torstai 17. toukokuuta 2018

Anne B. Ragde ja muu skandikirjallisuus


Luin vihdoin Anne B. Ragden Berliininpoppelit-sarjan neljännen "yllätysosan", ja otin sitten hänet hyvine ja huonoine kirjoineen käsittelyyn podcastissa. Puhuin laajemminkin pohjoismaisesta tai oikeastaan skandinaavisesta kirjallisuudesta, ja ihmettelin, miksi juuri Norjasta tuntuu tulevan tai ainakin käännettävän suomeksi niin valtava määrä mahtavia kirjoja.

Muissa kuulumisissa kerroin perustaneeni uuden Bookstagram-tilin nimellä bookcat_daisy, katsoneeni lasten kanssa supersankarielokuvia, kuten mukavan feministisen Wonder Womanin, ja yksikseni/aikuisten seurassa japanilaisen Siskokset, Woody Allenin -paskiaisen ihanan Irrational Manin ja leffateatterissa upean Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missourin. Kävin naisseurassa Tallinnassa, ja siellä näin Kunstihooneen näyttelyn Riik ei ole kunstiteos. Helsingissä kävin katsomassa ennakkonäytöksessä Mamma Mia -musikaalin äidin ja pikkusiskon kanssa toteamassa, että Abban musiikki vie kyllä aina mukanaan.

Sarjarintamalta hehkutin SJP:n garderoobia Divorcen kakkoskaudella ja sitä, että Isänmaan puolesta nousi kuudennella tuotantokaudella takaisin vanhalle tasolleen. Kirjoista kehuin erityisesti Nina Stibben kirjeteosta Love, Nina, Pertti Lassilan romaania Kesän kerran mentyä, Gail Honeymanin teosta Eleanorille kuuluu ihan hyvää, Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonden Olimme kerran -romaania, Sarah Manguson 300 Arguments -afrorismiesseitä, Riikka Pulkkisen Iris Lempivaaran levoton ja painava sydän -sivupolkua, Helena Liikanen-Rengerin Mon Amour -parisuhdepohdiskelua ja Rose Tremainen Rosie-muistelmaa. Kaikista lukemistani kirjoista pysyy kärryillä käymässä blogin Luetut 2018 -alasivulla tai Goodreads-tililläni.


Muita jaksossa mainittuja kirjailijoita/teoksia:


  • Anne B. Ragde: Berliininpoppelit, Erakkoravut, Vihreät niityt, Perintötila, Satunnaista seuraa, Aion tehdä sinut onnelliseksi
  • Linn Ullmann: Rauhattomat ja koko muukin tuotanto
  • Heidi Linde: Jo nyt on!
  • Gaute Heivoll: Etten palaisi tuhkaksi
  • Karl Ole Knausgård: Taisteluni 1
  • Per Petterson: Hevosvarkaat, Kirottu ajan katoava virta, En suostu
  • Erlend Loe: Supernaiivi, Hiljaiset päivät Nigellan seurassa, lastenkirjat
  • Henrik Ibsen: Nukkekoti ja muu tuotanto
  • Knut Hamsun: Nälkä
  • Geir Gulliksen: Kertomus eräästä avioliitosta
  • Astrid Lindgren
  • Ingmar Bergman
  • Karin Alvtegen
  • Håkan Nesser
  • Lena Andersson
  • Jonas Gardell: Älä koskaan pyyhi kyyneleitä paljain käsin -trilogia
  • Sofie Sarenbrandt
  • Camilla Läckberg
  • Marianne Fredriksson: Anna, Hanna ja Johanna
  • Selma Lagerlöf: Jerusalem, Gösta Berlingin taru
  • Linda Olsson: Laulaisin sinulle lempeitä lauluja ja muu tuotanto
  • Linda Boström Knausgård: Tervetuloa Amerikkaan
  • Martina Haag: Olin niin varma meistä
  • Ebba Witt-Brattström: Vuosisadan rakkaussota
  • Tom Malmquist: Joka hetki olemme vielä elossa
  • Liv Strömqvist
  • Susanna Alakoski: Sikalat ja muu tuotanto
  • Peter Hoeg: Lumen taju, Susanin vaikutus
  • Kim Leine: Kuilu
  • H. C. Andersen
  • Hanne-Vibeke Holst
  • Rachel Hornak: Viikko on pitkä aika

Puhuin myös termistä "up lit" ja siihen liittyen tästä Guardianin artikkelista. Siinä yhteydessä mainitsin Rachel Joycen teoksen Harold Fryn odottamaton toivioretki, Libby Pagen The Lido -romaanin, Graeme Simsionin Vaimotestin ja Gabrielle Zevinin Tuulisen saaren kirjakauppiaan.

Ja lopuksi -- jos norjalainen kirjallisuus kiinnostaa, kannattaa tutustua Les! Lue! -blogiin ja sen somekanaviin.

Hyvää alkavaa kesää, ja "nähdään" seuraavan podcastjakson aikaan!

maanantai 2. huhtikuuta 2018

Kirjallinen avioliitto


Viime viikolla äänittämässäni podcastjaksossa aiheena on parisuhde kirjallisuudessa, etenkin avioliitto. Jonkin verran puhun myös siitä, millaisena kumppanin etsintä näyttäytyy kirjoissa.

