the sunday lit: November 2019

"She had been wandering for a few months now with no real purpose; it seemed like fate to find herself in this village, knowing she might make a difference."

Clara Kristensen hails from Denmark ,the land famous for its happy people and its hygge. When she wanders into Yulethorpe one night, she cannot even conceive how much her life would change. Not having anything else to do, Clara offers to take care of everything.

Taking on the running of a toy shop and caring of an apartment, a potty-mouthed, movie-quoting parrot - Lady CaCa, and a lazy, sleepy cat - Roddy, Clara is on the road to changing this little sleepy town. The weather is dreadful and the future bleak as all the shops on high street have closed, save for the toy shop whose owner - Louisa, announces that she is closing the store and going to Spain. Soon, she begins building camaraderie with some other citizens like Gavin, the pub owner, Lauren who used to work at the store, back when there was business.

"Clara rested her head back on the soft leather of the sofa, the crackling logs and the smell of popcorn making her feel woozy."

Clara bring the hygge everywhere she goes, organizing Louisa messy flat into an oasis, making the toy shop look like a wonderland and regularly changing the displays that keep drawing people in. She is thriving, but it all comes with consequences.

Joe, Louisa's son works on M&A in London, is a very busy and very important guy. He cannot believe tat someone would take care of his mother's property out of the goodness of their heart and is convinced that Clara is a con artist. He goes to Yulethorpe to check out the situation, but soon Clara's natural peacefulness begins to impact him. He realizes how stressed he is, how much he hates his job, even though he tries to convince himself otherwise.

Clara is very secretive about her life, though. We only get snatches of her past. She empathizes with Joe somewhat because she used to have a corporate job, stuck in the grind and trying to climb the ladder. She used to have anxiety and feel inadequate and she also learned to take a step back.

The whole village learns to take it slow, to appreciate the small moments, the sunsets, the candlelight, a warm cup of tea... And Clara finds home at last.

This is a quick read, a book to flick through as you're sitting in a chair, surrounded by candles and fairylights, sipping a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Definitely a book that will make you want to explore hygge and try to adopt it into your own life.

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"It felt like they were ripping their hearts out on national TV."

This novel represents the history of the fictional band 'Daisy Jones and The Six'. told like an interview in lieu of a documentary. The narrator tell the story through the years, with interviews spread throughout. It takes a bit to get used to the stylistic choice (Reid said she was inspired to write this while watching documentaries about the rise and fall of famous rock bands) but once you're immersed the pages fly by.

"I had no interest in being somebody else's muse.

I am not a muse.

I am the somebody.

End of fucking story."

We are first introduced to Daisy, a rich girl with famous parent who wants to be taken seriously. She enters the LA groupie scene, starts doing drugs and sleeping with rock stars. Then there is The Six, originally The Dunne Brothers, formed by Billy and Graham, then joined by other instrumentalists. Each are on their own trajectory until they are put together to collaborate on a song.

This sparks a demand for more and soon 'Daisy Jones and the Six' is formed, with Billy and Daisy writing the lyrics, and the other supplying instrumentals. The push and pull between these two artists is the driving force behind the novel. They are too similar, they get each other but they don't get along. Billy is married to Camila and soon becomes a father to 3 daughters. He tries his damnedest to stay on the right path, but Daisy incites the worst in him. Daily is a train wreck , choosing bad men, alcohol and drugs to deal with life.

"I wish someone had told me that love isn't torture."

The question the novel poses is: why did the band split up? It takes us from the beginning to their last show, peeling back layers and asking difficult questions. I love how some of the band members give different answers to some questions, giving the story nuance and proving how unreliable memory is. Or how we change the memory to fit our narrative.

I have complicated feelings for Daisy. I love that she's her own person, that she does what she wants, asserts herself, fights for her art, puts her bleeding hart into her lyrics. I hate that she is so weak that she turns to alcohol and drugs to get her through the day. Her relationship with Billy left me reeling because I just didn't know what to feel about it. It's all so messy and everyone is the good guy and everyone is the bad guy at the same time and it's simply... life. It's just life and it happens and we make choices. Hindsight is a curse because it is only then that we see what we should have done.

