vignettes, about people trying to figure out why they do the messy things they do – the joys and the fears, the hopes and the heartbreak, and everything in between. Her favourite authors of 2023 are Carmen Maria Machado, Helena Fox, Isobel Beech and Laura McPhee-Browne.
In a series of short essays based around garments she has sewn, Ballard epitomizes the experiences of those who have an affinity with making.
Her story speaks to the desire to be loved above all else and how when this doesn’t exist, or goes wrong, it can derail your sense of self.
Jacqueline Harpman has managed to convey a beautifully brutal balance of life and death, love and loneliness.
Evocative, tender, and deeply moving, this story will linger in your heart long after you have turned the final page.
Intimate & sophisticated at times and just straight up weird in others, it gives the vibe of being written in blood and glitter gel pen.
Moving seamlessly across time, it sews together two experiences of queerness; one embraced and one repressed, both equally as devastating.
Crosley utilises her humour, wit, and brutal honestly, and takes the awful experiences of loss and makes them reassuring and insightful.
Tremor is a genre-bending gem that transcends traditional boundaries, dancing between fiction and non-fiction, storytelling and academia.
Although all only short snapshots of complex scenarios, I feel as if everyone can find at least a slice of their life within these stories.
A quick read though not lacking emotional depth, The Swimmers is abstract, hard-hitting and creatively depicts the realities of being human
Intimate, devastating and clever yet not overly complicated, Homesick is a brilliant exploration of life, love and loss.
It was lyrical and beautiful, so sensitively written, and confronted necessary topics including the complications of grief and guilt…
Beautiful and hopeful and sad yet strangely comforting, ‘Cherry Beach’ is a quick but intense read about friendship, love, and death.
Tragic, tender & wise, it made me think about who and what we take for granted, & the moments we don’t cherish enough until they are over.
The twin sister’s story highlights the conflicting feelings of being too much and also not enough; of being so close to someone and yet so far apart; of loving a person overwhelmingly but still resenting them greatly for their presence and their absence.
Beagin successfully entices the reader into Greta and Flavia’s bizarre world and delivers a creative and confronting account
The Quiet and the Loud does a magnificent job of articulating the ups and downs and all the noise that occurs as a teenager…
Wandering Souls reminded me that the world is cruel but the beautiful is beautiful: it broke my heart but also left it hopeful.
Lyrical, haunting, contemplative, mesmerising and intense, this memoir is an honest depiction of trauma, heartbreak, healing, and love.
Maddie Mortimer 100% succeeds in conveying the complexity of life and death and the relationships that both make and break you.