Aihe tuli mieleeni, kun haastattelin Akateemisessa kirjakaupassa kirjailja Henriikka Rönkköstä, mitä varten luin hänen mainiot teoksensa Mielikuvituspoikaystävä ja Bikinirajatapaus. Ne ovat ns. sinkkukirjallisuutta ja käsittelevät paljon puolison -- eli rakkauden -- etsimistä. Se näyttäytyy Rönkkösen kirjoissa usein epätoivoisena, mutta käsittelytapa on enimmäkseen humoristinen. Rönkkösen kirjojen kanssa samaan aikaan luin ruotsalaisen Ebba Witt-Brattströmin avioliittokuvauksen Vuosisadan rakkaussota. Siinä ja useissa muissakin viime aikoina lukemissani romaaneissa avioliitto näyttäytyy helvetillisenä vankilana tai vähintään epäonnistumisena, joka suistaa ainakin toisen puolisoista pahasti raiteiltaan.

Moni avioliiton tai puolison käytöksen kauheutta kuvaava teos on vieläpä omaelämäkerrallinen (mikä herättää kysymyksiä etiikasta). Aloin miettiä, miksi haemme romanttista rakkautta ja kumppania niin kiihkeän epätoivoisesti, kun lopputulos, parisuhde, on usein niin kamala, ainakin jos kirjoja uskoo. Pohdinnan aikoihin luin myös Helsingin Sanomista Rosa Meriläisen kolumnin "Onko yksin lonkeroa juova nainen surullinen tapaus?", joka paitsi viittaa Saara Turusen erinomaiseen Sivuhenkilö-romaaniin myös käsittelee sinkkuutta sekä parisuhteellisuutta. Samastuin moniin kolumnistin sanomisista.

Totesin että parisuhteen tavoittelu on kirjoissa usein epätoivossaan humoristista, kuten juuri Henriikka Rönkkösen kirjoissa tai Helen Fieldingin Bridget Jones -klassikoissa. Joskus epätoivossa taas ei ole mitään huvittavaa, kuten vaikkapa Lena Anderssonin Omavaltaista menettelyä -romaanissa. Asia erikseen ovat varsinaiset rakkausromaanit, joissa päähenkilöt eivät useinkaan etsimällä etsi kumppania, vaan täydellinen sellainen löytyy sattumalta ja usein vielä pienen vastustelun jälkeen.

Mietin ettei romaanin aiheena varmaankaan koskaan voi olla pelkkä onnellinen avioliitto, sillä kirjoissa tarvitaan draamaa, vastuksia ja vaikeuksia. Siksi termi "avioliittoromaani" voi tarkoittaa oikeastaan vain vaikean parisuhteen kuvausta. Usein teokset, joissa avioliitto on vahvasti keskiössä, kuvaavat parisuhdetta melko älyllisesti ja keskittyvät emotionaalisiin ongelmiin. Niissä on monesti paljon pariskunnan välistä keskustelua -- jotkut ovat suorastaan dialogiromaaneja, kuten Ingmar Bergmanin upea Kohtauksia eräästä avioliitosta. Toki niissäkin joskus on väkivaltaa tai alkoholismia, ja useinkin ne käsittelevät pettämistä, jotka näen ns. käsin kosketeltavina ongelmina toisin kuin vaikeammin määriteltävät erilleen ajautumiset, etääntymiset ja kyllästymiset. Mutta vaikka etenkin kotimaisissa romaaneissa avioliittojen ongelmat ovat useimmiten tyyppiä "mies juo ja lyö", pelkän hakkaamisen ja ryyppäämisen kuvaaminen ei kirjallisuudessa pitkälle kanna.

Yritin muistella lukemiani kirjoja, joissa olisi kuvattu pääosin onnellisia avioliittoja. Aiemmin mainituista luonnollisista syistä niitä on melko harvassa, mutta jos kirjassa on muita jännitteitä ja vastuksia, liitto voidaan toki kuvata onnelliseksi. Etenkin jos toinen puolisoista sairastuu vakavasti tai kuolee, tai jos useita pariskuntia kuvaavassa teoksessa tarvitaan vastapainoa onnettomille liitoille. Lastenkirjallisuudessa lapsen näkökulmasta kuvattu vanhempien avioliitto näyttäytyy usein harmonisen onnellisena. 

Aikuisten romaaneissa avioliitto voidaan esittää lempeänä turvasatamana muuta maailmaa vastaan, joka kuohuu kodin seinien ulkopuolella. Lopuksi minulle tuli mieleen vielä yksi genre, jossa onnellisen liiton kuvaus on luvallista, ja se on ns. agraariromaanit. Kun kuvataan esimerkiksi vanhaa Suomea ja ihannoidaan historiaan jäänyttä yksinkertaista elämänmuotoa ideaalina ja hyveellisenä, myös avioliitto voidaan kuvana yhteisenä ihanana ponnistuksena, jossa raivataan tila, rakennetaan talo ja tehtaillaan liuta poikia tilaa jatkamaan. Esimerkiksi Väinö Linnan Täällä Pohjantähden alla -trilogiassa Koskelan Jussin ja Alman liitto on uskoakseni pyritty kuvaamaan eräänlaiseksi onnelaksi, vaikka se modernin naisen silmin olisi kaikkea muuta.

Listaan vielä alle podcastjaksossa mainitut teokset, ja lisäksi minulle tuli myöhemmin onnellisten avioliittojen kuvauksesta mieleen Gail Godwinin omaelämäkerrallinen romaani Evenings at Five sekä podcastin kuuntelijat vinkkasivat/muistuttivat Ulla-Lena Lundbergin Jäästä, Anni Blomqvistin Myrskyluodon Maijasta sekä Pauliina Rauhalan Taivaslaulusta.

