Wrap Up: June 2025

Hi everyone

June has flown by. Summer vacation has started for the children, my husband and I are still working but in a couple of weeks we'll be going on holiday and we're all looking forward to that.

Here's the list with links to the books I read in June.

- Rachel Joyce: Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North

- Yoko Ogawa: Revenge 

- Stephen Aryan: Of Gods and Men

- Jonathan French: The True Bastards

- Trudi Canavan: Thief's Magic

- Martha Wells: Witch King 

Did you read anything amazing in June? I’d love to hear your recommendations, especially if you’ve got a hidden gem I should add to my list!

Happy reading!
Helena 

 

Yoko Ogawa: Revenge

Hi everyone

Revenge is a collection of Yoko Ogawa's shortstories, they are interconnected and centered around revenge (obviously). I read this on my e-reader.

"Sinister forces draw together a cast of desperate characters in this eerie and absorbing novel from Yoko Ogawa.
An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Years later, the writer’s stepson reflects upon his stepmother and the strange stories she used to tell him. Meanwhile, a surgeon’s lover vows to kill him if he does not leave his wife. Before she can follow-through on her crime of passion, though, the surgeon will cross paths with another remarkable woman, a cabaret singer whose heart beats delicately outside of her body. But when the surgeon promises to repair her condition, he sparks the jealousy of another man who would like to preserve the heart in a custom tailored bag. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders—their fates converge in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape." 

Unfortunately, I found Revenge to be really mediocre.

Most of the stories were forgettable and left no impression on me. They felt flat, lacking the depth or emotional punch I was hoping for. There was nothing that stood out; no moment that made me pause, no character that lingered in my mind after I finished reading.
The only bright spots were the little moments where the connections between the stories became clear but they weren’t enough to make the book memorable or impactful.

It’s a shame, because I love the idea of interconnected stories, especially with such a dark and intriguing theme as revenge. But in the end, Revenge just didn’t resonate with me.

Have you read Revenge or anything else by Yoko Ogawa? Did you feel the same way about this book, or did it leave a stronger impression on you? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Happy reading!
Helena

Yoko Ogawa: The Diving Pool

Hi again

I finished this collection of three novellas’ on Monday but I couldn’t write a review about them.
These are strange and disturbing stories and I still don’t know whether I liked them or not.
My copy is in Dutch and counts 158 pages.

“A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool--a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life.
A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy that may or may not be a hallucination--but whose hallucination is it, hers or her sister's?
A woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boarding house run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg.
Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.”

All three novellas’ have a detached, alienated and very, very lonely protagonist.
They don’t know why they are doing what they are doing and they don’t seem to understand the consequences of their actions, they are adrift. And in their isolation they try to reach out to others without knowing how. This leads them to cruelties both large and small. They get bitter and lost in their own world where there is no empathy for them.
Ogawa has a subtle, detached writing style. We are observing the characters and while we do so we get glimpses of their emotions, but only glimpses. It’s bleak and cold.
The stories are deeply unsettling and downright creepy.
Definitely unique and the stories have been turning around in my mind for two days now.

Happy reading.
Helena