Recent Reads

Patrick Bateman is a wealthy banker in New York City who leads a double life as a serial killer.
I was very conflicted on how to rate this book. It had been on my reading list for quite some time and I decided Halloween week was the perfect occasion to get stuck right into this terrorizing and horror filled world that Easton Ellis manages to create.
Although I found the narration to be brilliant, with the character of Bateman trying ever so restlessly to hide his true desires, I was partly turned off by not only the grotesque nature of the plot but also the at times tedious repititions of themes.
Whilst I understand the novel is creating an image of the monotonous life of a Wall Street Banker, there was just something about the repititon that felt dragged out to me and by the last few chapters I just wanted the book to end.
The three star rating is balanced by the at times excessively lengthened chapters and themes but also positively by the carefully descriptive nature of the narrative and the humorous writing of dialogue which in my opinion kept this book alive.

While Jeannette Walls was living on Park Avenue, covering the Academy Awards and attending black-tie parties at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her parents were squatting in an abandoned building on the Lower East Side.   Rex Walls, her father, was an ingenious adventurer and a hopeless alcoholic. Her mother was an artist who abhorred domestic routine and the chores of motherhood: ‘Why should I cook a meal that will be gone in an hour when I can do a painting that will last forever?’ Funny sad, quirky and loving, The Glass Castle is an almost incredible story of a nomadic, impoverished childhood.
A riveting read, Walls writes with grit and passion about her impoverished, nomadic childhood in this gripping tale of hardship, adventure and survival. I could not put this book down, the story of Wall’s childhood itself was engrossing yet her writing is what draws you in and leaves you wanting to read chapter after chapter in one sitting. Her reflective and descriptive tone brings to life the vivid imagery of her itinerant youth, depicting herself and her siblings struggles for survival amidst a bohemian parenting style that leaves them endlessly indigent.

In 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn’t play an instrument and she’d never seen a girl play electric guitar.
A year later, she was the guitarist in the hugely influential all-girl band the Slits, who fearlessly took on the male-dominated music scene and became part of a movement that changed music.
Viv Albertine is an icon and her book has left an iconic mark on me. This memoir is an evocative, graphic, and entertaining account of Albertine’s journey in music. Filled with anecdotes from the music scene in the 70s and vulnerable tellings of her personal life, Albertine takes us through what it is like to pave the way for women in music. I could not put this book down, every story she tells is sharp, witty, and insightful. I highly recommend you put this on your ‘TBR’ list.

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of this terrible crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades. Say Nothing deftly weaves the stories of Jean McConville and her family with those of Dolours Price, the first woman to join the IRA as a front-line soldier, who bombed the Old Bailey when barely out of her teens; Gerry Adams, who helped bring an end to the fighting, but denied his own IRA past; Brendan Hughes, a fearsome IRA commander who turned on Adams after the peace process and broke the IRA’s code of silence; and other indelible figures.
Patrick Radden O’Keefe lays out a narrative, informative and enthralling portrait of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. O’Keefe uses the infamous case of Jean McConville’s disappearance as a backdrop to unfold the entangled chronicles of the IRA and the effect of the violence and turmoil caused by the paramilitary organization’s crimes. This book is an impressive yet harrowing read and will motivate the reader to educate themselves on the complex history of Northern Ireland and the effects of this part of history that heavily influence Irish society, still to this day.

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