  • Elokuvat: Le week-end, Viimeinen illallinen, 45 vuotta
  • Tv-sarjat: Rimakauhua ja rakkautta, Divorce
  • Teatterikappale: Arki ja kauhu
  • Henriikka Rönkkönen: Mielikuvituspoikaystävä; Bikinirajatapaus
  • Ebba Witt-Brattström: Vuosisadan rakkaussota
  • Domenico Starnone: Solmut
  • Elene Ferrante: Hylkäämisen päivät
  • Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones -kirjat
  • Lena Andersson: Omavaltaista menettelyä
  • Rosa Liksom: Everstinna
  • Märta Tikkanen: Vuosisadan rakkaustarina ja muu omaelämäkerrallinen tuotanto
  • Henrik Tikkanen: omaelämäkerrallinen tuotanto
  • Edward Albee: Kuka pelkää Virginia Woolfia?
  • Tennessee Williams: Kissa kuumalla katolla
  • Ingmar Bergman: Kohtauksia eräästä avioliitosta
  • Geir Gulliksen: Kertomus eräästä avioliitosta
  • Martina Haag: Olin niin varma meistä
  • Saara Turunen: Sivuhenkilö
  • Carol Shields: tuotanto
  • Anne Tyler: tuotanto
  • Liane Moriarty: tuotanto
  • Rebecca Wells: Jumalaiset jajasiskot
  • Jarmo Ihalainen: Perheestä ja alastomana juoksemisesta
  • Tove Jansson: Rent spel
  • Kate Atkinson: Elämä elämältä
  • Astrid Lindgren: Marikki-kirjat ja muu tuotanto
  • Lisa Genova: Edelleen Alice
  • Joan Didion: omaelämäkerrallinen tuotanto
  • Tom Malmquist: Joka hetki olemme yhä elossa
  • Camilla Läckberg: Enkelintekijä
  • Ian McEwan: Vieraan turva; Lauantai; Lapsen oikeus ja muu tuotanto
  • Minna Rytisalo: Lempi
  • Väinö Linna: Täällä Pohjantähden alla
  • Heidi Köngäs: Sandra


keskiviikko 28. helmikuuta 2018

Kirjojen New York


Podcastissa on nyt aiheena kirjojen New York, etenkin New York City. Rakas aihe, rakas kaupunki, monia rakkaita kirjoja. Listaan jaksossa mainitut alle.

Tärkeimmät vahvasti New Yorkiin liittämäni romaanikirjailijat ovat Michael Cunningham, Siri Hustvedt ja Lionel Shriver. Heidän lähes mutta eivät ihan kaikki teoksensa sijoittuvat New Yorkiin tai niissä ainakin käydään siellä tai muistellaan kaupunkia. Cunninghamin Illan tullen on tärkeimpiä sieluromaanejani ja samalla ehkä tärkein yksittäinen New York -romaanini, jossa kiteytyy paljon sitä, mitä useimmiten "New York -romaanilta" odotan.

Näiltä kolmelta olen lukenut seuraavat teokset:

  • Michael Cunningham: Tunnit; Säkenöivät päivät; Illan tullen; Lumikuningatar
  • Siri Hustvedt: Lumous; Kaikki mitä rakastin; Amerikkalainen elegia; Kesä ilman miehiä; Säihkyvä maailma
  • Lionel Shriver: Poikani Kevin; Kaksoisvirhe; Syntymäpäivän jälkeen; Jonnekin pois

Monien mielestä kaikkein tärkeimmän tai leimallisesti newyorkilaisimman kirjailijan, Paul Austerin, kirjoja olen lukenut vasta vähän. Aloitin aikanaan kuuluisimmalla eli New York -trilogialla, josta en kuitenkaan erityisesti pitänyt. Sattumuksia Brooklynissa oli jo paljon enemmän mieleeni. Aion kyllä joskus vielä jatkaa Austerin parissa; viimeisin suomennettu 4 3 2 1 kiinnostaa minua erityisesti. Haluan mainita Austerin yhteydessä myös upeat New Yorkiin sijoittuvat elokuvat Smoke ja Blue in the Face, joita hän on ollut käsikirjoittamassa ja ohjaamassa.

Yksittäisiä ja erityisen rakkaita New York -romaaneja minulle ovat:

  • Jennifer Egan: Aika suuri hämäys
  • Jeffrey Eugenides: Naimapuuhia
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald: Kultahattu
  • Jonathan Franzen: Muutoksia
  • Yaa Gyasi: Matkalla kotiin
  • William Styron: Sofien valinta
  • Colm Tóibín: Brooklyn
  • Hanya Yanagihara: Pieni elämä

Puhuin jonkin verran myös kirjojen sijoittumisesta eri kaupunginosiin. NYC on valtava kaupunki, jonka eri osilla on omat luonteensa. Jo tässä mainittujen kirjojen sijoittumisesta olisi itse asiassa mahtavaa tehdä jonkinlainen kartta tai edes listaus, mutta karkeasti ja muistin varassa pelaten voi jo sanoa, että hyvin moni mainituista romaaneista sijoittuu Brooklyniin (jonka sisällä on tietysti vielä lukuisia pienempiä alueita). Pariskunta Hustvedt-Auster on hyvin tunnettu rakkaudestaan tuota kaupunginosaansa kohtaan, ja sinne he sijoittavat valtaosan kirjoistaankin. Sen lisäksi ainakin Cunninghamin Lumikuningatar tapahtuu pääosin Brooklynissa, samoin kuin Sofien valinta, Syntympäivän jälkeen ja tietenkin Brooklyn. Muistaakseni myös Suzanne Rindellin pyskologinen trilleri The Other Typist, jota pidän vähän kuin Tóibínin Brooklynin kaksosena johtuen joistakin ulkokohtaisista samankaltaisuuksista.

