A generational family history told by the narrator, born as intersex and raised as Calliope later turned Cal, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex is a rare, unconventional gem of fiction. The family saga is rich and full of drama. It ran seamlessly when the book picked up its pace, despite its inconsistency…
This was a pretty difficult read. Given the history of the author, it’s easy to surmise that Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar isn’t just some detached piece of literature; it’s eerie how likely it is that the musings of our narrator, Esther, were articulated through Plath’s thought process in how she perceived…
When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from his unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. Containing, perhaps, some of the most absurdly comedic lines in classic literature, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka perfectly illustrates a similarly absurd type of tragedy: Gregor Samsa wakes up…
Persuasion is my second Jane Austen book after Pride and Prejudice. Stylistically, there are some major differences that I can assume make these books appeal to different groups. If I had to sum it up simply, it would be that while Pride and Prejudice excels in wittiness and character development, Persuasion embraces more of…
“Sometimes we want what we want, even if we know it’s going to kill us.” It is when you read pieces like Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch that you realize that modern literature has failed us. A lot of the books that we are accustomed to fail to leave lasting impressions. Most of…
“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of. So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.” Convenience Store Woman is one of the books whose titles reflect the contents of…
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh is the epitome of no plot, just vibes. Unlikeable characters, an unreliable narrator, and a bizarre, dark type of humor—this book has it all. It’s year 2000, set in the wealthy enclaves of Chicago. Hilarious and sad at the same time, the…
It is an impressive feat to be able to write an unconventional, let alone an unexplored, type of love story as Audrey Niffenegger does in The Time Traveler’s Wife. While the plotline is intricately woven, the premise is simple: Henry DeTamble has a “Chrono-Displacement Disorder”, a genetic condition that causes him…
I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls. Emma Cline, The Girls It is 1969, and 14-year-old Evie Boyd is thrust into a cult-like group of girls. Evie, being the child of recently divorced parents and scurrying for acceptance from her peers, finds herself…
I have mixed feelings about Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. On one side, I want to appreciate the lyrical mastery of the prose; on the other, I’m disgusted at how this very prose portrays our narrator, Humbert Humbert, not as much as a monster as it does a mere protagonist in passing.…