Les enfants endormis

Read Les enfants endormis by Anthony Passeron

Quarante ans après la mort de son oncle Désiré, Anthony Passeron décide d’interroger le passé familial. Evoquant l’ascension sociale de ses grands-parents devenus bouchers pendant les Trente Glorieuses, puis le fossé qui grandit entre eux et la génération de leurs enfants, il croise deux récits : celui de l’apparition du sida dans une famille de l’arrière-pays niçois – la sienne – et celui de la lutte contre la maladie dans les hôpitaux français et américains.

Dans ce roman de filiation, mêlant enquête sociologique et histoire intime, il évoque la solitude des familles à une époque où la méconnaissance du virus était totale, le déni écrasant, et la condition du malade celle d’un paria.

Coup de cœur des bibliothécaires de mon quartier, Les enfants endormis d’Anthony Passeron se révèle à la hauteur. L’auteur y retrace la mort de son oncle Désiré, mort du sida dans la France rurale des années 1980, la mettant en parallèle avec l’histoire de la recherche sur le sida et le VIH en France. Dans…

Ordinary human failings

Read Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

It’s 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the « peasants » – ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star looks set to rise when he stumbles across a scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents loved across the neighbourhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and « bad apples »: the Greens.

At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life – and love – got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there’s nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

Ordinary human failings is a sad and painful exploration of everything that can go wrong in a poor immigrant family. It takes place in 1990s London and follows an Irish family, after the youngest child, a ten-year-old girl, is taken into custody for possibly killing a toddler from the same neighbourhood. Points of view alternate…

River East, River West

Read River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure

Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she’s never known her Chinese father, and is certain a better life awaits them in America. But when her mother announces her engagement to their wealthy Chinese landlord, Lu Fang, Alva’s hopes are dashed, and so she plots for the next best thing: the American School in Shanghai. Upon admission, though, Alva is surprised to discover an institution run by an exclusive community of expats and the ever-wilder thrills of a city where foreigners can ostensibly act as they please.

1985: In the seaside city of Qingdao, Lu Fang is a young, married man and a lowly clerk in a shipping yard. Though he once dreamed of a bright future, he is one of many casualties in his country’s harsh political reforms. So when China opens its doors to the first wave of foreigners in decades, Lu Fang’s world is split wide open after he meets an American woman who makes him confront difficult questions about his current status in life, and how much will ever be enough.

River East, River West was nominated to the Women’s Prize for fiction. It follows two stories: The main one is 14 year old Alva, born of an American immigrant and an unknown Chinese father. She wants to be American; her mom has completely rejected her country of origin and loves China more than anything. The…

The No-Girlfriend Rule

Read The No-Girlfriend Rule by Christen Randall

Hollis Beckwith isn’t trying to get a girl—she’s just trying to get by. For a fat, broke girl with anxiety, the start of senior year brings enough to worry about. And besides, she already has a boyfriend: Chris. Their relationship isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s comfortable and familiar, and Hollis wants it to survive beyond senior year. To prove she’s a girlfriend worth keeping, Hollis decides to learn Chris’s favorite tabletop roleplaying game, Secrets & Sorcery—but his unfortunate “No Girlfriends at the Table” rule means she’ll need to find her own group if she wants in.

Enter: Gloria Castañeda and her all-girls game of S&S! Crowded at the table in Gloria’s cozy Ohio apartment, the six girls battle twisted magic in-game and become fast friends outside it. With her character as armor, Hollis starts to believe that maybe she can be more than just fat, anxious, and a little lost.

But then an in-game crush develops between Hollis’s character and the bard played by charismatic Aini Amin-Shaw, whose wide, cocky grin makes Hollis’s stomach flutter. As their gentle flirting sparks into something deeper, Hollis is no longer sure what she wants…or if she’s content to just play pretend.

Remember how I’m exhausted of queer novels always being YA and cannot relate to any of it? Well. The No-Girlfriend Rule is a young adult (high school) novel about a girl who realizes she might not be super straight while playing a tabletop RPG with a group of feminists, only one of them blue-haired. I’m…

Last night at the Hollywood canteen

Read Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen by Sarah James

Perhaps the best place in 1943 Hollywood to see the stars is the Hollywood Canteen, a club for servicemen staffed exclusively by those in show business. Murder mystery playwright Annie Laurence, new in town after a devastating breakup, definitely hopes to rub elbows with the right stars. Maybe then she can get her movie made.
But Hollywood proves to be more than tinsel and glamour. When despised film critic Fiona Farris is found dead in the Canteen kitchen, Annie realizes any one of the Canteen’s luminous volunteers could be guilty of the crime. To catch the killer, Annie falls in with Fiona’s friends, a bitter and cynical group–each as uniquely unhappy in their life and career as Annie is in hers–that call themselves the Ambassador’s Club.
Solving a murder in real life, it turns out, is a lot harder than writing one for the stage. And by involving herself in the secrets and lies of the Ambassador’s Club, Annie just might have put a target on her own back.