Harlemissa taas ollaan esimerkiksi Matkalla kotiin -romaanissa ja muista lukemistani ainakin Richard Powersin Laulut joita lauloimme -kirjassa sekä Toni Morrisonin Jazzissa. Kaikista kauan sitten luetuista kirjoista ei tarkka sijoittuminen ole jäänyt mieleen, mutta väitän, että pääosin Manhattanille sijoittuvat ainakin Illan tullen ja Pieni elämä. Kultahattu taas tapahtuu pääosin Long Islandilla.

Muita lukemiani New York -romaaneja ovat esimerkiksi:

  • Neil Abramson: Unsaid
  • Leela Corman: Unterzakhn
  • Bret Easton Ellis: Amerikan psyko
  • Joshua Feldman: The Book of Jonah
  • Jean Kwok: Käännöksiä
  • Kamila Shamsie: Poltetut varjot
  • J. Courtney Sullivan: The Engagements
  • Amor Towles: Seuraelämän säännöt

Kesken minulla on jostain syystä mainiolta vaikuttava Nathan Hillin Nix, joka nousi myös muiden vinkkaamana esiin. Muita Twitterissä ja Facebookissa mainittuja -- mutta minulle toistaiseksi lukemattomia -- New Yorkiin sijoittuvia kirjoja olivat:

  • Peter Cameron: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You
  • Mark Helprin: Talvinen tarina
  • Eleanor Henderson: Ten Thousand Saints
  • Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
  • Donna Tartt: Tikli
  • Antti Tuuri: Taivaanraapijat
  • Sarah Winman: Kani nimeltä Jumala

New York -klassikoihin (jotka ovat minulla yhä lukematta) luen ainakin seuraavat:

  • Truman Capote: Aamiainen Tiffanylla
  • E. L. Doctorow: Ragtime
  • John Dos Passos: Suurkaupungin kasvot
  • Ralph Ellison: Näkymätön mies
  • Henry James: Washingtonin aukio
  • Sylvia Plath: Lasikellon alla
  • J. D. Salinger: Sieppari ruispellossa
  • Betty Smith: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Luulen että New Yorkiin sijoittuvaa chicklitiä löytyy paljon. Minä olen lukenut ns. naistenviihteestä ainakin Candace Bushnellin Sinkkuelämää sekä Jennifer Weinerin Then Came You -romaanin. Ranskalaisen Kathrine Pancolin Mimmit-sarjan toinen osa ja ehkä myös romaani Central Parkin oravat ovat surullisia sunnuntaisin sijoittuvat New Yorkiin, samoin Kate Jacobsin Lankakauppa-sarja. Ja voisiko ehkä tässä yhteydessä mainita oman romaanini Aika mennyt palaa, vaikka sen podcastista kokonaan unohdin. :D No, pääosin se sijoittuukin Bostoniin, mutta osin myös New Yorkiin.

Jännityskirjallisuuden osalta minulle vinkattiin, että ainakin John E. Westlaken Dortmunder-dekkarit, Caleb Carrin The Alienist ja Håkan Nesserin Carmine Streetin sokeat tapahtuvat New Yorkissa.

Lopuksi päästään vielä minulle juuri nyt erityisen kiinnostavaan narratiivisen nonfiktion pariin. Sen osalta Joan Didion ja hänen muistelmateoksensa Maagisen ajattelun aika sekä Iltojen sinessä ovat olleet (vähintään) yhtä tärkeitä New York -teoksia kuin Cunninghamin, Hustvedtin ja Shriverin romaanit. Voin suositella myös Lena Dunhamin Sellainen tyttö -teosta sekä Patti Smithin rakastettua Ihan kakaroita -kirjaa, vaikka se on minulla kesken. Näiden lisäksi minulle vinkattiin parista tämän kategorian kirjasta, jotka haluan pian etsiä käsiini ja lukea: Olivia Laingin The Lonely City sekä Sarah Manguson The Guardians.

Olen varmasti unohtanut listoilta niin itselleni kuin yleisesti tärkeitä New York -teoksia, mutta onhan tässäkin jo monta. Jään haaveilemaan siitä New York -kirjakartasta ja suunnittelemaan podcastiin ehkä lisää tällaisia kaupunkijaksoja. :)

maanantai 19. helmikuuta 2018

Dekkarit ja psykologiset trillerit


Pohdin podcastissa tällä kertaa suhdettani dekkareihin ja muuhun jännityskirjallisuuteen. Syystä tai toisesta en ole lapsuuden ja nuoruuden jälkeen juuri dekkareita lukenut, ja suurimman osan niistä vähistäkin työtoimeksiantoina. Siksi asetin itselleni tälle vuodelle dekkarihaasteen, ja aion joka kuukausi lukea yhden dekkarin tai katsoa perinteisen dekkarisarjan tai -tv-elokuvan. Kaipaan usein nostalgisesti vanhanaikaiseen Agatha Christie -maailmaan, ja siksi ainakin aloitan haasteen hänen kirjoillaan ja niistä tehdyillä tv-sovituksilla sekä dekkaristeilla, jotka kuulemani tai lukemani mukaan voisivat sopia Christien kirjoista pitäville.

