cobwebshelves

“shelley created a witch, a mad, ethereal thing, for a poem. this lady never slept– this line tormets her. shelley’s line dances round her head as she rises from the curtained bed. his Witch. she lay in fountains and viewed the world through waterfalls. perhaps that is all mary is doing. existing in some half-waking world, for at night time she does see clearer.”

mary wollstonecraft godwin was marked by death from the time she entered this world. her mother died soon after birthing her — a fate mary herself nearly succumbed to with her own pregnancies — her sister, much like herself, was prone to depression and took her own life. her children, all but one, left the world before long.

but the worst curse of her life, the deepest mark left in ink in, was her love for percy bysshe shelley.

“the aziola’s cry” is a beautiful look into the short-lived

 “Isn't anyone going to ask why it took only one wayward root vegetable to turn Blackhall into a turnip-fuelled fight club? Or care to wonder why we have so much repressed rage bottled up inside of us? Or ask what might be traumatising the future members of the legal profession they claim to care so much about?"

Oof. New longest review, yay?

Firstly, "The Lost Apprentice" is very misleadingly being advertised as a dark academia novel, which it is not. it vaguely tries to mention how perceptions of Irish students from different cities differ and tries to build a disparity between Dubliners and non-dubliners, but it doesn't really go anywhere. Nor does the academia side of things—we're told that the apprentices must find time for both their studies and work, but I can't recall more than a few paragraphs in one chapter mentioning that they attend a class. Otherwise, we're just told how overworked they are and

“Go on. Tell him how Korea has a history, even though the Japanese say we don’t."

if there is one thing i took away from “white mulberry”, it’s that every occupying state is fundamentally the same.

the novel, inspired by the life of easton’s own grandmother, follows miyoung—a young girl from a small village in korea who attempts to escape her predetermined life path of a wife and a mother by moving to live with her older sister in japan. spanning over a decade, it’s a story of both personal and national struggle, of finding one’s identity as a person in a land that was altered by force.

the descriptions of persecution (both ethnic and religious), the use of koreans essentially as fodder for the war, the hardships of women seeking better life prospects were the aspects that pulled me in the most. miyoung’s life is rifled with tragedy and loss, yet there

"where do they find pawns

to sacrifice themselves, one square

at a time, to accept the smaller fates,

while kinds and queens huddle

backstage, twirling their fingers,

expecting glory to meet them halfway?"

almallah's poetry collection is a raw experience of a palestinian man, forced to see his homeland destroyed and slaughtered from afar. it's a rumination of the influence that western colonialism had on the modern-day world, on the very genocide in play.

the works seem to be split into two halves—some more personal, emotional, speaking of palestine and gaza overtly. of the shared pain and grief, of a life lost and life that cannot be recovered. the other half feels more of a meditation on the work of almallah's peers and authors whose works he's admired over the years. i was particularly drawn to the poems discussing the arabic influence in spain, "some verses for the depressed rebel" and "poet in andalusia/andalusia in the poet",

welp, it's not the book it's me :/ i understand why people love this book, the translation was beautifully done so I'm assuming the original is too. it just didn't click for me at any point.

 “i’m a hungry ghost, still roaming all these years later, greedy and angry and only vaguely aware of why. instead of devouring flesh and blood, my tiny mouth screams for the page. not too loud, though.”

“unquiet spirits” is a solid collection of essays talking about those who often go unnamed, unseen, haunting the pages of history and the nightmares of the restless – women. dead women, killed women, hurt women, mistreated, unheard, and yet, unquiet.

the sequence of the stories felt well-structured, and i appreciate what a diverse selection it was, offering perspectives both local and of diaspora. at times, you could connect the dots between the stories – told from different perspectives, analogs found in other countries, ghost footsteps traced across time and space. some even feature comparisons to western creatures and ghosts, making it more approachable to readers who might not be as familiar with eastern mythos.

it’s tough to