About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Hanne Orstavik, tr. Martin Aitken
Rave The Skinny (UK) ... deeply intimate and harrowing – words and questions unable to be said but instead carried as a weight internally. In fewer than 100 pages this persists – from the opening ‘I love you’ to the last, Ti Amo is a complex look at grief, love and loneliness, longing, not veiled within a wider narrative or hidden under layers. The pain sits plainly on the page, challenging readers to either step away or carry this weight with them. It is a novel that confronts some of the hardest realities of our inevitable fate, to lose those close to us, and is tender and heartrending at once.
Alycia Pirmohamed
Rave The Skinny Alycia Pirmohamed’s Another Way to Split Water is fluid, flowing through settings, explorations, emotions and questions with an ease that lures the reader to dive in without hesitation ... The collection is itself an act of creation and recreation, acknowledging change over time ... The collection reflects on ideas of belonging, faith and more, offering intimate insight and ponderings of bigger questions through the vivid landscapes that lay backdrop. Memory is explored – sometimes with the heft of the past, others with regret – each with a tenderness and care ... Each poem is crafted, each word perfectly placed, flowing into one another. Dreamlike, brimming with ideas, it’s a collection that engulfs you, invites you to read more, to discover new jewels on each read.
Madeline Miller
Rave The Skinny (UK) A little jewel ... This pocket-sized short story is an offering...that satisfies an itch in its succinct fifty pages ... Deft and satisfying, it’s a welcome – albeit fleeting – return to the worlds Miller brings alive.
Graeme MacRae Burnet
Rave The Skinny (UK) Inventive as ever, Case Study is a masterclass of diversion. Ever blurring the lines of fiction and reality in the form itself, readers come seeking one answer, but instead are drawn into the search for countless more. Serious and witty at once, reality becomes what we make of it. Reality, in this case, is an enthralling read.
Clare Pollard
Positive The Skinny (UK) Lyrical and ambitious, humorous and disturbing at points, Delphi is a relatable tale. The question is whether you’re keen to return to the black hole of the past two years or try to forget it existed where possible. If you do, Delphi gets to the heart of what we might not see coming when the future isn’t on our radar.
Sophie Burrows
Positive The Skinny (UK) ... it’s a calm and silent book. Through its lack of words, all that’s left to read is the feeling—of searching, of wanting, of moving through the world day after day ... A muted palette with pops of reds and pinks guide the reader through many days that could blur into one another, each having their own small significance in moments that in other stories wouldn\'t warrant mention, or are mere background details. This isolation, repetitiveness, is this story\'s main thread ... It\'s warm, it\'s funny—a subtle read, resting in the minor moments—the kebab shop visits, supermarkets, being curled up on the couch watching TV. More than words, Crushing is a feeling; a comforting, quiet feeling—just a really nice and relatable read for our times.
Emily Ratajkowski
Positive The Skinny (UK) My Body captures Emily Ratajkowski’s evolving understanding of herself, and others’ perceptions and expectations, while trying to dissect the patriarchal, capitalist, and often predatory backbone to the industry that defines her beauty as the standard by which others should aspire ... Her self-awareness dives deeper than the surface to offer thought-provoking and impactful moments – some raw and awful, others heart warming – and a genuine attempt to ask bigger questions of how the industry operates and influences while acknowledging her privilege, though it doesn’t always provide answers, and here’s the gap. This essay collection aims big, and gets much of the way there – My Body is an observant, honest, thoughtful, and fascinating read, welcoming readers behind the curtain of an industry often shrouded in glamour, but also into the world of Emily.
Megan Abbott
Positive The Skinny (UK) The Turnout is a dance that begins slowly and lures the reader in – Abbott’s writing is razor sharp, offering a precise dissection of complex relationships, sheltered family, sexuality and secrets. Within the beauty of these dancers’ lives is a darkness left to be peeled, layer by layer, until the dying pages. Ominous and unsettling, The Turnout drives the reader to seek answers.