Lukulistallani on nyt Agathan lisäksi P. D. Jamesia, Dorothy L. Sayersia, Caroline Grahamia ja Elizabeth Georgea. Podcastissa kerron myös, mitkä viime vuosien modernimmeista dekkarituttavuuksista ovat mielestäni olleet hyviä.

Dekkareiden lisäksi jännityskirjallisuuden kirjoon kuuluvat esim. rikosromaanit, trillerit ja psykologiset trillerit. Rajanveto eri alalajien välillä on usein vaikeaa, mutta psykologinen trilleri siten kuin minä sen ymmärrän on ollut minulle mieluisin jännärigenre. Olenhan sellaisen itsekin kirjoittanut. :) Psykologista jännitystä löytyy todella monenlaisista kirjoista dekkarimaisista mysteereistä hyvinkin korkeakirjallisiin teoksiin. Laitan alle vielä listat dekkareista ja psykologisista trillereistä, joita olen lukenut vuosina 2011--2017. Niiden lisäksi puhuin tässä jaksossa Anna-Liisa Ahokummun äskettäin ilmestyneestä esikoisromaanista Viktor Stanislauksen kolmetoista sinfoniaa (Gummerus) sekä elokuvista Mudbound ja Loisto.


Luetut dekkarit 2011--2017

  • C.J. Box: Back of Beyond
  • Leffe & Caroline Grimwalker: Sodassa ja rakkaudessa
  • Tarquin Hall: Vish Puri ja kadonneen palvelijattaren tapaus
  • Jouko Heikura: Joki kaupungin alla
  • Jack Higgins: Kuoleman sade
  • Tami Hoag: Secrets to the Grave
  • Nina Hurma: Yönpunainen höyhen
  • Marko Kilpi: Kuolematon
  • Camilla Läckberg: Enkelintekijä
  • Lauri Mäkinen: Älykkäät kuin käärmeet, viattomat kuin kyyhkyset
  • Håkan Nesser: Kim Novak ei uinut Genesaretin järvessä
  • Kathy Reichs: Flash and Bones
  • Sofie Sarenbrant: Vila i frid
  • Vera Vala: Kosto ikuisessa kaupungissa
  • Vera Vala: Kuolema sypressin varjossa
  • Vera Vala: Villa Sibyllan kirous


Luetut psykologiset trillerit 2011-2017

  • Eeva-Kaarina Aronen: Edda
  • Johan Bargum: Syyspurjehdus
  • Emma Chapman: How to Be a Good Wife
  • Emma Donoghue: Room
  • Louise Doughty: Kielletyn hedelmän kuja
  • Simon Lelic: Katkeamispiste
  • Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca
  • Helen Dunmore: Keskustelua kuolleiden kanssa
  • Jennifer Egan: The Keep (suom. Sydäntorni)
  • Gillian Flynn: Dark Places
  • Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl
  • Gillian Flynn: Sharp Objects
  • Amity Gaige: Schroder
  • Paula Hawkins: Nainen junassa
  • Tiina Krohn: Kortti Recifestä
  • Rosamund Lupton: Mitä jäljelle jää
  • Rosamund Lupton: Sisar
  • Pekka Manninen: Peili
  • Ian McEwan: Vieraan turva
  • Suzanne Rindell: The Other Typist
  • Charlotte Rogan: The Lifeboat
  • Juha Ruusuvuori: Koston enkeli
  • Karoliina Timonen: Kesäinen illuusioni
  • Donna Tartt: The Secret History
  • Sarah Waters: Vieras kartanossa
  • S.J. Watson: Kun suljen silmäni

maanantai 12. helmikuuta 2018

Kevään ulkomaisia kirjoja


Tuoreessa podcastjaksossa tärppään kevään kiinnostavia ulkomailla ilmestyviä kirjoja. Lupauksen mukaisesti listaan ja linkkaan laajemman listan kansikuvineen tänne. Osa näistä voi tosiaan olla jo ilmestynyt jossain maassa jo aiemmin -- mutta tänä keväänä Yhdysvalloissa tai Iso-Britanniassa, joiden uutuuslistoilta kirjat on poimittu.

Ja kyllä, Julian Barnesin edellinen suomennettu romaani on tosiaankin nimeltään Kuin jokin päättyisi, ja Deborah Levyn Uiden kotiin -romaanin suomalainen kustantaja on Fabriikki. :) Tätä kootessa nauratti myös monet asiat, joita olin kirjoista podcastissa kertoessani muistanut väärin. Alla oikeampaa tietoa. :D




Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.

First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention.

As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.

Tender and wise, The Only Story is a deeply moving novel by one of fiction’s greatest mappers of the human heart.




No subject is too fringe or too mainstream for the unstoppable Zadie Smith. From social media to the environment, from Jay-Z to Karl Ove Knausgaard, she has boundless curiosity and the boundless wit to match. In Feel Free, pop culture, high culture, social change and political debate all get the Zadie Smith treatment, dissected with razor-sharp intellect, set brilliantly against the context of the utterly contemporary, and considered with a deep humanity and compassion. 
This electrifying new collection showcases its author as a true literary powerhouse, demonstrating once again her credentials as an essential voice of her generation.




