Edited by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy, The Norton Anthology of Poetry (W. W. Norton & Company: 2005, 9780393979206) This Is Just To Say I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe icebox and whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfast Forgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold First Lines Wednesday – Plums are the new apples? Is [...]
Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age (Bloomsbury: 2020, 9781526612144) Such a Fun Age opens with a Black babysitter called Emira being accosted by grocery store security upon being accused by a ‘Karen’ of kidnapping the white child she is babysitting. This prompts her boss, a liberal, wealthy, white social influencer called Alix, to get involved [...]
Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer (Atlantic Books: 2018, 9781786495976) “WORDS Ayoola summons me with these words – Korede, I killed him. I had hoped I would never hear those words again. BLEACH I bet you didn’t know that bleach masks the smell of blood. Most people use bleach indiscriminately, assuming it is a [...]
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics: 2006, 9780141441146) Check out more reviews here. "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with [...]
Elif Shafak, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World (Penguin Books: 2020, 9780241979464) 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World begins with the end – of Tequila Leila’s life. Her death sparks a string of memories that take us from her birth to her death; from a childhood of oppression and abuse in [...]
Absurd Reviews 