A polyamorous, bisexual murder mystery set in 1940s, pre-Singin’ in the Rain Hollywood? Do I need to say more? Here is my original draft for this review: do you know how rare lgbt thriller mysteries are? do you???? Now − I’ve read a few queer crime novels recently, so clearly there’s more and more going…

Blood in the machine

Read Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant

The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.

The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines—on punishment of death—and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.

Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it?

I found out about Blood in the machine through the episode of 99% Invisible podcast of the same name. Blood in the machine is storytelling more than anything else. It follows just a few emblematic people, recreating their life and struggle from the sources, and goes to more general lessons from there. This narrative approach…

Mangeuses

Read Mangeuses by Lauren Malka

Qui a volé l’appétit des femmes ?

On date souvent les troubles alimentaires féminins des années 1970, quand apparaît le diktat de la minceur, mais l’injonction, pour les femmes, à s’entourer de nourriture sans manger est bien plus ancienne. Pandore doit cacher son « estomac de chienne » dans un corps parfait, Ève est condamnée à se soumettre à tous les désirs masculins pour avoir croqué la pomme, au XVIIe siècle, les premiers cafés parisiens servent à manger mais les femmes en sont exclues… Les femmes sont partout présentées comme des ménagères ou des gloutonnes, tandis que les hommes sont des chefs ou des gourmets.

Dans l’histoire personnelle de Lauren Malka, le rapport à la gourmandise est central. C’est un plaisir, un lien à la convivialité, aux origines, une créativité des parfums et des couleurs… mais aussi un tourment, une obsession. En se mettant à l’écoute de femmes d’âges et de milieux différents, et mêmes d’autres époques, elle s’est rendu compte que son histoire était partagée par beaucoup.

Récit-enquête incarné assaisonné d’anecdotes culinaires historiques ou culturelles et de témoignages, Mangeuses tente d’apporter quelques miettes d’espoir dans un monde d’affamées.

Un ouvrage tellement intéressant que j’ai oublié de le rendre à la bibliothèque, mon inconscient ayant apparemment décidé que j’ai besoin de le posséder. J’ai beaucoup appris de cette lecture, qui traite de nombreux sujets dont la description de la nourriture dans la fiction et les magazines féminins, l’opposition entre gourmandise mignonne et gloutonnerie honteuse,…

Restless Dolly Maunder

Read Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville

Dolly Maunder was born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors were finally starting to creak ajar for women. Born into a poor farming family in country New South Wales but clever, energetic and determined, she spent her restless life pushing at those doors.

Kate Grenville writes the story of her grandmother, as she imagines it from a few photos and a couple of anecdotes. It’s the story of a woman before women could get out of the home, it’s fascinating and so horrifyingly mundane. There is despair in these pages, but this kind of despair is felt only…

Holly

Read Holly by Stephen King

Êtes-vous prêt à franchir la porte du 93 Ridge Road ?

Dans une jolie maison victorienne d’une petite ville du Midwest, Emily et Rodney Harris, anciens professeurs d’université, mènent une vie de retraités actifs. Malgré leur grand âge, les années semblent n’avoir pas avoir de prise sur eux.
À quelques pas de leur demeure, on a retrouvé le vélo de Bonnie Dahl, récemment disparue. Elle n’est pas la première à se volatiliser dans ce périmètre. Chose étrange : à chaque fois, il s’agit de jeunes gens.

Quels secrets inavouables cachent les murs tapissés de livres des époux Harris ?

Sur l’insistance de la mère de Bonnie, Holly Gibney accepte de reprendre du service. Elle est loin d’imaginer ce qui l’attend : une plongée dans la folie humaine, là où l’épouvante n’a pas de limite.

Holly est un Stephen King sans fioritures. Il refait ce qu’il sait faire, proprement, sans surprise, et avec son talent habituel. Holly, c’est un thriller horrifique sans éléments surnaturels, mais avec des anti-vaccins et du COVID à chaque page, et un petit côté « eh mais ce tueur en série est Jordan Peterson » qui…

Blanc autour

Read Blanc autour by Wilfrid Lupano

1832, Canterbury. Dans cette petite ville du Connecticut, l’institutrice Prudence Crandall s’occupe d’une école pour filles. Un jour, elle accueille dans sa classe une jeune noire, Sarah. La population blanche locale voit immédiatement cette « exception » comme une menace. Même si l’esclavage n’est plus pratiqué dans la plupart des États du Nord, l’Amérique blanche reste hantée par le spectre de Nat Turner : un an plus tôt, en Virginie, cet esclave noir qui savait lire et écrire a pris la tête d’une révolte sanglante.
Pour les habitants de Canterbury, instruction rime désormais avec insurrection. Ils menacent de retirer leurs filles de l’école si la jeune Sarah reste admise. Prudence Crandall les prend au mot et l’école devient la première école pour jeunes filles noires des États-Unis, trente ans avant l’abolition de l’esclavage.

Trente ans avant la fin de l’esclavage au Sud, et en pleine ségrégation au Nord des États-Unis, Prudence Crandall, au Connecticut, accueille des jeunes étudiantes noires. Et je suppose que je ne surprendrai personne en disant que ça ne se passe pas très bien. Mon ami Loïc m’a prêté plusieurs BDs de Lupano, et celle-ci…