In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. Through spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of her novels. 



Lauren Groff: Kesäkuussa ilmestyvä romaani on nimeltään Florida, mutta minä puhuin podcastissa vanhemmasta teoksesta Fates and Furies

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.

At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.




The audacious and elegiac second installment in her 'living autobiography' on writing and womanhood, from the twice-Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home

Following the acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, Deborah Levy returns to the subject of her life in letters. The Cost of Living reveals a writer in radical flux, considering what it means to live with value and meaning and pleasure. This perfectly crafted snapshot of a woman in the process of transformation is as distinctive, wide-ranging and original as Levy's acclaimed novels, an essential read for every Deborah Levy fan.




A welcome surprise: more than fifty prose pieces, gathered together for the first time, by one of America’s most revered and admired novelists and short-story writers, whose articles, essays, and cultural commentary–appearing in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere–have been parsing the political, artistic, and media idiom for the last three decades.

From Lorrie Moore’s earliest reviews of novels by Margaret Atwood and Nora Ephron, to an essay on Ezra Edelman’s 2016 O.J. Simpson documentary, and in between: Moore on the writing of fiction (the work of V. S. Pritchett, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, Stanley Elkin, Dawn Powell, Nicholson Baker, et al.) . . . on the continuing unequal state of race in America . . . on the shock of the shocking GOP . . . on the dangers (and cruel truths) of celebrity marriages and love affairs . . . on the wilds of television (The Wire, Friday Night Lights, Into the Abyss, Girls, Homeland, True Detective, Making a Murderer) . . . on the (d)evolving environment . . . on terrorism, the historical imagination, and the world’s newest form of novelist . . . on the lesser (and larger) lives of biography and the midwifery between art and life (Anaïs Nin, Marilyn Monroe, John Cheever, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eudora Welty, Bernard Malamud, among others) . . . and on the high art of being Helen Gurley Brown . . . and much, much more.




A captivating collection of pieces about the art of narration by Britain's finest biographer, Michael Holroyd

In this collection of pieces, Michael Holroyd reflects on the eccentricities of the art of writing about others. With characteristic playfulness and guilefulness, he considers the ways in which lives can be written about (and painted), with all the subtle differences of design and intention that this entails.

From Kipling to forgetfulness, Princess Diana's butler Paul Burrell to fellow biographers like Richard Holmes and the fathers of British biography, Boswell and Johnson, Holroyd tackles a rich and vibrant array of topics. He discusses his life at the mercy of subjects who have led him all over the world – and often into other people's families uninvited. With wit, warmth and humour, he reflects on the unlikely ways he arrives at his subjects, and how the process of building their narratives is often a disturbing experience: so consuming that, when completed, he feels as if he has had a holiday from himself. 




How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump. 

By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.




In this compelling, beautiful memoir, award-winning writer Apricot Irving recounts her childhood as a missionary’s daughter in Haiti during a time of upheaval—both in the country and in her home.

Beautiful, poignant, and explosive, The Gospel of Trees is the story of a family crushed by ideals, and restored to kindness by honesty. Told against the backdrop of Haiti’s long history of intervention—often unwelcome—it grapples with the complicated legacy of those who wish to improve the world. Drawing from family letters, cassette tapes, journals, and interviews, it is an exploration of missionary culpability and idealism, told from within.




Before she was a trauma cleaner, Sandra Pankhurst was many things: husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, trophy wife…

But as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home, she just wanted to belong. Now she believes her clients deserve no less.

Sarah Krasnostein has watched the extraordinary Sandra Pankhurst bring order and care to these, the living and the dead—and the book she has written is equally extraordinary. Not just the compelling story of a fascinating life among lives of desperation, but an affirmation that, as isolated as we may feel, we are all in this together.




From one of the fiercest critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins’ highly-anticipated collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman today—perfect for fans of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists.
Morgan Jerkins is only in her twenties, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, she takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to “be”—to live as, to exist as—a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it’s necessary reading for all Americans.


Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm—these brilliant women are the central figures of Sharp, a vibrant and rich depiction of the intellectual beau monde of twentieth-century New York, where gossip-filled parties at night gave out to literary slanging-matches in the pages of the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books as well as a considered portrayal of how these women came to be so influential in a climate where women were treated with derision by the critical establishment.

Mixing biography, literary criticism, and cultural history, Sharp is an enthralling exploration of how a group of brilliant women became central figures in the world of letters despite the many obstacles facing them, a testament to how anyone not in a position of power can claim the mantle of writer and, perhaps, help change the world.





Before she became the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention in 2016 at the age of twenty-six, Sarah McBride struggled with the decision to come out—not just to her family but to the students of American University, where she was serving as student body president. She’d known she was a girl from her earliest memories, but it wasn’t until the Facebook post announcing her truth went viral that she realized just how much impact her story could have on the country.

Informative, heartbreaking, and profoundly empowering, Tomorrow Will Be Different is McBride’s story of love and loss and a powerful entry point into the LGBTQ community’s battle for equal rights and what it means to be openly transgender. From issues like bathroom access to health care to gender in America, McBride weaves the important political and cultural milestones into a personal journey that will open hearts and change minds.




Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
 
This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward--with hope and pain--into the future.




Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help—Priscilla Johnson—and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny.
Priscilla’s presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca’s perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently.


