What I'd Rather Not Think About
What I'd Rather Not Think AboutJente Posthuma
Buy on Amazon

What I'd Rather Not Think About (2020)

Jente Posthuma

Others: Neutral

What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them? This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.

ISBN:
9781914484711
Length:
228 pages

Genres: literary fiction

Lists: …

Similar books

1 of 6
  • Pew

    Catherine Lacey

    2020 · 224 pages · 2 reviews

    Others: Overwhelmingly positive

    "In a small unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives to a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless, racially ambiguous, and refuses to speak. One family takes the strange visitor in and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origins. As days pass, the void around Pew's presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew's story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of their true nature - as a devil or an angel or something else entirely - is dwarfed by even larger truths."--Publisher description.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    63%
    Also literary fiction
    35%
    Similar descriptions
    2%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • Sisters

    Daisy Johnson

    2020 · 192 pages · 2 reviews

    Others: Mixed

    A New York Times Notable Book (2020) from a Booker Prize finalist and international literary star: a blazing portrait of one darkly riveting sibling relationship, from the inside out.. Now she returns with Sisters, a haunting story about two sisters caught in a powerful emotional web and wrestling to understand where one ends and the other begins. Born just ten months apart, July and September are thick as thieves, never needing anyone but each other. Now, following a case of school bullying, the teens have moved away with their single mother to a long-abandoned family home near the shore. In their new, isolated life, July finds that the deep bond she has always shared with September is shifting in ways she cannot entirely understand. A creeping sense of dread and unease descends inside the house. Meanwhile, outside, the sisters push boundaries of behavior—until a series of shocking encounters tests the limits of their shared experience, and forces shocking revelations about the girls’ past and future. Sisters is a one-two punch of wild fury and heartache—a taut, powerful, and deeply moving account of sibling love and what happens when two sisters must face each other’s darkest impulses.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    90%
    Also literary fiction
    9%
    Similar descriptions
    1%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • The bear

    Andrew Krivak

    2020 · 224 pages · 2 reviews

    Others: Positive

    "In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last two left. But when the girl suddenly finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness, which offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen. A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature's dominion"--

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    58%
    Also literary fiction
    41%
    Similar descriptions
    1%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • How to Pronounce Knife

    Souvankham Thammavongsa

    2019 · 192 pages · 0 reviews

    "In her stunning debut, Souvankham Thammavongsa captures the day-to-day lives of immigrants and refugees in a nameless city, illuminating hopes, disappointments, love affairs, and above all, the pursuit of a place to belong. An ex-boxer turned nail salon worker falls for a pair of immaculate hands; a mother and daughter harvest earthworms in the middle of the night; a country music-obsessed housewife abandons her family for fantasy; and a young girl's love for her father transcends language. Uncannily and intimately observed, written with prose of exceptional precision, the stories in How to Pronounce Knife speak of modern location and dislocation, revealing lives lived in the embrace of isolation and severed history - but not without joy, humour, resilience, and constant wonder at the workings of the world."--Provided by publisher.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    55%
    Also literary fiction
    41%
    Similar descriptions
    4%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • Temporary

    Hilary Leichter

    2020 · 200 pages · 2 reviews

    Others: Leaning positive

    A young woman's workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.”

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    76%
    Also literary fiction
    24%
    Personalize your recommendations
  • Luster

    Raven Leilani

    2020 · 240 pages · 1 review

    Others: Positive

    "Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties--sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage--with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric's home--though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows. Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life--her hunger, her anger--in a tumultuous era. It is also a description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way."--Provided by publisher.

    Why?

    What made the match, strongest first

    On the same reading list
    50%
    Also literary fiction
    50%
    Personalize your recommendations

Reviews1