Thought Train to Pusan

"Clad not exactly as a boy but, rather confusingly, as the boy I would have been, had I been more of a girl." Another book snagged off of the Show Your Pride display at our local library this month: and can you go wrong with checking out a Sarah Waters novel? Even when they are not great, they are still worth a read for the twists and turns (the mileage of which may vary), but most importantly the striving to connect to the relationships around us, or even just to understand how they fit within our lives: there is always a sense of longing, desire, and humanity. In Tipping the Velvet , the story follows a young woman named Nancy in 1890s England, who finds herself drawn into the wonders of a performer named Kitty, who performs songs as a male impersonator. But it is not the act and life of performing itself which is drawing Nancy away from her family to become a part of Kitty’s life, but a stirring in her heart. From here we see how Nancy and Kitty’s relationshi...

I haven’t read any of Sarah Waters’ works previously, though I did get about 20 pages into The Fingersmith before giving up as the language was just really difficult for me to get into (I have seen The Handmaiden a few times already anyways, and do love that movie a lot). But I watched the film adaptation of The Little Stranger recently and thought it might be worth a shot! And The Night Watch sounded interesting enough: the interwoven lives, secrets, identities, and shames of various people set within the backdrop of WWII London, living their everyday lives that aren’t necessarily tied up directly in the war in terms of fighting like you may find in a lot of WWII historical fiction, but their experiences and how things play out are still so inherently tied into this cultural context, showing the effect on lives beyond the front lines. The twist in The Night Watch , however, is that we begin after the war has ended, seeing the point of view of four different...