"No matter who you love they will break your heat along the way."

The supporting characters add even more nuance: Graham and Karen's doomed relationship, Daisy's amazing friend Simone, the resentful Eddie who always felt he deserved more say and more credit in the working of the band, Warren and Pete who were indifferent, who knew the band was only a phase in their lives, who didn't take it too seriously.

It's a novel about life, love and music. About people who feel too much, who need something to dull the pain and the love because they cannot cope with the immensity of the world.

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"She's got used to the idea now that she'll probably never be able to buy a house. It's no big deal, no one can these days except people who are loaded, or whose parents die, or whose parents are loaded."

"Autumn" is hailed as the first post-Brexit novel and after a while I understood why. There is no specific mention of it by name, there is just the "vote" and there is the aftermath - a country divided. The novel's opening lines "It was the worst of times. It was the worst of times. Again." reflect this quite clearly.

"All across the country there was misery and rejoicing."

There are two main characters here, connected yet separate, coming together at different points in the story. Daniel Gluck is 101 and he is in a nursing home. Elisabeth Demand is 32 and she is a junior lecturer at a London university. We soon find out that they were neighbors when Elisabeth was a child and this leads to a multitude of stories about the adventures the two shared.

Elisabeth's chapters are more grounded, they are in the present, she is dealing with the fallout of the vote, wondering if she'll lose her job, struggling with the bureaucracy of getting a passport, and visiting Daniel. She is rooted in the present, unwilling to think about what the future holds because from her standpoint it's pretty bleak.

"Overnight, like a girl in a myth being hunted by a god who's determined to have his way with her, she has altered herself, remade herself so she can't be had by anyone."

When it comes to Daniel's chapters, it's like following the rambling thread of this thoughts. His world is especially chaotic, and as he is sleeping, it is his memories or even dreams we see, so there are no rules as to how and when things happen. He goes from rhyming, to thinking about his sister, to dreams about being naked in front of someone and being aroused... It's a bit hard to follow in the beginning, but as you get used to it, it just becomes natural. It's simply Daniel's voice.

There is no coherent storyline, or a timeline for that matter. It jumps from one story into another, from present to past and further past and then back to the present. It's unclear if the past is simply memories or maybe they're dreams or a combination of both. It is also unclear sometimes whose memories they are - maybe Daniel's because Elisabeth cannot recollect much about the past.

"A great many men don't understand a woman full of joy, even more don't understand paintings full of joy by a woman."

Another thread we follow is about two women: Christine Keeler, best known for her involvement in the Profumo affair, and a female pop-artist Pauline Boty. Boty painted Keeler and this is why her story is mentions, but there is also a link between Daniel, Pauline and Elisabeth. It's a tragic and fascinating story, but it was touching how Elisabeth fought for Pauline's legacy and for her artistry to be acknowledges in the academic circles.

And so it goes, back a forth, revealing little by little the stories of all the characters, peeling away their armor and exposing what's underneath. The writing lends it an ethereal quality, almost whimsical, as it's airy and poetic but not pretentious so you cannot follow it, or would need a dictionary. Definitely give this a go if you like character driven books.

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The cover is what did me in. I bought this specifically for the cover. Also, I'm intrigued by short stories because I don't read a lot of those and it's a writer I haven't heard of before... So, there I was, happily putting this into my shopping cart and entering my card info... A month later it was on my doorstep. Then it sat on my bookshelf until autumn came 'cause I'm a basic bitch.

This book contains twelve stories, all different lengths and dealing with different matters. Now, the thing they have in common is that each seems to be derived from a fairytale or other, or are at least partially inspired by them. They are very moody and fantastical stories, some of them proving to be quite tedious to read, though. That is what I didn't like. There were a few stories that blew me away, I loved the premise and wished it could be developed a bit more, but the writing seemed pretentious at times and it was hard to follow.

