A delightful little book about a little girl spending her summer on a Finnish island with her grandmother in the aftermath of her mother’s death. Really profound, easy to read book about death, love, family nature, and the beauty of being alive despite the horrors told from a six-year old‘s perspective.
I’ve really never read anything else like it and think about it all the time. Bonus: the author, Tove Jansson, also created Moomins!
Jul 3, 2024
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Stunning memoir. Absolutely immersive. Precise and heartbreaking writing by and about a woman who suffered her whole life and ultimately caused others to as well. Felt like a thrill and a privilege to live in the honest minutia of a real daily life in 1920s-50s Copenhagen, a world that was entirely unfamiliar to me previously. Bleak yet somehow sharply funny and delightful too!
Apr 10, 2024
A widowed mother in her forties goes on a trip to a cabin in the Austrian mountains and wakes up one morning to find that she is trapped there by an invisible dome. She is alone, save for a few animals who are the other characters in the story. Everything outside of the dome is dead, their corpses frozen in the positions in which they suddenly passed. A coffee cup halfway to their lips, dogs curled at their feet. The book is written as a log of her years in the dome, on the final pieces of paper she can find in her cabin. The result is an extended soliloquy that jumps between the past and present to account a life shed of time and societal expectation and instead ruled by the rhythms of nature and the necessity to care for herself and her animal companions.
I read it this year, have already done a reread, and I still want to read it again after typing this out! It’s surrealism lite and an ecofeminist meditation on death, isolation, memory, and the nature of reality. Can’t recommend it enough!
“But if time exists only in my head, and I'm the last human being, it will end with my death. The thought cheers me. I may be in a position to murder time. The big net will tear and fall, with its sad contents, into oblivion. I'm owed some gratitude, but no one after my death will know I murdered time. Really these thoughts are quite meaningless. Things happen, and, like millions of people before me, I look for meaning in them, because my vanity will not allow me to admit that the whole meaning of an event lies in the event itself.”
Dec 21, 2024
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a super short n sentimental read that also happens to be one of my favorite books of all time. i don’t want to say too much about it (to maintain an element of surprise n whimsy), but it contains two different stories, with both touching upon processing grief and finding joy in the mundane. i love the way yoshimoto writes, with such an appreciation for the details in the world around her.
if you end up reading this one, i’d love to know what you think <3 happy reading!
Sep 17, 2024
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returning a stack of library books and stumbling upon the library book sale? right as it opens?? for free will donation????? 😮💨😮💨
Aug 15, 2024
(minor spoilers, I guess?)
a few long take bangers in this film, but the battle scene near the end is so goddamn good. follow Clive Owen and the pregnant young woman in his care as they get caught in a skirmish between two warring factions. Cuarón is the best.
Jul 13, 2024
Nov 1, 2024