The Steady Read

Your home for book reviews, recommendations, and more

Tag: Female Author

  • Review: Normal People by Sally Rooney

    Review: Normal People by Sally Rooney

    Over the last year or so, I have actively been trying to read new authors and pick up a few best-seller books that seem to be universally recommended. Sally Rooney’s Normal People was one such novel that everyone—and I mean everyone—seemed to rank at the top of the must-read lists. Naturally, I was sceptical about…

  • Review: Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami

    Review: Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami

    Mieko Kawakami is one of my favourite authors, at least regarding works from the twenty-first century. All of her works have scored four stars and above here on The Steady Read, which should indicate my fondness for her writing style and handling of stories. However, as this introduction (and the rating above) may allude to,…

  • Review: The Columbine School Shootings by Jenny MacKay

    Review: The Columbine School Shootings by Jenny MacKay

    A few months ago, I read A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold, mother of Columbine mass shooter Dylan Klebold. Whilst I found her memoir and insight into the tragic events of 20 April 1999, I also found that the author had gone to some lengths to tiptoe around the actual events of the day—instead filling…

  • Review: Autumn by Ali Smith

    Review: Autumn by Ali Smith

    Writing is hard to spice up, especially when it comes to the way in which a story is told. A typical novel follows a largely chronological telling of a story from a limited amount of perspectives, and that’s that. Ali Smith’s first entry of her Seasonal Quartet of works, Autumn, seeks to challenge how cohesive,…

  • Review: Mr Salary by Sally Rooney

    Review: Mr Salary by Sally Rooney

    A very short but impactful read, and my first experience with Sally Rooney’s writing that has left me interested in cracking open my untouched copy of Normal People. Across its short span of less than fifty pages, Mr Salary details the complex and sexually tense relationship between twenty-four-year-old Sukie and her significantly older—as well as…

  • Review: A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold

    Review: A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold

    I’ve been trying to dabble in non-fiction a bit more, and I’ve always had an interest in notable crimes and their aftermath. Regarding school-related crimes and shootings, none is more noteworthy than the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre (often referred to simply as ‘Columbine’). In A Mother’s Reckoning, Sue Klebold, mother of co-shooter Dylan Klebold,…

  • Review: Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Review: Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Adichie is an author I have a great admiration for, yet I always take an incredible amount of time to get through each of her works. Her talent and slow narratives daunt and bore me at first, but I always come away wishing I had really engaged with the novel and digested it more consistently….

  • Review: All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

    Review: All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

    The last in Mieko Kawakami’s main trio of works—All the Lovers in the Night evokes much of the same emotions and motifs found within her acclaimed debut Breast and Eggs, whilst also successfully mixing in the emotional messiness of her much shorter work Heaven. The story follows Fuyoko Irie, a freelance proofreader who has always…

  • Review: Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

    Review: Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

    You may notice my reoccurring fondness for Japanese fiction, and quirky novels like Convenience Store Woman are exactly why my fondness persists year upon year. Despite being a funny, not-too-serious story about an oddball woman who has dedicated herself to working part-time at a convenience store since she was eighteen, Murata is a surprisingly talented…

  • Review: Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami

    Review: Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami

    A tender, strange, and relatively short novella that explores love, age, and weirdness that forms our many life-long relationships. Following the lonesome and somewhat gloomy Tsukiko in her thirties, Strange Weather in Tokyo focuses on her deepening, almost-taboo and socially unacceptable relationship with the elderly Mr Matsumoto—nicknamed ‘Sensei’—who taught her Japanese in high school. In…