My feelings on this one are completely jumbled. I am so unsure of what I actually took away from it. What annoyed me was how unfinished some stories were, as if they were just ideas that needed further developing into an actual story. I would read it but just could never get to the point of what I was being told. Still, I'll mention each of them and give my thoughts.

1) Animals

This is one of my favorites. It's a strange world where the world is suffering from a lack of love. It is possible to implant people with different hearts so that they could feel romantic emotions. This story follows a man who has bought a swan heart online to implant in his girlfriend/wife and the process he goes through. Some disturbing things are revealed in the end and it raises the questions of consent in relationships, as well.

"There isn't anything quite like holding love in your bare hands."

2) Jacob

This is a sweet story, though maybe a beet too sweet and overdone, about a boy writing a letter to the weather lady from the news, asking for some advice. Now, I believe this is a bit of a trope, the whole premise of the story, but I did like it, the way his innocence can be seen in his worldview and how he couldn't understand certain things.

"Sometimes having walls around you makes you feel safe."

3) Plum Pie. Zombie Green. Yellow Bee. Purple Monster.

There are people who have plants growing inside them. The question posed in the beginning is what would have happened in Jack ate the beans and they grew inside him, instead of planting them the traditional way? The protagonists here are teenagers, Fern, Rose, Poppy, Daisy, etc. They all come to a summer camp where they are taken care of and the doctors take clippings of their limbs in the end. But that summer Lily is missing, the most colorful of them all, the one who knew the hex codes to all the colors. She simply didn't show up. So the gang decides to find her...

"Forests aren't terrifying places. They just speak a different language."

4) In the Dark

This is definitely one I did not care for. A stranger walks into a woman's house in the middle of the night. He is wearing a uniform, so she assumes he is a soldier headed into the war everyone is talking about. She keeps babbling, she feeds him, he doesn't say a word and then he leaves. That's it. Not impressed.

"Brains can rationalize a lot of strange things. Memories are complicated, too."

5) Margaret and Mary and the End of the World

"Where is your beginning?" the story asks. It talks about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It mentions a birthday cake, a museum and a painting. Dante Gabriel Rosetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini. (Look it up, it's beautiful, as is all of Rosetti's work.) It's a paining of Gabriel appearing to Mary, to tell her the good news. The protagonist, Margaret, sympathizes with her and mashes her own story (obesity, then an eating disorder, a pregnancy she did not want) with the story told on that painting. It does get a bit confusing, but I liked it overall, especially when you get to full picture.

"We look at the painting, at Mary shying away from someone she should trust."

6) Little Deaths

This could have been longer! This should have been longer. In a nutshell, a disease of the lungs is making people cough up ghosts, brightly colored pieces of themselves that are floating in the air. People are hunting them, selling them illegally or handing them to the government. The whole town the protagonist lives in is obsessed with death because of these ghosts they are birthing. It's a quirky story that definitely needed more room to breathe but I like it as a premise.

"Right now, we are ghost hotels."

7) The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night

The title story was not to my liking at all. It was written as a script, which was an interesting idea and it separates it from the other stories. Props for that. But the overall preachy nature and philosophizing of the story and the strangeness of the conversation is bizarre. The couple basically trades stories on their ideas on how the world began, all because the city should come to cut down a tree in their backyard that is bothering a neighbor. I don't know. There are some interesting things here, but it simply didn't work for me as a whole.

"The possibility of us, and of all life, was sleeping. And we emerged from a dream."

8) Pebbles

A woman goes to the Brighton Pride with her girlfriend. She thinks about the IRA and how romantic wars are because you can love whoever you want then, no one pays attention to that. She fantasizes about a redhead girlfriend from Belfast who would kiss both boys and girls and no one would care. Mentions the Skilled Veterans Corps, the retired Fukushima volunteers, as well for some reason. Strange and convoluted.

"If you put your head underwater then everything stops existing."

