Welcome to Litsy!

I enjoyed this quite a bit & it reminded me of Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night: the same cloistered environment of women & girls in close quarters & the same kind of simmering psychological motivations for the murder. Bowers' writing is quite delightful; it might seem over-written at first as the pace is slow, but it picks up nicely & provides so many interesting insights into the social & material conditions of the time. #GoldenAgeCrimeClub @Mitch

Oh, man. I'm so JEALOUS of how Jen Beagin writes such clever lines that are consistently snort-out-loud funny without it becoming a flippant kind of farce. This is deranged, sexy, weird, & tender. I love Greta so much; I've never related more to a character. I saw someone describe Beagin as having a soft spot for the wayward soul. And oh my god, the dog & the mini donkeys were so beautifully brought to life. Top-notch #spinsterlit , I must say.

This book was grim, but also brilliant.

It's an excruciating portrait of a lonely, unattractive (we are told), middle aged woman who bores her only "friends" to death each Sunday. She's not got any money, but at least she has her faith, right?.... right?

Well-written, believable characters, vivid, tragic, poignant. This is a highly effective piece of storytelling; just be prepared for 250 pages of joyless misery!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Another Book Depository surprise! Is this one from you, @Cathythoughts ? 😊

This pretty little volume is a novella/short story about “a single lady of a certain age” who befriends a woman from the Rescue Home who has fallen into “dubious ways”. Published in four parts in 1914-15 in the Free Church Suffrage Times, this tale has been virtually impossible to find until it was republished by an indie press last year.

This is the second book of Kawakami's I've read after Heaven, & like the previous one it's existential & profound despite it's calm, stoical surface. In describing in wrenching detail the loneliness of a woman in her thirties, Kawakami resists all kinds of easy moralising. She avoids performing a standard psychological deep-dive. We know the protagonist is living through forms of trauma because of her circumscribed life, but not much more.

#AlphabetGame @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
Letter L

It has to be Lolly for me 🖤 #spinsterlit

Nothing gets me more than sharp, bleakly funny novels with a gothic tinge charting the psychological chaos that is an aristocratic family slowly going to (financial & psychic) ruin. What's more if it's narrated by an outsider spinster, unloved & ungainly, with minimal awareness or an almost defiant sense of cultivated ignorance. All this wrapped up in a darkly glittering bow of cool, assured prose that discreetly maps the horror of good behaviour.

Jennifer promised her dying mother that she‘d never leave her father and has spent twelve years as his unpaid secretary and housekeeper. When her father suddenly shows up one day at tea time with a new wife (who‘s younger than Jennifer), she decides she must grab this opportunity to make a life of her own.

I‘m loving this 1931 #SpinsterLit novel (and von Arnim is rapidly becoming one of my new favourite authors)!

#BritishLibraryWomenWriters