The Steady Read

Your home for book reviews, recommendations, and more

Tag: Novel

  • 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: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

    Review: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

    A novel with an attitude, or that’s how it comes across to most readers. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is widely recognised as a novel that wants to pick apart the superficiality of twentieth century society, but I feel that undermines its appeal. Societal critique is a common facet of many novels, so that’s…

  • 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…

  • Review: South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

    Review: South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

    An excellent display of all of Murakami’s talents, bundled nicely into a much shorter package than that of his hit novel Norwegian Wood. South of the Border, West of the Sun follows Hajime, a flawed but very honest portrayal of a man who has had plenty of luck and success across his life, yet is…

  • Review: Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

    Review: Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

    You may notice my reoccurring fondness for Japanese fiction, and novel like Convenience Store Woman are exactly why this is the case. 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 surprisingly talented at tackling a lot…

  • Review: Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto

    Review: Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto

    A short, riveting tale of a mystery that involves what seems to be nothing more than a tragic lover’s suicide quickly becomes quite an entrancing step-by-step deduction to the true motive behind two cyanide-filled corpses – a government worker and a waitress – turning up on a secluded beach in Hakata, Japan. Despite not expecting…

  • 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…

  • Review: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Review: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Beautiful, sombre, and touching. Often touted as Ishiguro’s most sincere and top-quality release, The Remains of the Day certainly earns that title. The story itself is unassuming, following Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, as he takes a short summer trip in his employer’s Ford. Despite being set in 1956, much of the story…

  • Review: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Review: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

    A return to form, that’s one way to put it. Klara and the Sun, as of writing, is Ishiguro’s latest in a strong library of works — but it seems to have prevailed as one of his more memorable novels. Following Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), the reader is introduced to a dystopian, near-future vision…