Books I read in January 2024

Wellness by Nathan Hill was placed in the 1990s when Jack and Elizabeth met as students against the background of a life scene in Chicago. The novel follows the ups and downs of their relationship over the next 20 years until the middle age, when they are married with a young son. Jack is a photographer while Elizabeth works at a wellness lab specializing in the use of placebo to treat disorders. The development of the character is extremely detailed, although some of the deep dives on psychology and algorithms could be slightly shorter. Still, unlike most Prague novels that deal with complex social problems – Wellness is a huge 600+ pages – it is not taken too seriously thanks to Hill’s sharp eye for humor and cynicism. I enjoyed Hill’s debut a lot and his second novel did not disappoint. Many thanks to Pan McMila for sending me a copy copy through Netgalley.

Green Point by Madeleine Gray is a debut novel for a young woman from Australia, who has an affair with a more adult colleague for married work. Hera is a sarcastic graduate of the mid-1920s in an office work he hates as a moderator when he meets Arthur who works as a journalist. I can understand how some readers will be delayed by Hera’s obsession to someone who clearly wastes his time and will never keep his promise to leave his wife, but I think Gray emphasized the situation intentionally infusing, keeping Arthur very remote as Hera tried to do something completely for her. Gray is also very good at depicting the banality of office work and how social media weave the way through everyday life for millennia. Many thanks to Weidenfeld and Nicholson for sending me a copy copy via Netgalley.

All the houses I have ever lived in by Kieran Yates He examines the condition of the UK housing today through 20 different properties in which Yates lived during her childhood and early adulthood. These include a Satile terrace as a young child, an apartment over a car showroom in Wales, then returned to London to live in the student’s residence student, followed by a depressing cheerful circle of private rentals. This is a smart mix of a personal memoir and a nuanced housing crisis. The Farce of roommates’ auditions generates some fun anecdotes, but also reveals a lot about how discrimination decreases in race, class and gender. Yates reveals in the last chapter that the advance I received for writing “all the houses I had ever lived in” allowed her to put a deposit to buy a property with her husband. Ironically, the book itself is a timely reminder that fewer people are able to achieve home property or even feel secure and secure in renting.

I read A day by David Nicolls In the summer of 2010 and reviewed it before the much expected adaptation of Netflix. Emma Morley and Dexter Maichu meet on the night of their graduation at the University of Edinburgh on July 15, 1988. They maintained a connection as friends and the novel follows their life on St. Sweetin’s day every year for the next two decades while moving in the 20th and 30s. Emma lacks self-esteem and is a waitress, a teacher and then a writer, while Dexter comes from a more recent origin and becomes a television presenter. The scenes of the photos usually explore the consequences of the main events of life, not to deal with them directly. In addition to Emma Ian’s boyfriend, the supporting characters were not very clear in my memory, but this region certainly did it, and although it was not unexpected this time, his impact was still felt. So far I have watched the first six episodes of the Netflix series and I enjoy it a lot, especially because it is so loyal to the PACY dialogue in the novel.