Journey To The End Of The Night
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Told in the first person, the novel is based on the author's own experiences during the First World...
The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020
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From the Booker-shortlisted author of The Mars Room, a career-spanning collection of spectacular...
A Passage to India
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A Passage to India (1924) is a novel by English author E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the...
Martha Quest
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The opening book in the Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s ‘Children of Violence’ series...
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The German House
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Frankfurt, 1963 At the war’s end, Frankfurt was a smoldering ruin, severely damaged by the Allied...
Historical Fiction Post World War Two German Literature
Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes
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'PEOPLE THINK THAT STORIES ARE SHAPED BY PEOPLE. IN FACT, IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND.' At the time...
Inji works for a secret branch of a well-known matchmaking agency. Men who would like a wife without the long term commitment, hire a Field Wife. She fulfils their every wish, be it domestic or sexual. Inji’s current husband is a repeat contract. He’s not very good at being a husband, and reinforces Inji’s opinions on marriage: unnecessary and unfulfilling. And then there’s the possibility of domestic violence and exploitation.
To be fair, this doesn’t paint a great picture of marriage in (this case) Korea. Inji doesn’t even refer to her husband by name. He’s just “husband”, which makes him almost incidental to the story.
There’s a lot going on in this novel: family dynamics, exploitation, modern slavery, death (by suicide?), prostitution.
And what is the trunk in the title? I personally think it’s Inji’s personal baggage: the emotions, feelings and responsibilities that she carries around with her all the time. This trunk goes with her between field husband, her family and her flat. She’s never without it.
Is it the thriller that it’s sold as? I don’t think so, but it is a very interesting glance into life in Korea, and I really enjoyed it.
David McK (3562 KP) rated Decision at Thunder Rift: Book One of The Saga of the Gray Death Legion in Books
Mar 9, 2025
Giant stompy robots, very much - it seems to me - the Western version of Japanese mecha.
A board (miniatures) game that's been around since the 1980s, with a fair few PC games and other associated elements spin-offs.
With said spin-offs including a series of novels which - although aware they existed (in much the same way as do Start Trek or Dr Who novels) I never really read any of them - I think I might have tried one, back in the mid 90s or so, but it was forgettable at best.
So, when I was recently looking for something light to read in between bouts of heavier literature (I hate that word), I thought I would give this one a try, since it is - apparently - #1 in the entire series, and since it was on sale for something silly like 99p on Kindle.
What I got was pretty much what I expected: a sci-fi war story, where the 'mechs are basically the equivalent of futuristic tanks, with a light smattering of intrigue but with the real draw, of course, being on the mech vs mech action.
I might pick up some more in the series, but don't think I'll be going out of my way to do so.
ClareR (5879 KP) rated My Good Bright Wolf in Books
Mar 30, 2025
At its heart is Moss’ battle with anorexia. After reading about her childhood and her parents, it would be unrealistic to think that both of these factors had nothing to do with her eating disorder. In fact, some of her most intrusive thoughts have her parents voices.
Throughout is Moss’ love of literature, and how the books she read - the girls and women that they portrayed - influenced her self-worth.
This is a story of how women are policed, constrained and ultimately how they are treated in illness. It’s also a story of never feeling that you’re good enough and a lack of control over everything - except the control over what you put in your body.
This really is a stunning, shocking, very emotional memoir, and it reinforces to me what an exceptional author Sarah Moss is.