A waitress at the Betsy Ross Diner, Elsie hopes her nickel-and-dime tips will add up to a new life. Then she meets Bashkim, who is at once both worldly and naïve, a married man who left Albania to chase his dreams—and wound up working as a line cook in Waterbury, Connecticut. Back when the brass mills were still open, this bustling factory town drew one wave of immigrants after another. Now it’s the place they can’t seem to leave. Elsie, herself the granddaughter of Lithuanian immigrants, falls in love quickly, but when she learns that she’s pregnant, Elsie can’t help wondering where Bashkim’s heart really lies, and what he’ll do about the wife he left behind.

Seventeen years later, headstrong and independent Luljeta receives a rejection letter from NYU and her first-ever suspension from school on the same day. Instead of striking out on her own in Manhattan, she’s stuck in Connecticut with her mother, Elsie—a fate she refuses to accept. Wondering if the key to her future is unlocking the secrets of the past, Lulu decides to find out what exactly her mother has been hiding about the father she never knew. As she soon discovers, the truth is closer than she ever imagined.


On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.
When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.


Rosemary has lived in Brixton all her life. But now everything she knows is changing - the library where she used to work has closed, the family fruit and veg shop has become a trendy bar, and her beloved husband George is gone.

Kate has just moved and feels alone in a city that is too big for her. She's at the bottom rung of her career as a journalist on a local paper, and is determined to make something of it.  So when the local lido is threatened with closure, Kate knows this story could be her chance to shine. And Rosemary knows it is the end of everything for her.

Together they are determined to make a stand, to show that the pool is more than just a place to swim - it is the heart of the community. Together they will show the importance of friendship, the value of community, and how ordinary people can protect the things they love.




Friendless and fatherless, sixteen-year-old Szu lives in the shadow of her mother Amisa, once a beautiful actress and now a hack medium performing séances with her sister in a rusty house. When Szu meets the privileged, acid-tongued Circe, they develop an intense friendship which offers Szu an escape from her mother’s alarming solitariness, and Circe a step closer to the fascinating, unknowable Amisa.

Told from the perspectives of all three women, Ponti by Sharlene Teo is an exquisite story of friendship and memory spanning decades. Infused with mythology and modernity, with the rich sticky heat of Singapore, it is at once an astounding portrayal of the gaping loneliness of teenagehood, and a vivid exploration of how tragedy can make monsters of us.





South London, 2008. Two couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning, on the brink of acceptance or revolution. Melissa has a new baby and doesn’t want to let it change her but, in the crooked walls of a narrow Victorian terrace, she begins to disappear. Michael, growing daily more accustomed to his commute, still loves Melissa but can’t quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Meanwhile out in the suburbs, Stephanie is happy with Damian and their three children, but the death of Damian’s father has thrown him into crisis – or is it something, or someone, else? Are they all just in the wrong place? Are any of them prepared to take the leap?

Set against the backdrop of Barack Obama’s historic election victory, Ordinary People is an intimate, immersive study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and aging, and the fragile architecture of love. With its distinctive prose and irresistible soundtrack, it is the story of our lives, and those moments that threaten to unravel us.




The year is 1750. As he makes his way to the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda Kingdom, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. As the centuries pass, the tale moves down the bloodline, exploring the lives of four of Kintu Kidda's descendants. Although the family members all have their own stories and live in very different circumstances, they are united by one thing - the struggle to break free from the curse and escape the burden of their family's past.

Blending Ganda oral tradition, myth, folktale and history, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi has brought to life an extraordinarily colourful cast of characters to produce a powerful epic - a modern classic.




Chris Power's stories are peopled by men and women who find themselves at crossroads or dead ends – characters who search without knowing what they seek. A woman uses her mother's old travel guide to navigate nowhere; a stand-up comic with writer's block performs a fateful gig at a cocaine-fulled bachelor party; on holiday in Greece, a father must confront the limits to which he can keep his daughters safe.

From remote and wild Exmoor to ancient Swedish burial sites and hedonistic Mexican weddings, these stories lay bare the emotional and psychic damage of life, love and abandonment.

Mothers proves the vital importance of short fiction and announces the debut of an exceptional literary voice.





On a brisk day in 1970, a daughter arrives at her mother’s home to take care of her as she nears the end of her life. ‘Home’ is the sprawling Italian castle of Roccasinibalda, and Diana’s mother is the legendary Caresse Crosby, one half of literature’s most scandalous couple in 1920s Paris, widow of Harry Crosby, the American heir, poet and publisher who epitomised the ‘Lost Generation’.

But it was not only Harry who was lost. Their incendiary love story concealed a darkness that marked mercurial Diana and still burns through the generations: through Diana's troubled daughters Elena and Leonie, and Elena’s young children.

Moving between the decades, between France, Italy and the Channel Islands, Tamara Colchester’s debut novel is an unforgettably powerful portrait of a line of extraordinary women, and the inheritance they give their daughters.




In 1977, three terrorists broke into Gabriela Ybarra’s grandfather’s home, and pointed a gun at him in the shower. This was the last time his family saw him alive, and his kidnapping played out in the press, culminating in his murder.

Ybarra first heard the story when she was eight, but it was only after her mother’s death, years later, that she felt the need to go deeper and discover more about her family’s past.

The Dinner Guest is a novel, with the feel of documentary non-fiction. It connects two life-changing events – the very public death of Ybarra’s grandfather, and the more private pain as her mother dies from cancer and Gabriela cares for her. Devastating yet luminous, the book is an investigation, marking the arrival of a talented new voice in international fiction.




