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Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
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|isbn=1786482126
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|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Joan DidionNeil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=The Year of Magical ThinkingDysphoria Mundi
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=This book ''It is Joan Didionnever too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood''s heartbreaking autobiographical account Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the grief she endured following her husbandproportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''s sudden death. Books The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that shed light which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less aloneglobal scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pityRather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normalor mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, lends them a human face Preciado urges his readers to wear''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''.|isbn=00072168581804271454
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|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.
|isbn=1529922933
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|isbn=295967572X
|title=Pale Pieces
|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.
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|isbnauthor=0241678412Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Proof of My Innocence|author=Jonathan CoeVaim
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Life after university hasn''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035043092|title=The Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=I can't worked out quite have been the way that Phyl anticipatedonly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. SheIt's back homebeen seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with her parents Willow Reeves and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of Heathrow Airporthis former partner. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughterbe on maternity leave, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as but when the body of a lefty blogger) popular islander, Archie Stout, is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University found, in the 1980saftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. It plans to push He'd been battered about the government in head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a more extreme direction and is ready to actmuseum.
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|isbnauthor= 1836282028Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Fighting Spirit|author=Rob KeeleyTower|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=''Would you like to adopt a ghost?'How unctuous are the fats of another' ''Young spirits life, born 1887, seeks kind home to haunt. Gentleman by birth. Good company. Gets on well with other children. Jokes and shocks a speciality.'' how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''If interested, place outside your home three twigs, in the shape of an arrow, pointing to your front door...''
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|isbnauthor=1739526910Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Where I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen SibleyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
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|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
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|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.
|isbn=1804271845
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|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.
|isbn=1804271977
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|isbn=1399613073B0FK5LHKD9|title=Moral InjuriesThe Colour of Memory|author=Christie WatsonChristopher Bowden|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of It's been three years since we last reviewed a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, which is a bonus when you aim so we were very glad to be see a cardiothoracic surgeonnew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Laura is Like all Bowden's stories, there's a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is mystery at the free spirit heart of ''The Colour of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyMoney're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We donlike this running theme in an author't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twentys work -five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time, it's their teenage children who are involved.
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|isbnauthor=0241636604Olga Tokarczuk|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary StevensonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyLiterary Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image ''What's the good of a city banker world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in your mindit?'' The title of this spellbinding work, you're unlikely to think 'House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of someone shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like Gary Stevensonthe shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. A hoodie and jeans replaces But, the pin-stripe suit and his background constant in that image is the East Endhouse, where he was familiar with violencestoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, poverty and injusticehe should be doing quite well financially. There was no posh public school on Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his CV - but he had savings. His wife, Laura, has been trying to the London School of Economicspersuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most That's what 'ordinary people do','' He's not been entirely up front about the state of us can only envytheir savings. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to be stupid. It was take his ability at what wascase, essentially, a card game which got it's the thought of the money he could make that convinces him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, that this turned into permanent employment as is a tradermiscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
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|authorisbn=Leanne Egan1836284683|title=Lover BirdsThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensDystopian Fiction|summary=When new girlWell! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, Isabel, moves to Louit's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with hernothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And thatis just what happened with ''The Big Happy's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn. I don't she? Even though none want to ruin a similar experience for any of her relationships with boys you reading but I'll have gone very well so far, and sheto at least set the scene. Once that's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldone, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657XI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
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|summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
|isbn=0571365469
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|isbn=1036916375
|title=Just a Liverpool Lad
|author=Peter McArdle
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''Just a Liverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and around Liverpool. Some are factual, such as the family history of a sea-going family, with the docks dominating lives. Other stories blend seamlessly into the what-might-have-been. It's a book to settle into and allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle's early years. I'd never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and could appear after the all-clear was sounded.
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|isbn= 1836285493
|title=The Double Life of a Wheelchair User
|author=Rob Keeley
|rating=5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Will is a keen player of video games, a conscientious student, a slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, he is an aspiring writer. English is his favourite lesson at his school, Marlowe Park, and one at which he excels. This hasn't gone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and she has suggested to Will and his mum that he spends a couple of afternoons a week at a different school, Station Road, where his ability might be better extended.