9) Aunt Libby's Coffin Hotel

Aunt Libby has a hotel where people lay in coffins in preparation for death. She lives on an island, where many props are set up to make people believe in her nonsense. Her niece Ankaa is presented as a "death fairy", having come from the underworld, and she can communicate with the dead. The story follows Mr Henderson, a customer, who is touring the grounds in preparation for death, and the ways Libby and Ankaa trick him into believing his wife is haunting him. Weird but I did like it.

"There are different sorts of magic. There is hope, and there is suggestion, and there is listening to the hurt."

10) Sea Devils

A strange story of two girls hunting and killing actual crabs because a sister of one told them they are devil (obviously thinking about the pubic lice). Tabs wants to go to Hollywood, but she also preaches a lot about the devil and witches. Soon she begins hanging out with a boy who has a camera, and it is inferred that she is making porn. Weird story, the pacing, the writing...

"She's full of stories, she is. A tank full to the brim with hundreds of words that all mean different things."

11) Human Satellites

A new planet, The Hours, is discovered where all lost atoms go to retire, it is composed of snippets of time and space. People on Earth are panicking, fearing it would overtake and kill us all, the religious are calling it God, scientists are salivating at the chance to explore it, others think it's a conspiracy by the government to distract us from real issues. The title refers to PhD students who volunteer to orbit the planet in order to explore it. It feels a bit sci-fi but I like the idea - the existence of a planet like that, as well as some of the social commentary from our planet. Again, wish it was more developed.

"Some say the Hours is the Internet in physical form."

12) Bright White Hearts

This story seems to be close to the author's heart, because the main character is living with the same physical disability Ms Campbell is. I respect that, but the story is still... hm. Definitely my least favorite. It goes on about different facts, like I'm reading an encyclopedia about the aquatic world, and I just couldn't focus on what the story actually is. The girl works in an aquarium and loves fish. I just... don't know what else to say. I wish this was better executed because there is an important story to tell here.

"Because princess is beauty."

And there it is. All the stories in my own words. I am glad I read this. It wasn't a total bust, but it was not a completely enjoyable experience either. Still, an experience it was. If you've given this book a try, let me know your thoughts. I seem to be one of the few that did not enjoy it, at least according to Goodreads, so maybe the fault lies with me..

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"Every Owns woman since Maria has inherited those clear grey eyes and the knowledge that there is no real defence against evil."

lithereal, book review, practical magic review,

It took me a while to read this, I admit. I have seen the movie a countless times, and the book has been waiting on my shelf since last autumn. I always put together a list of books to read for the season and the completely ignore it. This year was no different, only I'm behind on posts as well. Alas...

So, let's get this out of the way - the movie is a PG version of the story. It's also simplified and abbreviated. Sally is still the responsible adult and Gillian is the selfish, fiery force of nature. Jimmy is still there, though his death goes down differently and his haunting is much more drawn-out, it's not a possession that is as dramatic as in the movie, but a slow burn that makes everyone act out.

Sally's daughters, Antonia and Kylie, are more grown up, 15 and 16/17 respectively, and they are much more involved. Also, Sally moves away from the aunts' after her husbands death, not in, so the two old bats are not in the novel much, they are just mentioned in the backstory and they come in at the end.

"She never thought about whether or not she had privacy or happiness or anything else. She never dared to."

This is a story about four women figuring out who they are and their place in the world. Sally, who has always been responsible and put off her wants and needs for others learns to be a bit more selfish, to take something for herself. Gillian learns how to settle down, how to love and enjoy stability. Antonia learns to share the spotlight, to discover that there is more to her than her stunning looks. And Kylie goes through a dramatic change, turns into a swan from a duckling, only to realize that being a swan has its own burdens and that she need to be confident in who she is no matter her outward appearance.

"She'll be removed forever, distant as stars, unhurt and untouched, forever and ever."

I truly loved this book, it gave me all the feelings of October without being too spooky or scary because that is the line I never cross when it comes to Halloween themed movies. I can completely understand why this is considered a classic and if you haven't given it a chance yet, please do so now.

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About Me

I blog from time to time about things that inspire me. Lately, I have been getting back into the habit of reading, and my posts reflect that. I'm also always trying to take pretty photos, with varying degrees of success.

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