Others: Overwhelmingly positive In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss gives way to memories, the little unit of three starts to heal. In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief - Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.--
Lists: …
Hallie Rubenhold
2019 · 400 pages · 9 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positivePolly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. Their murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become far more famous than any of these five women. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, historian Hallie Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, and gives these women back their stories. Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.
What made the match, strongest first
Ali Smith
2005 · 306 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveThe Accidental is a 2005 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk. Amber's arrival has a profound effect on all the family members. Eventually she is cast out the house by the mother, Eve. But the consequences of her appearance continue even after the family has returned home to London. The novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Man Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and it won the Whitbread Award.
What made the match, strongest first
Virginia Woolf
1929 · 133 pages · 5 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveA Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled "Women and Fiction", and hence the essay, are considered non-fiction. The essay is generally seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.
What made the match, strongest first
Jessica Townsend
2018 · 560 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positive"Morrigan Crow is now a proud scholar in the elite Wundrous Society, but must prove that she belongs in the Society, while battling a new evil"--
What made the match, strongest first
Jon McGregor
2010 · 260 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveOn a still and frozen day between Christmas and New Year, a man's body is found lying in his ruined flat. 'Even the Dogs' is an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society, describing a world littered with love, loss, despair and a glimpse of redemption.
What made the match, strongest first
Charlotte Brontë
1847 · 489 pages · 37 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveThe novel is set somewhere in the north of England. Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family, during which her earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St John Rivers, proposes to her. Will she or will she not marry him?
What made the match, strongest first
Loved itit deals with that theme so sensitively and beautifully and unfortunately obviously grief is something even if we have an experience at this point is sort of in all of our features and it's a really important topic to talk about and I just love the way this book handles that it's beautifully written like I mentioned quite experimental in its format but stunning
Loved itI am just absolutely in love with Max Porter's writing essentially
Loved itI thought this book was absolutely beautiful
