Diving into books from this month. No filters, just raw takes on what I read.
I found Ogawa through The Housekeeper and the Professor, where memory and generational transfer took center stage. Same themes here. An ancient woman lives isolated in a manor. Her story unfolds like layers of forgotten time, preserved in silence.
Keep ReadingZarifian just died at sixty-five. Psychoanalyst, professor of psychiatry at Caen. He wrote about madness, paradise in the head, and losing words. This book recovers what we can't say anymore. Turns out that's a lot.
Keep ReadingYes, anglophone Quebec writers exist. Richler pulls up childhood memories from the Jewish quarter of 1940s Montreal. Each chapter works like a standalone story. The neighborhood lives through fragments, not one straight line.
Keep ReadingAuster hasn't been this Auster-esque in ages. Pure metaphor mode. Old man wakes up in an unknown room. Where? Who? He has no clue. The whole thing operates on that disorientation, that signature Auster puzzle-box feeling.
Keep ReadingIf Michel Quint's short, brutal novel hit you right, the Jean Becker film adaptation airs tonight on France 3 at 8:55. Haven't read it? Here's your shot to discover something fierce packed into small pages.
Keep ReadingFell completely under Kawabata's spell again. Reading him feels like stepping into a Japanese print where every element matters: the cloud, the plum blossom, the teapot. Nothing's decoration. Everything means.
Keep ReadingSecond volume of Shimazaki's pentalogy, The Weight of Secrets. Beautiful cover again. We're back with Yukio and Yukiko, but now everything about WWII and its aftermath takes different angles. New perspective, same characters.
Keep ReadingMario Conde left the police ten years back. Now he buys and sells old books. Economic crisis has Cubans starving, ready to sell furniture, porcelain, art—anything to eat. Conde navigates this desperation market.
Keep ReadingMaster Rikyu was one of Japan's most famous tea masters. Late sixteenth century, practicing the "Way of Simple and Pure Tea," rooted in Zen philosophy. The tea ceremony goes beyond ritual—it's coded meditation. Precision as spiritual practice.
Keep ReadingAfter his girlfriend's death, Julien swore off love's traps. He drags his depression around with Pierrot, equally single and unemployed. Then Pierrot meets Sonia. Things shift. They always do.
Keep Reading