Tag: book review

A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, Nonfiction by Sophie Elmhirst

A fascinating book, based on a true story about a failed ocean trip. On their way to New Zealand and approaching the Galapagos, the British seafarers Maurice and Maralyn get shipwrecked and spend 174 days on a life raft drifting in the Pacific. Their story is told so well by journalist Sophie Elmhirst that it makes you question whether there is any point in reading fiction. Elmhirst’s language is so understated, but her style is so powerful that it manages to create several metaphorical levels on top of this story of adventure and survival.

The first several parts of the book read like a thriller; the last two chapters of the book are heartbreaking. A sea voyage becomes a metaphor for marriage, partnership, love, and death. It is a must-read if you need a trigger to reflect on your own choices and your own voyages…

Yellowface, Novel by R.F.Kuang,2023

What starts as an excellent, witty satire of the publishing industry ends as a boring attempt at changing the genre of the book and turning it into something like a mystery or a psychological thriller.

The most powerful part of the book is the one describing June’s options offered by her publisher as a spec writer after her disgrace as a plagiarist. It is a scathing satire on the “check-box” approach to fiction writing – the author is aiming to tick certain thematic or political or purely propaganda boxes: e.g. race, identity, feminist agendas, patriarchy, etc. Kuang’s own book is ticking one such big check-box – “cultural appropriation”. Hence the title “Yellowface”. Yet, the most important issue the book touches upon is “what exactly authorship is”! Is using somebody else’s story plagiarism? And unfortunately, Kuang tends to side with the wrong answer – that it is. As if you can’t write about experiences that you have not personally lived through… Or you can’t write about a race you don’t belong to… Kuang seems to forget that writing is “expression”, it is about the “how” and not about the “what”. Recent literature though, which manages to get in the spotlight, borders on propaganda – it is more interested in the “what”. It is enough to look at some of the major fiction awards! Or The New York Times’ book recommendations…

Books: Flesh, A Novel by David Szalay, 2025

Somewhat disappointing for a Booker-nominated novel! But aren’t they all recently?

Szalay tracks in a coldly observant style the life of a boy from behind the Iron Curtain who is sexually abused by a 40-something woman, the age of his mother. The boy becomes obsessed with the older woman, which leads to the accidental murder of her husband. From now on, things go downhill for the main character – although on the surface, his life trajectory is quite successful, financially, socially, and sexually. We follow Istvan, who leads a life as an “out of body” experience, unable to fully engage emotionally with his female partners. On the other hand, we see him capable of deep hatred – towards his stepson, and deep love – towards his own child. Istvan is not just an unsympathetic character. He develops into quite a monstrous person, and despite his overwhelming unhappiness, he never appeals to the compassion of the reader.

If Szalay’s intention was to show the effects of a totalitarian society and its sexually and socially frustrating system on a generation of people who got to experience the collapse of this system, the result is quite unsatisfactory. Istvan’s story could be anybody’s story. The author seems to have little, if any, knowledge of life behind the Iron Curtain.

If Szalay’s intention was to show the effects of childhood sexual trauma on the life of an innocent boy, this has already been done by Ian McEwan in “Lessons” (2022) in a most brilliant way.