Honey by Imani Thompson

That women can kill for fun, due to boredom or as a revenge, or all at once, it is no scientific wonder. Women can be as good or as bad as the male counter-parts and there is no need of feminist revolution or revelation to acknowledge that. But...it doesn´t mean that one gender or the other is supposed to enjoy a priviledge to kill. In real or literary life. Or that just killing is enough to make life more enjoyable.

Yrsa, the main character of Honey, the debut roman by Imani Thompson everyone is talking about, is initially starting to kill men for the sake of testing her PhD premises. She is a young Black woman, from a middle class family, studying to Cambridge, enjoying brunch with her girlfriends, no pressure to work menial jobs. Some of the men she is killing are exes, men who disappointed her or someone else, random dates. 

As an avid crime reader I would have expected some extra details about really preparing the crimes, and how she fails by being considered a main suspect. The writing flows, with some ideological intersectional snippets I may happen to feel where they are leading, but which I refuse to accept, from a simple non-ideological point of view.  Three years and I am sick to my stomach to digest the idea of ´those who we think are oppressors, are the legitimate tarket of individual violence´. IYKYK.

Seven years ago I´ve read My Sister, the Serial Killer and loved it for the sake of the story, without any ideological embellishments. This is how I love my fiction. 

PS: The cover is from the German edition of the book, and although I´ve read the book in the original English, I couldn´t resist to use this deliciously decadent image. 

Rating: 2.5 stars

My First Book in Portuguese!

Since several years I promised myself to finally advance my Portuguese, this year really happened. This time, I was not only watching some random movie or playing some random Duolingo or eventually advancing my pronunciation via Rosetta Stone, but I´ve succeed reading a book - with the help of a dictionary. 

My random choice - completely random, from a local library - was a very short book by a very prolific author and comedian, Ricardo Artur de Araújo Pereira featuring some random thoughts and anecdotic encounters happening during the pandemic. 

Ideias concretas sobre vagas - which I clumsily translate as Concrete ideas about job openings - is a collection of short chapters with or without a character, with a bit of humour, unequal in the degree of novelty. From my point of view, it was important to be able to read is step-by-step, trying to understand the context and sometimes translating word by word. 

One of the lessons learned from reading this book, from the perspective of language learning, was for the beginning - A2 to B1 - to rather focus on short stories, nonfiction, allowing to understand the short installments, instead of aspiring to read novels without properly following the plot. The relative success with this book encouraged me to continue with the reading, although I still have a lot to improve - the grammar, vocabulary and first and foremost the pronunciation - which right now is horrible, a combination of falsely accented Spanish and Italian intonation; but promise to improve it somehow...

In any case, I can only be proud of myself that this year, I finally kept my promises in terms of language improvement. With few more months from this year left, I can only wish myself to continue with my consistent progress. 

Récits de certains faits by Yasmina Reza

 

I love reading essays because this art of nonfiction is rooted in the literary life of the authors as well. And if those essays to have some drops of true crime, count me in for a long read. 

French playwriter, novelist and actress Yasmina Reza spent time in courts across France, assisting to trials of convincted murderers. With precision and high attention to detail, she focused on the human aspects of the crimes - well, the crimes always involve a human aspect, but in this case it dealt with the deep psychology of the stories - such as the relationships between the victim and criminal, as well as the tremendous role of childhood trauma. 

Récit de certains faits by Yasmina Reza - which I´ve read in the German translation, Die Rücksteite des Lebens, translated from French by Claudia Hamm - is partially an account of those experiences. The rest includes personal stories, memories from Venice, literary encounters. 

Clearly, the crime-related part was the most interesting, in terms of writing and intensity of the story and thereafter thoughts - how prevalent is the evil ? (as in ´evil doing´), how one can explain it? - , but the other accounts do have their own merits as well. 

Personally, I find the idea of taking part to murder trials, and trials in general, very appealing, and as I am writing, I already think about what possibilities are available for outside audience to attend such meetings - given the very strict German personal data protection laws. 

This short collection is a very interesting intimate exploration of human psyche, but don´t expect anything ´mild´ and ´sweet´ about it, but a lot of darkness.

Rating: 3.5 stars 

Astronaut! by Oana Aristide

It is hard to evaluate the amount of trauma one may get while growing up in a dictatorship. Of how getting used to live with fear as the only way of life perverts your self-awareness and trust in the others. How vicious are the lies for a normal mental and moral development. I want to stop now the amount of thoughts overwhelming me when thinking about this topic. With more books based in communist Romania, I may have the chance to talk about it on other occasions.

I better talk more about Astronaut!, the second novel by Oana Aristide instead. Lia is a 8-year old curious girl who loves colours. She notices how colours, including colouring pencils, are disappearing from her world. She is careless with what she talks with people, creating a lot of troubles for her parents. 

