This Week in Books – 13-09-23

This Week in Books is a feature hosted by Lipsy at Lipsyy Lost and Found that allows bloggers to share:

What they’ve recently finished reading
What they are currently reading
What they are planning to read next

A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.

Will it surprise you to know that there was a slight change of plan to last week’s reading? 😂 I finished The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman, which I reviewed on Monday. I then read Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica (translated by Sarah Moses) and then moved on to The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell which I loved.

Be careful what you wish for… it may just come true.

At The Mercury Theatre in London’s West End, rumours are circulating of a curse.

It is said that the lead actress Lilith has made a pact with Melpomene, the tragic muse of Greek mythology, to become the greatest actress to ever grace the stage. Suspicious of Lilith, the jealous wife of the theatre owner sends dresser Jenny to spy on her, and desperate for the money to help her family, Jenny agrees.

What Jenny finds is a woman as astonishing in her performance as she is provocative in nature. On stage, it’s as though Lilith is possessed by the characters she plays, yet off stage she is as tragic as the Muse who inspires her, and Jenny, sorry for her, befriends the troubled actress. But when strange events begin to take place around the theatre, Jenny wonders if the rumours are true, and fears that when the Muse comes calling for payment, the cost will be too high.

I am currently reading Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell.

Gaspar is in danger. Only six-years-old, he is frightened he may have inherited the same strange abilities as his father, Juan; a powerful medium who can open locked doors, commune with the dead, and possess the ancient forces of the Darkness.

Now father and son are in flight, hunted by the Order, a group of wealthy acolytes who seek to harness the Darkness, no matter the cost. Among them, Gaspar’s grandmother, whose twisted desires have already driven her to commit unspeakable acts.

Nothing will stop the Order, nothing is beyond them. Surrounded by horrors, can Gaspar and Juan break free?

Spanning the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a haunting, thrilling novel of broken families, cursed land, inheritance, power, and the terrible sacrifices a father will make to help his son escape his destiny.

My next read will probably be Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her-only that her books have been banned-and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him.

Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both.

Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.

And that’s my week in books! What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments! 😎