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Graphic novels often have a way of getting across human pain and loneliness that can’t be replicated in quite the same way without visual accompaniment.
Does it make sense to “review” great poetry? The following is from Milosz’s Campo dei Fiori:
“In Rome, on Campo dei Fiori,
baskets of olives and lemons
cobbles spattered with wine
and the wreckage of flowers.
This is not really a film at all, or a book. It’s a video game. Video games are a form of escapism and fantasy. This is no exception. It is set in an unspecified future during an inter-galactic war. There are all the clichéd humanoid alien characters typical of the genre.
Even the Dogs opens with the image of a man’s body being carried out of a broken-down house in the quiet days between Christmas and the New Year- but who’s the semi-homeless man, Robert, and who’s telling his story?
Alexander Masters’ book is a backwards biography of a homeless addict, Stuart Shorter, who lived on the streets of Cambridge. Tellingly, the backwards element was Stuart’s idea.
House Mother Normal is an experimental novel that at first seems to answer the question of what people are really thinking, though the author’s skilful use of format conceals more than it reveals.
It’s telling that the author describes ‘Maybe the Moon,‘ as being ‘partly autobiographical,’ despite the narrator being a three-foot-tall thirtysomething straight woman and not a middle-aged gay man.
A slim memoir of poverty, abuse, agency and power, this story of a young gay survivor growing up in dirt-poor Carolina is only ninety-four pages long.
Despite the precious title and aura of icky Victoriana, Burnett’s heroine Sara Crewe is actually a feisty little creature with a bit of a temper, fire in her veins and a huge imagination.
Explains why contact with others is so essential to psychological and emotional development. Very humbling stories of neglect and great inspiration to be kind to one another!