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Books: They were sisters, A Novel by Dorothy Whipple (1943)

It is always a pleasure to discover an underrated female author from the twentieth century. This book felt like a welcome palate cleanser after the flood of mediocre works so aggressively promoted through social media, trade magazines, and even the book sections of reputable newspapers. It is impossible to keep up with every recommendation, yet many of them fall short as lasting literature. It seems that books gain attention more for the identity they represent rather than for their literary merit.

Dorothy Whittle is a master storyteller in the tradition of nineteenth-century critical realism. The fates of the three sisters are shaped by their marriages and their differing conceptions of love. The domestic dramas of the three sisters are rendered with an observant, almost detached narrative voice, in which the perspectives of the children play a crucial role. Through their eyes, the tragedy of Charlotte unfolds, and it is also through them that Lucy and Vera begin to understand their own situations as women and wives.

Charlotte chooses the role of the obedient wife, becoming a prisoner of her own weakness and, in the process, sacrificing her children. Vera, by contrast, is the free-spirited lover who prioritizes pleasure and personal freedom above all else—also at the expense of her children. Both paths prove ultimately self-destructive. The third sister assumes the role of the savior: accommodating, self-sacrificing, and compassionate. Yet she, too, is denied fulfillment—her marriage is sensible and stable, but devoid of romantic passion, grounded in friendship rather than romantic love.

This is not a feminist novel in the conventional sense. It largely upholds a bourgeois view in which a woman’s fate is determined by marriage. And yet, the depth and precision of the characterization allow the novel to transcend this framework. It offers a subtle and compelling portrayal of a shared malaise—a melancholic dimension of the female psyche rooted in the constraints placed upon women’s choices.

Films: Hament, Dir.Chloé Zhao, 2025

The biggest issue is that the film is based on a very weak — not to say ridiculous — novel by Maggie O’Farrell. Chloé Zhao’s decision to adapt this particular book does not reflect especially well on her intelligence. How many stories about women-healers mistaken for witches can one endure? How many female characters cast as embodiments of “Mother Nature” are we expected to feel deeply for? And how many blood-soaked childbirth scenes hovering on the edge of death can a single film sustain?

Shakespeare’s wife giving birth among the enormous, fairy-tale roots of a tree — if this is not kitsch, what is? We see Shakespeare being slapped around by his father. Then the playwright suddenly grows restless — though we are given no real reason why — and leaves his wife to endure the birth of their second child alone. She refuses to give birth inside the house and insists on delivering the baby among the tree roots. Shall I go on?

I feel genuinely sorry for Jessie Buckley, who is a very good actress (The Lost Daughter) and deserves better material. As for Paul Mescal — less so. Throughout the entire film he looks silly and ridiculous.

Films: Sentimental Value, Dir. Joachim Trier, 2025

Isn’t it unbelievable that this film is considered the best European film of 2025?! Poor European film industry—how far it has sunk. This is not a bad film, but it is such a lightweight creation in every respect.

First of all, the script is a pathetic attempt to manufacture a Chekhovian drama out of a family-reunion story. It is heavy with clichés and obsessively focused on the self-indulgent “issues” of the so-called creatives of this world—filmmakers and actors in particular. The introductory scene centers on the main character’s stage-fright “drama,” played with ambitious self-importance and pedal-to-the-metal intensity by Renate Reinsve.

Her father, a famous director, offers her a role in his latest autobiographical film (yet another narcissistic element). They have been estranged for years, and the mother has passed away. There are grievances to be aired and guilt to be atoned for. The daughter refuses the role, and both sisters want nothing to do with the father. This is the core conflict of the film. Please! Chekhov’s characters wrestled with far greater questions—such as the meaning of life or the impossibility of happiness. Compare that to two daughters sulking over their father’s return and his failed attempts to involve them in his next film project.

Stellan Skarsgård could have played this role with his eyes closed. Meanwhile, the overachiever quality in Renate Reinsve’s performance is far too conspicuous; it is as if she approaches every scene with the attitude of, “Look how good an actress I am!”

The film’s ending does carry a certain sentimental value, but it is nowhere near enough to elevate it into genuinely good cinema.

Books: Before I Forget, A Novel by Tory Henwood Hoen, 2025

It is no accident that this book is a bestseller. Essentially, it is a self-help book presented in fictional form—and the fiction is of high quality without being great literature. The novel gently guides the reader through personal failure, coping with death and loss, and dealing with guilt, all in a mellow, compassionate way. A touch of humour and a dose of the occult are woven in, which the reader may take seriously or not.

Henwood’s satirical strength shines when the wellness industry enters the picture. The pages devoted to the main character’s conversations with her boss—the owner of an organic products (or rather, “experiences”) company—are hilarious.

