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The Gifting: A Supernatural Romance (The Gifting Series Book 1)

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There’s nothing like a big ol’ coffee table book to capture the substance of an artist’s work, but sometimes, smaller formats are just as cool and satisfying but quieter, more discreet ways. These four extraordinary women who take on tradition, injustice, arrogance and entitlement in their own way and will not be cowed. The prose in this novel is so delicious and so sumptuous, you’ll definitely gobble this up in one sitting. And if you try to shut something out and say, ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ I guarantee that you’re going to think about it.

The story is narrated in short vignettes, alternating between the voices of the two women with wings, a feisty would-be female journalist, and the wife of the surgeon who sees an opportunity to achieve fame and fortune by exploiting the winged women, the ‘gifts’ of the title, sent to him by God. Rose—a senior with beautiful ebony skin and a killer volleyball spike—wraps her long leg over the arm rest of the love seat.

Fiction set in the past, yet fresh and relevant to today; a vein of darkness within, yet wondrous and filled with hope.

Sydney Lauren—whose lips are never the same color—leans forward and pokes Dustin in the back with her pencil. Written from a third person POV, I felt the characters were superbly drawn – Etta was just wonderful and I loved Natalya’s stories. The story covers some excellent themes, especially highlighting how the craze for science and the obsession over religion can have common roots. If you enjoyed Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield (another of my favourites in recent years) then I would think that The Gifts would greatly appeal.

Clasping my hands in front of my waist, I watch Missy set up the Ouija board while everyone else laughs and clowns around. We’ve had to wait these many years for a novel that gives us anything like the brilliant, bawdy, tragic, hilarious voice of Karunatilaka’s debut, Chinaman. My head pounds as I open my eyes to a blinding white box—white walls, white floors, white sheets, white bed.

Percival Everett achieves this in The Trees (Influx Press) and makes you giggle and grimace on this uncomfortable but weirdly enjoyable ride. Set in 16th-century Venice, it sees the world’s most famous painters compete to win the greatest commission of their lives while the plague moves ever closer.

The structure of the novel is challenging, and lends itself to needing complete focus by the reader, but if this isn't a problem, the book is an intriguing and gripping novel that is extremely enjoyable. I loved it, and although my proof copy just had placeholder text, I’m sure that the finished copy with its chapter illustrations will be a thing of beauty indeed. My husband will be getting Thomas Piketty’s A Brief History of Equality(Harvard University Press), which I’ll read when he’s done. Then there is Bitch by Lucy Cooke (Doubleday), which provocatively and in great depth reminds us of the sexuality of the female animal.

When we’re in the habit of denying our feelings, it can be hard even to identify what we’re feeling, much less face it, express it, and finally release it. Eger shares the horrors of life at Auschwitz along with personal stories of struggles from her clients in an effort to help others heal from every day challenges we all face. I loved Seán Hewitt’s moving memoir, All Down Darkness Wide (Jonathan Cape), which describes growing up gay in Liverpool within a Catholic family and which gives an extraordinarily sensitive, insightful account of his love affair with someone suffering clinical depression while at the same time keeping faith with Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry – the mind’s mountains scaled. The last time I went to a party, I kept seeing stars in the periphery of my vision, as if I had some sort of concussion. The story of an 80-year-old widow, Ma, who travels across India to Pakistan in a journey that awakens many memories and wounds, both personal and historical, it’s beautiful, lyrical, fiercely feminist and often unexpectedly funny.

Edith Eger embraced those lessons and beliefs as a young girl and they helped her survive Auschwitz. There’s a slew of excellent books on hip hop this year as the genre celebrates its 50th anniversary— Do Remember!

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