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|author=Mark LinganeJenny Valentine|title=ChimeraUs in the Before and After|rating=4.5|genre=Science FictionTeens|summary=''The survivor stumbles forwardElk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, her steps echoing their friendship is a once in the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lost.'' ''Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her headlifetime connection. Fear courses through her body. Her breaths come in shallow, ragged gasps They meet as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes her, and children one day on a raging thirst feels unquenchable.trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other' ''There must be a way out. As she moves through s contact details at the foreign area, memories begin to geltime. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers But then chance brings them back together, everyone’sand they are inseparable.'' As our survivor struggles to orient herself Something has happened though, she's guided by a robotsomething terrible and tragic, which looks human-made, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she and now they must try not to injure herself. Guided to an interview with an eeriework through their grief, terrifying group of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradation, deals done and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be heretheir friendship, apparently the last human being alivetogether.|isbn=B0DNVWMYP21471196585
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|authorisbn=Max Boucherat1787333175|title=The Last Life of Lori MillsYou Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here|author=Benji Waterhouse|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersPopular Science|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening sheI was tempted to read ''You Don's got the house t Have to herself – no neighbour be Mad to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to log on to VoxminerHurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the world-buildingNHS, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's worldhumour and autobiography. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn''You Don't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spookyHave to be Mad... For '' promised the server she same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs the work of tamperinga psychiatrist. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the game has been doctored – well, where laughter is directed at a situation rather than a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.
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|author=Fyodor DostoyevskyMariana Enriquez|title=White NightsA Sunny Place for Shady People
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=As always in DostoyevskyMariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable claritysimilarly tangible texture.|isbn=02416197851803511230
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|isbn=00083850681529934753|title=The Midnight FeastProtest|author=Lucy FoleyRob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersCrime|summary=ItFor a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the country's midsummer on most famous living artist, was not going to show up for the Dorset coast and guests gather opening of his retrospective at The Manorthe Royal Academy. It's their opening weekend Still, he arrived in the nick of time, complete with his two wives and splendid celebrations are promisedsix children, one of whom filmed what happened. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into Being an impressive retreat for the wealthy and famous. Her husbandinfluencer, Owenyou tend to do things like that, but it was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts fortunate that there was a record of the siteprotest. The heat is oppressive Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair and amongst proceeded to spray Bruce in the face, whilst shouting ''Stop the guests are enemies as well as friendsWar''. Old scores are going It seemed to be settled part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, but this was different. The can had been laced with cyanide, and it won't be long before a body is foundSir Max Bruce was dead.
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|author=James BaldwinAriel Saramandi|title=Giovanni's RoomPortrait of an Island on Fire
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction Politics and Society|summary=In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and slavery to expose how these legacies still shape modern life. Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''Giovannirotting's Room'' follows , a blunt yet apt metaphor for the systemic decay brought about by the narrator Davidmalignant forces of racism, an American man living patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. Each essay in Paris, this collection serves as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hellakind of diagnostic, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in charting the novel arises not from his infidelity but from various diseases afflicting the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanniisland state.|isbn=01411863561804271616
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|author=Ashley HicksonPekka Harju-LovenceAutti|title=Wild EastLoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=4.5|genre=TeensFantasy|summary=Written in verse, this is RonnyIt's storythe eighteenth century, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich time of discovery and start at a mostly white schoolBritain is expanding its foreign trade. The move Captain Julius Hawthorne, an experienced Scottish sea captain, is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying sent to settle the Andaman Islands in a new townhis endeavour. Along with his son, a new schoolPeter, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantlytheir cat, Michi, and has always dreamed of being they set off on a rapperperilous voyage to these faraway lands. But now, The islands are beautiful and stunning in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group their scenery andthe islanders' leader, slowlyAarav, Ronny begins is keen to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your wordsestablish good relations.|isbn=0241645441B0DS1VGHH3
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|isbnauthor=1635866847Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Lavender Companion|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin VesciLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=LifestyleLiterary Fiction|summary=It's strangeFirst published in 1953 in French, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the book for you. Before I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake sentences from their proper position on the homepage. I don't eat cakes page and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerallypositions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. (There's a recipe in Like the booklives of her characters, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins they are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book alreadyoften left tragically incomplete.|isbn=1804271675
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|author=Han KangTom Percival|title=The VegetarianWrong Shoes|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionConfident Readers|summary=This novelWill's life is difficult, winner in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the International Booker Prize college, was working a cash-in 2016 -hand job on a building site and penned by had an author who received accident. Throw into that mix the Nobel Prize for Literature this yearfact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is as close to unputdownable as it gets. It more than lives up good at art, and clings to the acclaim. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragilemoments of joy when he is drawing, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowablethat feel like a light at the end of a long, elusive soulsdark tunnel.|isbn=18035100561398527122
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|author=Jenny ValentineSylvie Cathrall|title=Us in A Letter to the Before and AfterLuminous Deep
|rating=5
|genre=TeensScience Fiction|summary=Elk and Mab There are best friends, or more few greater joys than that even, their friendship is a once in book which lives up to a lifetime connectioncompelling premise. They meet as children And this is one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the timeof them. But then chance brings them back together, |isbn= 0356522776}}{{Frontpage|author=Guadalupe Nettel and they are inseparableRosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Accidentals|rating=4. Something has happened though5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with its fantastical, something terrible magical elements and tragic, charming in its gentle portrayal of nature and now they must work through their grief, human relationships. Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and their friendshipprecisely, togetherher stories structured by a wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the world.|isbn=14711965851804271470
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