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Lucy Hearne Keane's avatar

Read the book a few months ago having pocked it up on a visit to Paris. I quite enjoyed it but I did find it a bit difficult to relate to the characters and their direct experiences. She does have a lovely reflective way of writing though.

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Kate Jones's avatar

Such a lovely way of writing! I can’t wait to try her other novels.

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Jon (Animated)'s avatar

This was a great read. It really highlights that life is lived in those little moments between each other, not in the big gestures. So well written.

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Kate Jones's avatar

Thank you! :)

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Eleanor Jones's avatar

Congrats on your anniversary! This sounds like such an interesting read, I love finding novels with a lovely style of writing. Thanks for sharing x

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Kate Jones's avatar

Thank you! 💕 I think you’d like this one.

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Petya K. Grady's avatar

OK. I have been saving this post to read ... and I was so nervous, Kate!!! I really wanted you to love it and I am so relieved that you did, for all the same reasons.

This quote is in my commonplace journal, I love it so much:

'This was the other thing: it seemed that our interests could be legitimised only if we made something of them—a book, an exhibit. We often said what a shame this was; we romanticised artists of past decades, doing work with great joy and creativity without turning it into a product. Still, we belonged to our own times.’

So many of the reviews of Savaş's work are focused on how simple and monotone her work feels... and I feel that even though I agree with those descriptions from a factual perspective, I also feel that in describing her work in that way... we don't do it justice. There is such an emotional density to it, she is just a master of distilling a big idea to an off-the-cough comment between spouses. I am totally and completely obsessed!

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Kate Jones's avatar

Oh, how amazing that you had the same quotation written down! There were so many in the book that I loved. Like we have both noted, the language and dialogue seem so simple, but like all the best novelists (in my opinion), she conveys the deepst of ideas and emotions this way. And I absolutely loved the ending of the book. I can't wait to read all of her work. Thank you for the introduction 💜 📚

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Resh Susan's avatar

I really enjoyed this book too. It really spoke to me

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Kate Jones's avatar

It's wonderful 💕

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Victoria K. Walker's avatar

Not an author I know, but the book sounds really interesting. Thank you to yourself and Petya for the introduction. And happy upcoming 3rd anniversary 🥳

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Kate Jones's avatar

Thank you Victoria. Such a tiny book that contains much more than it seems. An author I will definitely be reading more of!

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Anna Tuckett's avatar

And happy 3rd birthday! I really enjoy your posts - I have, in fact, linked to your piece on Anne Brontẽ in my latest post.

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Kate Jones's avatar

Thank you!

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Anna Tuckett's avatar

I haven’t read it, but your excellent review has convinced me I’ll love it, so will definitely move it to the top of my TBR list, thank you!

I’m reading Project Hail Mary by Andrew Weir - I read very little science-fiction and it was a present for my husband, but he enjoyed it, so I picked it up to broaden my reading horizons.

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Kate Jones's avatar

Ooh, I am glad to have inspired your tbr!

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Baird Brightman's avatar

Happy 3rd, Kate! 🎂🎉 Consistently great writing! 👏

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Kate Jones's avatar

Thank you! 💕 😊

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Joanna Clare Dobson's avatar

I really enjoyed this, Kate. It very much chimed with my own experience of starting a daily journal of the ‘ordinary’ things that happen to me

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Joanna Clare Dobson's avatar

Ok so that posted while I was trying to edit it and I can’t find a way of deleting it. So to continue: … and of seeing clearly for the first time how that’s exactly where the most important parts of our lives are.

I’ve been luck enough to have been reading a proof copy of Ghosts of the Farm by the brilliant Nicola Chester @nicolawriting which is out at the end of this month. I think you’d really like it actually - a central theme is the impossibility of having a farm of one’s own if one is female and not from the landowning aristocracy. Nobody writes about English rural life better than Nicola.

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Kate Jones's avatar

That sounds amazing! I will get hold of it once it comes out- thanks. I love the term "a farm of one's own."

And yes, your new journaling ideas would sit well with the ideas in the book. It really touched me in that regard.

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