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Review: All This and More
The grim implications of All This and More have a lot of room to build on, and Shepherd committing to the sinister endings makes for very entertaining reading regardless of which one a reader lands on.
The grim implications of All This and More have a lot of room to build on, and Shepherd committing to the sinister endings makes for very entertaining reading regardless of which one a reader lands on.
Like with a trip to a museum, it is unlikely that a reader can digest all of Momento’s content in one go, nor is it necessarily ideal to try. However, Donaldson’s work does inspire return visits; on my read-through, my copy ended up full of bookmarks as I moved through the various sections and marked off passages to come back to again.
Sitting between 150 and 200 pages (depending on the edition) with fourteen essays, Dinner on Monster Island does not overstay its welcome.
The Leftover Woman embraces a range of topics with great emotional weight, including motherhood, adoption, abuse, and the hostility of the United States to undocumented immigrants, all of which together do make a reader truly hope for a kind resolution…
June Hayward wants what Athena Liu has: a spectacular, high-flying career as an author. Despite both women coming out of Yale and releasing their debuts at about the same time, June is bitterly aware of her relative obscurity. Athena dies in a sudden accident, leaving behind her manuscript of her next novel about Chinese workers who were exploited and maltreated during the British war effort in World War One. Even in its draft form, unseen by anybody else, it is a brilliant work. June takes Athena’s manuscript and reworks some of it before presenting it as her own, published under the name “Juniper Song.” Song is a legal middle name provided by her whimsical mother. If it conveniently also suggests a Chinese background that June doesn’t have, so be it. Athena’s wild level of success is suddenly in June’s hands. As Yellowface unfolds, June proves the extent to which she is willing to lie, threaten, and bully her way into holding onto that success.