Claire McAlpine 📚
@clairewords
Reads, Reviews at Word by Word Enjoys women in translation, Irish Lit, Nature Writing, Creative Non-fiction Adoptee France clairemcalpine.com flairesse.com
Enjoyed seeing a number of iconic works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicting his fascination with theatre & the many characters frequenting & participating in Moulin Rouge performances during the Belle Epoque era, Paris, Montmartre. Also the lithograph process used in his infamous poster style.
#SaraBaume discovers the work of artist #MollieDouthit at an exhibition in County Cork. 'Opening Night' explores the connection between two women, consideration of the artist's work, growing into support of a woman grappling with a tumultuous period of her inner life. So looking forward to this.
Relocated to the lake to escape the ever increasing temperature, as day by day, walls, floors, interiors of cupboards, everything keeps getting hotter.🌡 Reading Remarkably Bright Creatures by #ShelbyVanPelt another popular fiction novel of 2022. 🐙 Seen: less remarkable creature on a paddle board.🐾
A serendipitous reading moment while reading the closing pages of #DouglasStuart 's John of John. I come across a reference to a meeting time and place. Thursday 16th July at 8pm. "The date was today. The time was less than two hours away." 🤔 📚💙
L'Ange de la Baie ("The Angel of the Bay") on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice, created by Niçois sculptor #JeanMarieFondacaro, unveiled on 14 July 2022. #dayofremembrance #14juillet #nice2016 #fêtenational🇫🇷
A Bloom🌺 Under suffrance of a canicule, You choose this day to grow & bloom. Your life so short, of beauty unfolds, crimson, carmine, ruby bold. Shades of scarlet, burgundy crease I can but admire this nature release, that gifts us her bloom on this baking day, making mine brighter In every way.
After #jancarson 's The Raptures, I read #MiriamToews novel, A Complicated Kindness & was surprised to find a common theme #Rapture Teenage Nomi is Mennonite trying to work out why her sister & mother have disappeared and begins to question this eternal life belief system that shuns so easily. 💙📚
I'm immersing in the riveting 'Land' by #MaggieOFarrell, the cover depicting a water source, a welcome representation on yet another very hot day. Now 34°C rising to 37°C. Incredibly descriptive, full of love for language, both Irish and English. Here, we encounter theodolite and pellucid.
I can relate, I picked up Han Kang's The White Book to read in the 1st heatwave, largely set in snowy Warsaw, but all the whiteness definitely had a cooling effect. 🤍🕊🥰
N. Ireland 1993. When children from a class in a small town begin dying from a mysterious illness, locals react, exposing the realities of family life in a community amidst "the Troubles." One family seems to be immune. A thought-provoking portrayal of an affective legacy The Raptures, #JanCarson
The more stubborn the isolation, the more vivid these unlooked-for fragments, the more oppressive their weight. So that it seems the place I flee to is not so much a city on the other side of the world as further into my own interior." The White Book #HanKang
"Conversing with children is a fine art, I realised. An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word. Or a gradual release of information like time-controlled vitamins." #MiriamToews The Flying Troutmans 📚💙
Hattie is called back from Paris by her 11 yr old niece due to hospitalisation of unstable mother Min. When 15 yr old Logan gets expelled, they hit the road to find a long departed father. Ideal summer read, pacy, dramatic, funny, total feel good. The Flying Troutmans #MiriamToews 🇨🇦 #roadtrip 📚💙
Strategy for a heatwave. The White Book by #HanKang, evoking images of show, cold & plummeting air temperatures. Short vignettes of past & present evoking white, cold, death, memory, a dead sister, a dog named Fog. The many unanswered questions of existence, the in-between of sleep & wakefulness.
A Mask the Colour of the Sky by #BassemKhandaqji Nur, an archaeologist from a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds an Israeli ID card in an old coat. Adopting the mask of the occupier he attempts to understand a mindset. Joining a dig, Nur passing as Or, grapples with inner conflict. Though provoking.
An excellent, transformative tale of Anna. She looks at her life with bafflement. How did it come to be? Well read #CarlJung #AlbertCamus lacking agency, prone to obsession, her life reaches a tipping point, a beautiful loan to herself. Perseverance rewards. A Beautiful Loan by #MaryCostello 💙📚
Unsettling, compelling, mysterious, dark. Madelaine, a foundling, enters a repressive peasant community without having been conditioned into submission. Her instincts run contrary to theirs, unsettling an unsustainable way of life lead. Brilliant. Madelaine Before the Dawn by #SandrineCollette 🇫🇷
Currently reading this political satire set in a futuristic New Zealand where everything familiar is renamed and Earth has been colonised by non-Humans. A mixed race young man wants to help Humans so enters the system to try and change things ftom within. Turncoat by #TihemaBaker Ockham longlisted
1920, a remote farmhouse near Avignon. Ettie lives with a reclusive tyrannical artist uncle. Joseph arrives to interview him. Mystery, romantic tension, a badly behaved, spoiled artist who has coerced his niece to take care of his needs for little in return. Unique revenge. The Artist #LucySteeds
Immersing in the 1940's & 1950's NY city and New Eng. suburban worlds of The Street & The Narrows by #AnnPetry Centred around residential communities, survival of inhabitants confronting challenges of their birth circumstance & who they are becoming, in those environments. Highly Recommended.
What a joy to pick this up, to be completely immersed, intrigued, entertained by interlinked characters, connections, disappointments and dilemmas, navigating the lives of diverse, complex British women, each one of whom could have been a novel in herself. Girl, Woman, Other by #BernadineEvaristo 🎭
My weekend reading, Kin by #TayariJones Motherless, childhood friends, Vernice & Annie launch into adulthood carrying abandonment wounds. One runs to Memphis to find her mother, the other to Atlanta for an education and a substitute. Alternating chapters lead them away from & back to each other.
Recently finished this thoroughly extraordinary account of dedication & perseverance, the journey & battle to obtain an apology, redress and restorative justice for victims + survivors of #MagdaleneLaundries in Ireland from a state whose strategy was diminish, deny, delay. A Campaign for Justice
Will this one lure me back to fiction? Opening Line: "A swamp knows more than people about most things" THE MIRES BY #TinaMakereti Three women give birth in different countries and decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town. The swamp beneath their feet watches, waits.
Cactus on the Corner #Blueskyartshow #skyline #edge #FrenchVillage #cactus #photography
Raced through this nonfiction title that addresses this hot potato topic especially in the US. Using neutral language, with numerous quotes from people involved, it gives near equal chapters to First/birth mothers, adopted adults and adoptive parents & how the constellation comes together.
Kinship by #DorothyCross, because it's curated by an artist interested in the ordinary ancient, and in making things right, while also allowing others to share their thoughts as she makes her own enquiries, both practically and artistically. Thought provoking essays and an exhibition in a book. 💙📚
#PhilippeSands writes of the #Chagos archipelago. The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled it part of Mauritius. Britain must end its occupation. He travels with Liseby who visits her birthplace Île du Coin, dances on sand, sings, tends family graves, watched afar by a strange ship.
Thought-provoking essays from #JeanetteWinterson consider the non-western structure of Arabian Nights, a British obsession with Aladdin, what we can take from these stories, looking at life today. Engaging on life, storytelling, saviour of imagination, changing the narrative. One Aladdin Two Lamps