It is late 1980s, when the scarcity and repression of the Romanian dictatorship was doubled by a paranoid panic of the repression apparatchiks. Who are not tasked with a special mission: finding the criminal(s) killing various Securitate - communist ´intelligence´ apparatus - informers. Or maybe was rather a bear, or many of them at a killing spree?

Constantin, a policeman who loves stories - to write and read to his son - seems to be apparently untainted by the last jump of patriotic wave, observing the corruption of his co-workers and the kafkaesque bear-hunting. Lia and Constantin may be an unlikely anti-hero characters match, but in a world where people are running from one cue to another unable to figure out what is delivered that time, normality shall be re-defined.

Aristide´s take on the storyline and characters is full of empathic humour, successfully defying the need to lecture or complain. For a long time I felt that the Romanian dictatorship is rarely the pretexte of stories written in English while the Romanian writers are rather focused on the post-communist trauma. Astronaut! showed me that this shift is changing and cannot wait to read and review more such novels.

Rating: 4.5 stars

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

I am training my fantasy muscle lately, as cultivating a creative mind needs a lot of inspiration. The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd included a bit of fantasy, a bit of time travel and a lot of discussions about maps and their (sometimes deadly) power.

The theoretical premise of the book is the existence of phantom settlements, which are fictional places introduced on purposed by maps creators as a way to mark their copyright. This will allow to someone illegally copying a map to be caught, because only the original authors do know where the error was placed. Like Agloe, for instance, a classical phantom settlement placed by map makers, that inspired at least another book. 

The cartographers, a group of maps lovers academics experienced the out of time experience of the place, but its discovery and frequentation will destroy their friendship, and the search for getting back all the possible maps marking the place, as a way to return, will lead to terrible crimes. 

Nell Young, the daugher of the legendary Dr. Daniel Young, and of Tamara Young - who apparently died in a fire involving those maps - will recreate the chain of events leading to a return to the place. When someone unexpected is waiting for them, but especially for her. 

I loved the writing and the moderately paced plot, which seems to not spare any details of the ambiance and historical cartographic information. The fanastic part is tempered, allowing other universally human topics, such as friendship, the risks some may take for the sake of scientific curiosity. However though, I´ve found that the action advanced a bit too cautiously for my taste, with the plot not daring more than expected. More than half into the story, I guessed - right - what will happen next, but stayed for the sake of the story. 

The Cartographers has a catchy yet predictable plot, but it is well written keeping even the fantasy opaque readers like me. It just opened up the readig appetite for more fantasy in the next weeks. Just keep an eye on my blog for my upcoming reviews.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Random Things Tours: A History of Medicine in 12 Objects by Dr. Carol Cooper

We are usually thinking and talking about medicine when we are facing health scares or illness, but what about thinking medicine as part of our general society evolution? There are so many aspects directly connected with its progress, including the fact that thanks to the medical evolutions we are able to live longer nowadays compared to centuries ago.

I grew up surrounded by the fantastic doctors of my family and medicine belonged and still belongs to my daily life. Stories of unusual interventions and unique patients and some of their fantastic survivals kept me company during my own medical episodes. 

I love reading about medicine and doctors, hence my curiosity to discover A History of Medicine in Twelve Objects by Dr. Carol Cooper. Well-written, in an accessible language, while keeping the highest scientific standards, this book is an important contribution to revealing human discoveries. From the beginning of humanity until our times, this book is outlining changes and turns of mentality, through history of objects - like XRay machines, the microscope, the mask or the stethoscope - reflecting our own human history.

A recommended book for the science nerds, with an interest in medical knowledge and very specific episodes of the history of mentalities.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura

 When I´ve started reading Katie Kitamura´s books, I knew I will return to this writer. 

Intimacies is set in the Hague and the unnamed women character is, like in A Separation, a translator, this time a translator at the Criminal Court in Hague. As an interpreter/translator myself, I recognized the intimacies and distances we are experiencing through and about words. The protagonist is observing and connecting, projecting intimate information she had access to, without judging, just allowing herself the benefit of the moment.

There are the intimacies of people we don´t know, but also other people intimating our thoughts. The private turns public, common knowledge. 

There is no plot in Intimacies, as not all books should follow a plot. It feels claustrophobic sometimes, as we are living in the mind of the main character, we are obsessivelly following her, we intimate her thoughts and life, her lows and insecurities. There is also something deeply impressionistic about this novel, as in the art movement. 

The chiselled prose and thoughtful reflections are extraordinary and would clearly read Audition as soon as possible.

Kitamura, whose book Audition was shortlisted for 2025 Booker is the chair of the jury of the 2027 Booker Prize - rebranded as The Bukhman International Booker Prize.

Rating: 4.5 stars