Books read in Jaunary
Beside Myself immediately caught my attention because of the creepy premise of two young twins swapping identities as a prank when they were six years old, then one twin refusing to switch back and no one believing that there's anything wrong. > It was definitely very effective at portraying Helen completely mentally unraveling over the course of her life because of feeling like her identity has been stolen from her. I've seen some reviews wondering how Ellie managed to imitate Helen so well when she was supposed to be the slower twin with learning difficulties, but I thought the implication was that their mother had just seized on blaming the birth as an easy excuse for why Ellie was the way she was, whereas in reality she was so passive because of the trauma of witnessing their fathers suicide? I mean there are references to Helen bullying her because she wanted to draw her sister from two years ago back out, which suggested that Ellie wasn't always like that.
I guess my lingering question was more about her much their mothers attitude changed towards them both, even though it was revealed at the end that she had guessed about the twin swap pretty early on. I guess I can kind of buy why she would care so much about appearances and not want to admit to her new partner that she had mixed up her own daughters, but her attitude at the end also suggested that she saw the twins as interchangeable and figured that it wouldn't matter that much, which really doesn't fit with how she always favoured 'Helen' and dismissed 'Ellie' as slow and clumsy, surely she shouldn't have immediately switched to dismissing 'Ellie' in that same way when she knew that she was the original Helen? Lol this is confusing to talk about! :P
I read Brooke Shield's biography, There Was A Little Girl, it was moderately interesting, mostly for reading between the lines actually. She talks a lot about stuff like how the Calvin Klein ad's she did had nothing remotely suggestive about them, and defends her mother as not exploiting her when she was underage etc, even though that doesn't really fit with the movies and pictures that her mother allowed when she was just a young girl. It was interesting reading about their relationship though, and hearing about her experiences on the film sets
I also read and absolutely loved A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, even though it completely devastated me at the same time. It's four college friends growing up together in New York, and it's all about how one of them is struggling to reconcile his abusive childhood with who he is today. I can absolutely see why it's been criticised for being a misery slog, but I just found the writing really beautiful and couldn't stop thinking about Jude afterward and how heartbreaking it all was, I guess any book that makes a real emotional impression on me is going to go down as a favourite, and well this one made me cry A LOT
And finally Girl In The Dark was a memoir from Anna Lyndsey. She feels a terrible burning sensation in her skin whenever she's exposed to light, and so she's trying to adapt to living with as little light as possible, often in a completely blacked-out room for days at a time. I must admit that I did find myself starting to skim a bit towards the end. It would have made for a really interesting magazine article, but as a book I found it quite padded-out and tedious, there were lots of long flowery descriptions which just weren't my sort of thing. There wasn't as much explanation of her condition as I was expecting either actually (she does talk about hardly seeing any specialists because they weren't very understanding of her condition preventing her from leaving the house in daylight), so the book was really mostly about her experimenting with just how much light she could stand to be exposed too, along with descriptions of word games and audiobooks that she tries to keep herself entertained while she's lying in the dark. At one point it did seem like she was improving, but then it never really went anywhere and the book just sort of ended?
I did try reading The Lesser Dead as well, it sounded like a promising vampire novel and had great reviews, but I found the main character so obnoxious that in the end I had to drop it when I was about 20% into the book :P
I guess my lingering question was more about her much their mothers attitude changed towards them both, even though it was revealed at the end that she had guessed about the twin swap pretty early on. I guess I can kind of buy why she would care so much about appearances and not want to admit to her new partner that she had mixed up her own daughters, but her attitude at the end also suggested that she saw the twins as interchangeable and figured that it wouldn't matter that much, which really doesn't fit with how she always favoured 'Helen' and dismissed 'Ellie' as slow and clumsy, surely she shouldn't have immediately switched to dismissing 'Ellie' in that same way when she knew that she was the original Helen? Lol this is confusing to talk about! :P
I read Brooke Shield's biography, There Was A Little Girl, it was moderately interesting, mostly for reading between the lines actually. She talks a lot about stuff like how the Calvin Klein ad's she did had nothing remotely suggestive about them, and defends her mother as not exploiting her when she was underage etc, even though that doesn't really fit with the movies and pictures that her mother allowed when she was just a young girl. It was interesting reading about their relationship though, and hearing about her experiences on the film sets
I also read and absolutely loved A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, even though it completely devastated me at the same time. It's four college friends growing up together in New York, and it's all about how one of them is struggling to reconcile his abusive childhood with who he is today. I can absolutely see why it's been criticised for being a misery slog, but I just found the writing really beautiful and couldn't stop thinking about Jude afterward and how heartbreaking it all was, I guess any book that makes a real emotional impression on me is going to go down as a favourite, and well this one made me cry A LOT
And finally Girl In The Dark was a memoir from Anna Lyndsey. She feels a terrible burning sensation in her skin whenever she's exposed to light, and so she's trying to adapt to living with as little light as possible, often in a completely blacked-out room for days at a time. I must admit that I did find myself starting to skim a bit towards the end. It would have made for a really interesting magazine article, but as a book I found it quite padded-out and tedious, there were lots of long flowery descriptions which just weren't my sort of thing. There wasn't as much explanation of her condition as I was expecting either actually (she does talk about hardly seeing any specialists because they weren't very understanding of her condition preventing her from leaving the house in daylight), so the book was really mostly about her experimenting with just how much light she could stand to be exposed too, along with descriptions of word games and audiobooks that she tries to keep herself entertained while she's lying in the dark. At one point it did seem like she was improving, but then it never really went anywhere and the book just sort of ended?
I did try reading The Lesser Dead as well, it sounded like a promising vampire novel and had great reviews, but I found the main character so obnoxious that in the end I had to drop it when I was about 20% into the book :P