Hiromi Goto's Chorus of Mushrooms (1993) This debut novel is a great choice for the Women Unbound Reading Challenge because relationships, particularly those between women, are at the heart of it, even more particularly, the relationships between three women in one family: Naoe, Keiko and Muriel (a.k.a. Murasaki, which is
Duff Cooper's Operation Heartbreak Persephone No. 51 (1950) When it comes to articulating how I choose the Persephones that I read, I tend to think that it's simultaneously an exhaustive and amorphous plan: I want to read all-things-Persephone, s-o-m-e-d-a-y. But, in fact, I do have an unspoken ranking system and
Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life: 1941-1943 Persephone No. 4 (1999) One of the reasons that Etty Hillesum's diaries touched me so deeply is the way in which she openly struggles with the persecution that she is facing. Whether looking for a distraction from the blatant threats posed to her very
Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life: 1941-1943 Persephone No. 4 (1999) Of the three personal accounts that I read for Persephone Reading Week, In Wartime, An Interrupted Life, Etty Hillesum's diary, was the one that struck me most soundly. Partly, perhaps, because she does not survive the war, so what a
Mollie Panter-Downes' Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories Persephone No. 8 (1999) So you can choose to follow along with my bookish digression, or, you can do a quick online search on this collection and find many thorough reviews of and responses to it because -- both in and
