This book was so cute, and deep, sad and to be honest, relatable. I loved Zhuang’s character and got really frustrated at how she put up with her insufferable boyfriend. But that’s me in my thirties knowing that I might have done the same in my early twenties. That I also once long ago thought that love needs work, you gotta put in the time, … Continue reading Book Review: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

“Memory, for me, is often a home where the furniture has been rearranged one too many times.” – Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed. This book is beautiful like a nursery rhyme sang by a loving parent. Like the smell of clean linen out of the dryer. Ok, I am no poet but Clint Smith definitely is and paraphrasing a very wise man: “he … Continue reading Book Review: How The Word Is Passed

“Elena Knows” by Claudia Piñeiro is a masterpiece. A short, tense, thrilling story that hooks you from beginning to end. Who killed Rita? Elena is in her mid-sixties but you’d think she was much older due yo the damage that Parkinson has inflicted on her. When her only daughter and caretaker, Rita dies, she can’t accept suicide as an answer and goes on looking for … Continue reading Book Review: Elena Knows

I loved this cute romance with hints of the fantastic. Even if you are not one for romance or fantasy like me, this is one to appeal to fans of lighthearted fiction with strong women at the middle. Nina is young, pretty but not stunning, and incredibly smart and curious. Her quirky character and her tendency to make objects explode as her telekinetic powers get … Continue reading Book Review: The Beautiful Ones

Reading Patrick Modiano’s So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood took me back to when I was 10 and wrote a suspense – detective story about a man who suddenly disappears. It was quite bad, I am sure, but the novel I wanted to write was Sunday’s in August or So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood. Modiano really knows how to set … Continue reading Book Review: So You Don’t Get Lost In The Neighborhood

The Membranes” by Chi Ta-Wei (Taiwan, 1995) is a mind-blowing book. Described as queer speculative fiction, is the dystopian story of Momo. She’s a skin-treatment technician in the XXII century, when after devastating the environment, humanity has moved to the bottom of the sea. She is estranged from her mother, a successful executive at a global publisher (we are all into ebooks then btw), and … Continue reading Book Review: The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei

“One day in the spring of 1998, Bluma Lennon bought a secondhand copy of Emily Dickinson’s poems in a bookshop in Soho, and as she reached the second poem on the first street corner, she was knocked down by a car”. I love powerful opening sentences and this one certain packs a punch. Bluma Lennon, a lecturer of Latin American literature at Cambridge dies after … Continue reading Book Review: The House of Paper

Initially published in monthly chapters over the course of a year, this short novel allows us to glance into the life of a separated mother of a two year old just as she moves into a new apartment and starts her live alone with her toddler, over the span of one year. I have never read a novel before centering around an apartment, but I … Continue reading Book Review: Territory of Light

I love short story collections where the stories are interconnected and the reader has plenty of opportunities to get to know the characters in different settings. In Las Biuty Queen, Monalisa tells us of life for a group of Latinx trans women in New York City, trying to make ends meet by picking up clients in bars or the streets during the early hours of … Continue reading Book Review: Las Biuty Queens