Literary Brooding

All these Perfect Strangers - Aoife Clifford Advanced reading copy - March 1st 2016 by Simon & Schuster AU I was provided with an advanced copy by All these Perfect Strangers by NetGalley for an honest review. A young woman with a complicated past attempts to secure a new future but as she undertakes treatment truth and lies weave together in a clever thriller. Penelope has returned home after attending her first year at University, to a town that she hates and where a great number of people hate her. In an attempt to help her resolve and discuss her feelings about events that have occurred, her psychiatrist encourages Pen to commit to paper the story of what has occurred. We soon learn that Pen is linked to a series of murders that have been committed at University and we learn of an earlier incident as well. This is fast paced and you are quickly devouring the words on the page. I knocked this book over in a day and I really did not want to put the novel down. You are fro

My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante Kindle Edition, 336 pages Published July 24th 2013 by Text Publishing A story of friendship between two young women that is forged through poverty, violence, family expectations  and discovering love. This is a powerful novel that resonates the difficulties of friendship as you mature. The doubts of having a close friend who you come to rely on and the anxieties of finding your own place in the world. Ferrante writes with great beauty, capturing the world her characters inhabit with great realism and you can vividly picture the streets, the shops that they walk through. The characters that she has created are flawed, beautiful and ugly. It is their ugliness I found the most compelling as it you appreciate their motivations. There are also insights which come as shock when the age of the parents is revealed and you realise that this is a cycle of behaviour. There is a great deal to like about the novel, it is richly detailed and the chara