Her most moving prose appears toward the end of the book, when Alzheimer’s and death become part of everyday reality and real pain must be faced in a gracious, unsentimental way. Finally, the author offers the reader one last lifeline with the suggestion that “no one ever leaves this world completely.” You may choose to believe this literally, or simply take it as a comforting metaphor of remembrance.

Books: What We Can Know, A Novel by Ian McEwan, 2025

The novel offers variations of all possible answers to the question “What can we know?” The answers, as expected, are pessimistic. In a world overwhelmed with data and a digital cloud heavy with “knowledge” about everyone and everything, it is still possible to manipulate memory and history as we struggle to “know”. “Most of life is oblivion,” one of McEwan’s characters argues. The truth about the past is unattainable, as it is controlled by the living and by what they have decided to pass on. We can’t know ourselves or what we are capable of. Memoirs are misleading as we put our “better selves” on the page. In a dystopian post-catastrophic world, an age metaphorically named by McEwan – the Inundation (think climate change of catastrophic proportions), humanities and history are losing the attention of the young. The generation of the future is obsessed with the present. Still, a nostalgic professor from the 22nd century searches for a lost poem recited at a birthday party in 2014. This search reflects the author’s hope that literature will still matter…

While the first part of the novel takes place in the future and centers on the search for the lost poem, the second is a soliloquy of the woman to whom the poem was dedicated. It is the more captivating and emotionally engaging part. Here, the novel becomes a satire of sorts of a poet-genius and his literary circle. The poet suffers from “status anxiety” and “limited forgiveness for humankind,” and McEwan so detests him that he turns him into a murderer. Or did he have to do this because he needed to introduce some thriller element to his otherwise quite essayistic narrative?

Stylistically, McEwan is at the height of his craft; his message is melancholic and ironic.

Books: Heart the Lover, A Novel by Lily King, 2025

What an exquisite tear-jerker, impossible not to love! It is the perfect story about a love triangle, the choices we make in our youth, and the blurred line between love and friendship…

The novel follows three college friends, all passionately devoted to literature. It abounds in literary references as the characters spar, debate, crack jokes, and dissect their lives in an effort to impress one another. The narrator is in love with a boy whose closest friend is also in love with her. The first relationship eventually collapses, and the friend becomes her lover. He fathers a child with her but does not learn of it until his deathbed. He dies holding her hand, while her former boyfriend keeps vigil nearby. Stripped down to its bare plot, the story could easily sound like a soap opera. Yet one quickly realizes that “soap” does not define a novel as long as it is not part of its expression.

The reader gets immersed in the story of the girl as it is told by her – a reflection on growing up, a sensual narrative full of happy moments, dominated by the anticipation of happiness and future fulfilment that is only possible in youth, as well as by pain—pain that youth alone allows us to overcome. Even as the novel ends with death, the reverse perspective on time lived has a healing effect.

The entire book is illuminated by a line from The Aeneid, quoted twice: “Someday we will remember even these hardships with pleasure.” That very pleasure flows through the narrative, making the novel so profoundly moving.

Books: The Names, A Novel by Florence Knapp, 2025

The novel is celebrated as a remarkable debut… How is the quality of a book relevant to whether it is a first or a last one? It is also praised for being “original” – precisely the quality that it lacks. One can easily detect how it was planned and designed (or rather concocted) to achieve the effect it has on part of the female reading public. One can hardly imagine a male having any interest in this book.

Its “scheme” is so transparent that it is offensive….It is a novel that could be AI-generated or could be a product of a young achiever who just completed her Creative Writing class with an A+. It demonstrates certain skills on a sentence level. As a whole, it is simplistic and schematic. Its premise is preposterous – the different names a woman can select for her son determine his fortune. The first choice is the name of the abusive father, Gordon, the second is Julian, preferred by the mother, and the third is Bear, picked by the child’s sister. Predictably, the wildest choice leads to the happiest life story, while the name “Gordon” dooms the bearer of this name.

Obviously, the book is about the choices a woman can make to set herself free from an abusive marriage. How many more books can the female audience digest and laud that tackle abusive marriages? What does the book add to the artistic interpretation or psychological analysis of the issue? I can’t see the point. But this is the damage that the book club culture and creative writing classes have brought upon literature. Anyone who can read and write thinks that “there is a book in me”. The book clubs brainwash the potential reader with mediocre standards where everyone can “relate” to plots and characters using their own experience. No one has ever taught them that books are not to be judged from “experience”.

In addition, the whole notion of “female writing” – who came up with this nonsense? But now it has become like a self-fulfilled bad prophecy! There is now a “female writing” called to life, and it is bad. Did Mary Shelley write like a woman? No and no!

