Hey everyone!

La Chamade by Francoise Sagan is a 1965 contemporary novella that follows Lucille and Antoine in post-war Paris – two lovers who leave their older and richer partners so they can spend their days roaming the city, learning of each other and life.

I deeply enjoyed this book. Certainly La Chamade is an adult novel but it reads very much like a new adult contemporary; at its core it is a love story. Love is an ambivalent, evasive force in the translation I read of the novel. Sagan gives the young and beautiful Antoine and Lucille an irresistible kind of love that feels limitless and invulnerable. I think one of the reasons I enjoyed La Chamade so much is because of how simply happy the pair are – Sagan does something very rare in offering the reader a happily ever after in a modern romance story – (don’t worry this is no spoiler – the ending is refreshingly confusing). I certainly felt I was swept up in the glamour and pleasure of 1950s Paris, partly because of the author’s skill in world building but also because of the way love was intertwined with every cafe and street corner described. Sagan’s Paris is a romantic one.

I would recommend this book if you are looking for something that is luxurious, uplifting but also complex and challenging!

Keep on reading!

And thanks again Beth.

Hey everyone,

Here are some of my favourite quotes from some of my favourite books!

Touch by Claire North.

“My skin is wild in the wind

my breath is restless shock

and I am

woman, thick gloves woolly against the cold

man in yellow shoes who lost his way

I am the stranger who gave you the white flowers she carried

in her hand

the face you forget as it turned away

I am beautiful

until I see that she is more beautiful than me

and he more beautiful again

so beautiful, and never enough

I am the woman who stood on your foot on the train

jostled you in the queue

asked you for the time

I am the ancient man who has forgotten his name

the tired old woman who wished to be someone else.

I am no one.

I am Kepler.

I am love.

I am you.”

This is my favourite quote from Touch and is the last page of the book. Not only does it read like a piece of poetry it also manages to entirely sum up the meaning of the story. North breaks the wall between the reader and the page and makes you question whether you really are Kepler or Kepler really is you.

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

“You’re a storyteller. Dream up something wild and improbable,” she pleaded. “Something beautiful and full of monsters.”

“Beautiful and full of monsters?”

“All the best stories are.”

This quote is GUH! Strange the Dreamer is beautiful, it is full of Monsters.

I hope you liked these quotes!

Keep on reading!
And thanks again Beth.

Hey everyone.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a coming-of-age, historical fiction novel that I’m sure many of you will have already heard of!

The story surrounds and is narrated by Amir, a Pashtun Afghan who lives in Kabul. This is a book about family, friendship, class, war and what it means to call a place home. The Kite Runner begins in 1970s Afghanistan before the fall of the monarchy and the later rise of the Taliban. We begin at Amir’s childhood and his friendship with the Hazara boy Hassan – his best friend and the boy he is jealous of most. As the two spend hours buried in stories, flying kites and going to the cinema the Kabul they know and love is unfurling around them, just as Amir’s relationship with Baba is. The winter of 1975 will set forth a series of events that change Amir’s whole life and the lives of everyone he loves.

I went into this book knowing that it was going to be heartbreaking, earth-shattering and tear-jerking and thats why I’m shocked that I was still so surprised when it ended up being all of those things precisely. I thoroughly enjoyed the Kite Runner, not just because of how it made me feel, but more importantly, because of what it taught me about the world I am living in today.

Amir’s description of Afghanistan is worlds away from the Afghanistan I knew, the Afghanistan I had seen, whilst growing up, on the news. In a similar way to Exit West, Hosseini humanises these parts of the world that Western media is so inclined towards demonising. Kite Runner is not just a powerful text that shines light on the horrors of modern islamaphobia, it is also a cry for help to all of the Afghani children who have been left out in the dark because of ignorance and arrogance. After finishing this book I felt like I had gotten closer to learning what it is to truly feel empathy for another human.

Hosseini’s characters are rich, beautiful and horrendous constructs, constructs that are balanced perfectly with accessible but provocative language. Amir’s narration is both extremely frustrating and painfully rewarding; Hosseini pushes us to hate his protagonist so that when we learn to love him we are all the more shocked.

I will say that this is not an easy read – I won’t spoil of course, but do not go into The Kite runner expecting a nice story or a fun read. I recommend this book to all of you because it is important that this kind of story is told.

I give this book a 5 out of 5 stars.

Keep on reading!

And thanks again Beth.