It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone.

As mother of the house, Angel recruits Venus, a whip-fast trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics and design; and Daniel, a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus’s life. The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work, addiction, and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them. All are ambitious, resilient, and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences.


Waterloo Bridge, London. Two strangers collide. Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist, and Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes. From this chance encounter in the midst of the rush of a great city, numerous moments of connections span out and interweave, bringing disparate lives together.

In this delicate yet powerful novel of loves lost and new, of past griefs and of the hidden side of a multicultural metropolis, Aminatta Forna asks us to consider the values of the society we live in, our co-existence with one another and all living creatures – and the true nature of happiness.




In Sight a woman recounts her progress to motherhood, while remembering the death of her own mother, and the childhood summers she spent with her psychoanalyst grandmother. Woven among these personal recollections are significant events in medical history: Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of the X-ray and his production of an image of his wife's hand; Sigmund Freud's development of psychoanalysis and the work that he did with his daughter, Anna; John Hunter's attempts to set surgery on a scientific footing and his work, as a collaborator with his brother William and the artist Jan van Rymsdyk, on the anatomy of pregnant bodies. What emerges is the realisation that while the search for understanding might not lead us to an absolute truth, it is an end in itself.

Wonderfully intelligent, brilliantly written and deeply moving, Sight is a novel about how we see others, and how we might know ourselves.




1954, the South Pacific islands. When Beatriz Hanlon agreed to accompany her missionary husband Max to a remote island, she knew there would be challenges. But it isn't just the heat and the damp and the dirt. There are more insects than she could ever have imagined, and the islanders are strangely hostile. And then there are the awful noises coming from the church at night.

Yet as the months go by, Bea slowly grows accustomed to life on the island. That is until an unexpected and interminably humming guest arrives, and the couple's claustrophobic existence is stretched to breaking point.

Events draw to a terrible climax, and Bea watches helplessly as her husband's guilt drives him into madness. It's not long before Bea finds herself fighting for her freedom, and her life.





Greer Kadetsky is a shy college student when she meets the woman who will shape her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant, has been a pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others. Hearing Faith speak for the first time, in a crowded campus chapel, Greer – misunderstood yet full of longing for an ambition that she can’t quite place – feels herself changed. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites her to make something out of this new sense of purpose, with a career opportunity that leads her down the most exciting and rewarding path as it winds towards and away from her meant-to-be love story with high school sweetheart Cory and the future she had always imagined.

Expansive and wise, compassionate and witty, The Female Persuasion is about the spark we all believe is flickering inside us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time, and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light.




Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided. In “The World Has Many Butterflies,” married acquaintances play a strangely intimate game with devastating consequences. In “Vox Clamantis in Deserto,” a shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate’s seemingly enviable life. In “A Regular Couple,” a high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. And in “The Prairie Wife,” a suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie.

With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we’re all thinking—if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original.




Mukesh has just moved from Kenya to the drizzly northern town of Keighley. He was expecting fame, fortune, the Rolling Stones and a nice girl, not poverty, loneliness and racism. Still, he might not have found Keith Richards, but he did find the girl.

Neha is dying. Lung cancer, a genetic gift from her mother and an invocation to forge a better relationship with her brother and her widowed father before it’s too late. The problem is, her brother is an unfunny comedian and her idiot father is a first-generation immigrant who moved to Keighley of all places.

Rakesh is grieving. He lost his mother and his sister to the same illness, and his career as a comedian is flat-lining. Sure, his sister would have claimed that it was because he was simply unfunny, but he can’t help feel that there is more to it than that – more to do with who he is and where he comes from rather than the content of his jokes.

Ba has never looked after her two young grandchildren before. After her daughter died, her useless son-in-law dumped them on her doorstep for a month and now she has to try and work out how to bond with two children who are used England, not to the rhythms of Kenya…




An intensely beautiful, searingly powerful, tightly constructed novel, Brother explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991. 

With shimmering prose and mesmerizing precision, David Chariandy takes us inside the lives of Michael and Francis. They are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared and their mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home. 

With devastating emotional force David Chariandy, a unique and exciting voice in Canadian literature, crafts a heartbreaking and timely story about the profound love that exists between brothers and the senseless loss of lives cut short with the shot of a gun.




Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of Black society and when she falls for Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves.

In 1982, Evelyn’s daughter, Jackie, is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband’s drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life.


Jackie’s son, T.C., loves the creative process of growing marijuana more than the weed itself. But fresh out of a four-month stint for drug charges, T.C. decides to start over—until an old friend convinces him to stake his new beginning on one last deal.

A Kind of Freedom is an urgent novel that explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South through a poignant and redemptive family history.



Christine Mangan: Tangerine

The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the accident at Bennington, the two friends—once inseparable roommates—haven’t spoken in over a year. But there Lucy was, trying to make things right and return to their old rhythms. Perhaps Alice should be happy. She has not adjusted to life in Morocco, too afraid to venture out into the bustling medinas and oppressive heat. Lucy—always fearless and independent—helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country.

But soon a familiar feeling starts to overtake Alice—she feels controlled and stifled by Lucy at every turn. Then Alice’s husband, John, goes missing, and Alice starts to question everything around her: her relationship with her enigmatic friend, her decision to ever come to Tangier, and her very own state of mind.

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