A richly inventive new collection of stories from Ali Smith, author of How to be both, winner of the Baileys Women's Prize and the Costa Novel Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us? What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali Smith's new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make. Public libraries are places of joy, freedom, community and discovery - and right now they are under threat from funding cuts and widespread closures across the UK and further afield. With...
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Recensioner
2022-02-13
Betyg 
Jag hade höga förväntningar på denna bok då jag både tycker utsidan och beskrivningen är fantastiskt tilltalande. Tyvärr levde den inte upp till mina förväntningar, men den var ändå helt okej bra. Jag hade önskat att berättelserna hade haft en tydligare koppling till bibliotek, nu kändes mycket som svammel och väldigt vagt kopplat till just bibliotek. Minnena känns aningen onödiga och jag tycker det hade räckt med endast noveller. Boken har en poetisk anda över sig och det är nog det som jag gillar bäst med den. Som alltid med novellsamlingar gillar en några mer än andra. Vissa noveller fastnade jag för, men jag tycker på ett sätt att det krävs relativt mycket av läsaren av denna bok.
I had high expectations for this book as I find both the cover and the description fantastically appealing. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations, but it was still perfectly fine. I wish the stories had had a clearer connection to the library, now it felt a lot like waffle and very vaguely connected to the library. The memories feel a little unnecessary and I think only short stories would have been enough. The book has a poetic spirit about it and that's probably what I like best about it. As always with short story collections, one likes some more than others.