The book clubs and their followers created trends where books like “Flow Like a River” and “Where the Crawdads Sing” became the standard of female writing. Books where woman is one with nature and nature is one with woman…The funny thing is that these writers are thought to be “feminist” while they are promoting and reinforcing the most patriarchal trope of womanhood – the “nurturer”, the “earth”, the “procreator”. And because these books are successful, they become the model for future creative writing students to perpetuate that trend. How very annoying!

Books: The Lying Life of Adults. A Novel by Elena Ferrante, 2019

I have previously had mixed feelings about the writings of Elena Ferrante. My esteem of her rose after the film adaptation of “The Lost Daughter” by Maggie Gylenhaal, a truly original and thought-provoking film. My initial complaints about her fiction were related to the first part of the Neapolitan quartet – “My Brilliant Friend” which I found cliched and uninspiring, especially her very traditional class-struggles approach. In contrast – I was impressed by “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” which is an example of an in-depth look into the motherhood and womanhood themes of her previous books and a sort of more incisive continuation of “The Lost Daughter.” In the former, I enjoyed the string of character studies – contradictory and complex, the prose – dense and subtle, the non-judgemental representation of opposing kinds of “femininity,” the ambiguity of female strife for independence as a mix of libration and egotism. “We all narrate our lives as it suits us.” writes Ferrante. This is the powerful message of “Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave” – and it is the meta-revelation of the first-person narrative in that novel.

In “The Lying Life of Adults,” this principle is taken to a level of arbitrariness. An exceptionally smart girl, the author wants us to believe, is debunking the “narrative” of the adults that surround her as lies. Doing that she builds her own, supposedly innocent and honest, narrative. Not a new thing, by the way (i.e. What Maisie Knew) . The problem with the narrative of the coming-of-age girl, is that at some point the “disbelief” cannot be suspended. It becomes impossible to give credit to her unusual for her age intelligence, her interest in higher matters of politics and philosophy, the impression she creates for adults and peers, and her supposedly penetrating representations of the adults in her life. This time, Ferrante is invested too much in binary oppositions: ugly-beautiful, dreamy-cynical, rich-poor, entitled-self-made, so that instead of transforming into psychological “depth” the oppositions come across as confusing and arbitrary. In the main character’s narrative everything becomes possible and hence — not engaging.

Books: The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto, 2015

Have not had much luck with American novels recently so I decided to switch to Japanese literature…Really, everything that I started reading from Bestseller lists or Book Club lists was unimpressive as literature, “literal” or lacking in style (e.g. The Lions of Fifth Avenue”) or “checking boxes” propaganda type (e.g. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.) American fiction is becoming more of a “socialist realism” type of fiction, propaganda over belle lettres, politics over art….

So, here it goes – a Japanese novel. It was a strange experience. It is short, compared to American novels, obviously, Japanese publishers don’t have a recommended word count for a novel…It is definitely engaging – the existence of a secret is planted at the beginning of the novel and its disclosure represents its very end. It describes the relationship of two very fragile, very strange characters with a combination of naivete and depth that strikes me as a feature of modern Japanese literature. Here, for example, is a line, that I remembered: “You never know you are happy until later”…Simplicity and depth at the same time is very appealing. At times, the simplicity starts to dominate the narrative, unfortunately, and you are left with some very banal observations. On the other hand, Yoshimoto can definitely create haunting scenes – reminiscent of Gothic literature.

TV: Ripley, 2024, Dir. Steven Zaillian

Hands down – the best thing about the new version of “Ripley” is its black-and-white cinematography – kudos to Robert Eslwit!

Otherwise – it seems that the driving force behind the making of a new film version of Patricia Highsmith’s novel was Andrew Scott who so badly wanted to play Ripley! And there is the rub…because he is not for that role, he lacks the “charmer” aspect (even though we found him very charming in Fleabag.) And you wonder what draws these people to him?! Why would Greenleaf senior ask this particular man to persuade his son to come back from Italy? Scott (and the director) obviously emphasize the class aspect of the character – a person from the lowest strata of society, who wants to become one of the high society, who mimics their tastes, aspires to appreciate art and enjoys being surrounded by beautiful objects but at the same time has the audacity to criticize his wealthy companions for being too bourgeois (the whole line with the ice-box). So, Ripley’s is a story of hatred for the upper classes but also a deep desire to join their ranks. Scott also focuses on the sinister aspect of the hero. He is sinister even when he plays nice, of he just can’t do the latter…

Comparisons with Matt Damon and Alain Delon are inevitable and don’t go in favor of Andrew Scott.

The series becomes tedious at some point because of the lot of “fluff” in the footage just meant to turn this into a series (with a second season probably coming up, on top of that…) There are some ridiculous parts in the film – one that stands out is the “analogy” with the criminal Caravaggio! An episode that was original and striking, mostly because of the cinematographer, was the one about Dicky’s murder, an elaborate and haunting nail-biter…