Popular Culture – Page 2 – Cristina Sanders' blog

Creation Lake – Book Review

Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner

Very nearly an excellent book, but…

I’m intrigued from the start with Sadie, our kick-ass narrator. She’s a singular character, I’ll risk a bit of woke chastisement and suggest she felt masculine: decisive, job-focused, practical. Her job has no ethical element to it, she abuses trust for financial gain. A drinking driver, but she tells us she knows how much she can take, and a slovenly eater – warm beer, fast-food, the rubbish piling up around her. She’s very low on empathy, callously uses men for advantage, talks about her body like it’s a weapon. Got a breast enlargement and knows how to use it. Fantastic mercenary women agents have been turning up for a while, from Tomb Raider to Black Doves (mostly male creations I think), but these usually have an compassionate flip-side, perhaps to feed the male fantasy. Sadie is just unbalanced. This makes her interesting. Her narration is straight-forward.

Intermezzo – book review

Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney gives us here an almost perfect story. Five main characters, interlinked, each well rounded and complicated with their own goals and challenges, a set up which could go one of many ways, some deep subplots and an ending all tied up. Sounds a bit contrived, perhaps? There is nothing very experimental, no sweeping poetical passages, nothing clever. No ramping up the heartbeat with triggers and button pushing. It’s just a story of five people. And with that simplicity, it is exceptionally good.

The Ministry of Time – book review

The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley

Yes, it’s only June, but The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley gets my book of the year so far. It’ll be a hard one to beat. Great premise, excellent characters and the hottest sex I’ve read in years. The chap in question has been dragged out of 1845 into the near future, complete with fabulous side-whiskers, a cheeky dimple, and Victorian social attitudes. Our narrator likes his nose. He had a kind of resplendent excess of feature that made him look hyperreal. She is to be his bridge.

Good Material – book review

Good Material, by Dolly Alderton

Andy’s long term girlfriend Jen, with whom has been living for a few years, has broken up with him. He is a scruffy English comedian (I couldn’t help but imagine Josh Widdicombe in the role), not doing so well on the circuit, not hugely ambitious. He thought himself happy with Jen in their ‘tribe of two’ and with their mutual best friends, who have forged ahead, married, started a family while he and Jen roll unburdened into their mid-thirties. The unexpected breakup knocks him sideways. Andy makes his living out of observing others and making comments on the human condition and ‘Good Material’ eventually comes out of his break up. But hell, does he have to suffer for it.

The Night She Fell–book review

The Night She Fell, by Eileen Merriman

Eileen Merriman is delightful. I shared accommodation with her at a book festival last year and we sat by the fire in the evenings drinking wine and chatting about writing, YA books, families, life. I should have locked my door.

Forgotten on Sunday–book review

Forgotten on Sunday, by Valé Perrin

This was a recommendation from my French Canadian friend. She’s young. All her friends loved it. Valérie Perrin is a best selling author in France, and her previous novel Fresh Water for Flowers was a massive hit. But does it work in translation and enchant an older audience? Hell, yes.

Whatever Love Means – book review

Whatever love means, by David Baddiel

Whatever Love Means is an easy enough read about two couples in London around the turn of the millennium, the boys best mates, one married, the other a bit of a predator, with all the ingredients Baddiel seems to think we want to read about: sex, love, death, twists, secrets. Def a holiday read, there’s nothing much very philosophical here, no bigger picture other than creepy Vic having an affair with his best friend’s wife, and an unpicking of why her car crashed into a wall. “Whatever Love Means”, of course, is the famous line of Prince Charles’s in response to his engagement to Di – a stunningly cold response to love, which sums up the book really. None of these characters seem to have discovered the meaning of love. So why has it made my good books list? Well, I enjoyed the obviousness of it. Also, I think the stilted and stifled emotions of the characters deserve exploring. A good book, perhaps, for students of creative writing to unpick. Discuss: How might different people receive the book; what does the author want us to feel; is he in control of his characters?

Lola in the Mirror – book review

Lola in the Mirror, by Trent Dalton

Trent Dalton has done it again – Lola in the Mirror is Boy Swallows Universe in all its unmitigated glory, but in Lola in the Mirror we have a girl hero who’s on the rocks, fighting to gain a place in the world. This was one of my favourite books of 2023 and I do recommend it for the feisty characters, twisting plot, adversity, love and gorgeous writing all wrapped up in a thrilling read. Yes, it is sentimental and the homelessness described is packaged with optimism. Barbara Kingsolver did this with her brilliant Demon Copperhead; she gave the narration of a deprivation story to a gustsy kid with smarts. Perhaps such optimism doesn’t live in broken cars in junk yards. Or, just perhaps, it does.

Pineapple Street – book review

Pineapple Street, by Jenny Jackson

I asked around for a read that was entertaining and not at all intellectually challenging and Pineapple Street delivered, certainly on the second point. I’m not convinced that it is “wryly funny” or “acutely observed” as billed, or why it is recommended by the New York Times, except for the fact that it is very New York, but there are plenty of those books about. Some women in a super rich family have angst, worry about money and class and are fearful of the domineering matriarch.

Pet – book review

Pet, by Catherine Chidgey

Very creepy, very noir, if domestic New Zealand, circa 1970, can be called noir. The story certainly starts off sweetly enough. Our girl, Justine, is in class, trying to please the new teacher, Mrs Price. Everyone is. Mrs Price is young, new in town, and glamourous. Hot, she’d be called today. She also has a tragic past: a husband and daughter, dead in a car crash. Justine watches as she selects her pets and desperately wants to be the one asked to stay behind to wipe the board, or empty the bins, but these jobs go to the popular kids. Justine, and best friend Amy, are not part of the cool crowd. They go home to each other’s houses, rate the prettiest girls in the class in order: Melissa first, others depending on haircuts and body parts, and then they select each other as fourth. Pretty enough, but not up there. They are kind to each other. They talk about boys, and buying a first bra. There’s nothing creepy here, yet. Just a whiff of foreboding. Chidgey is a clever writer. It’s all good until it isn’t.

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