Tag: contemporary fiction

Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog1 Comment

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Publisher: Scribner UK
Publication Date: 20/02/2020
Length: 163 pages
Genre: Translated Fiction | Korean Fiction | Contemporary Fiction

CW: sexual assault

Blackwells.co.uk

Kim Ji-young is the most common name for Korean women born in the 1980s.
Kim Ji-young is representative of her generation:

At home, she is an unfavoured sister to her princeling little brother.
In primary school, she is a girl who has to line up behind the boys at lunchtime.
In high school, she is a daughter whose father blames her for being harassed late at night.
In university, she is a good student who doesn’t get put forward for internships by her professor.
In the office, she is an exemplary employee who is overlooked for promotion by her manager.
At home, she is a wife who has given up her career to take care of her husband and her baby.

Kim Ji-young is depressed.
Kim Ji-young has started acting out.
Kim Ji-young is her own woman.
Kim Ji-young is insane.

Kim Ji-young is sent by her husband to a psychiatrist.This is his clinical assessment of the everywoman in contemporary Korea.

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog3 Comments

The Bridge of Little Jeremy by Indrajit Garai

Firstly, huge thank you to Estelle for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: 17/03/2019
Length: 278 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Jeremy’s mother is about to go to prison for their debt to the State. He is trying everything within his means to save her, but his options are running out fast.

Then Jeremy discovers a treasure under Paris.

This discovery may save his mother, but it doesn’t come for free. And he has to ride over several obstacles for his plan to work.

Meanwhile, something else is limiting his time…

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog4 Comments

The Existence of Amy by Lana Grace Riva

Firstly, I just want to say a huge thank you to Lana Grace Riva for reaching out and providing me a copy of this book for an honest review.

Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: 02/08/2019
Length: 247 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Amy has a normal life. That is, if you were to go by a definition of ‘no immediate obvious indicators of peculiarity’, and you didn’t know her very well. She has good friends, a good job, a nice enough home. This normality, however, is precariously plastered on top of a different life. A life that is Amy’s real life. The only one her brain will let her lead. 

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog1 Comment

The Cat and the City by Nick Bradley

Publisher: Atlantic Books
Publication Date: 04/06/2020
Length: 291 pages
Genre: Short Stories | Literary Fiction | Contemporary Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

In Tokyo—, one of the world’s largest megacities, —a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. With each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways. But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers—, from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo’s denizens, drawing them ever closer. In a series of spellbinding, interlocking narratives—, with styles ranging from manga to footnotes—, Nick Bradley has hewn a novel of interplay and estrangement; of survival and self-destruction; of the desire to belong and the need to escape. Formally inventive and slyly political, The Cat and The City is a lithe thrill-ride through the less-glimpsed streets of Tokyo.

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