Book Club – Terence Eden’s Blog

Book Review: Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth ★★★⯪☆

Terence Eden — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:34:42 +0000

I'm really not sure what to make of this book. It was recommended by my book club as something between tragedy and comedy. The characters are excruciatingly well written - if you (or your friends) shoplifted Impulse body-spray back in the 1990s, you'll be hit by a terrifying wave of nostalgia.

It reminds me of this excellent essay by Marie Le Conte about consent. What can a teenage girl consent to? What will fuck her up for years to come? What if she doesn't mind being a little fucked up?

The prose is amazing, the plotting perfectly paced, and the denouement satisfying - with lots of retrospectives "Oh! I get it now"s.

Despite the hectic and hilarious story, I still felt a little sordid reading it. There's a streak of sadness running through it, intertwined with some unbearably heartbreaking poetry.

It’s always raining and there’s nothing to do except dream and they don’t even give you much time to do that with all the coursework.

It is entertaining and fun - but you need a strong stomach and a casual disregard for the overall happiness of your protagonists.

One note - there are a few odd / broken styles in the ePub. Nothing too disruptive, but some passages have a slightly smaller font size for no discernable reason.

Book Review: The Names by Florence Knapp ★★⯪☆☆

Terence Eden — Sat, 09 May 2026 11:34:20 +0000

This has an excellent narrative structure, some beautiful prose, and I just didn't enjoy it.

The story is Sliding Doors meets Same Time Next Year mixed with a distressing amount of domestic violence.

A mother faces a difficult choice. Should she name her child after her abusive and violent husband? In one strand she does, in another she doesn't, and in the third she makes a compromise. We rejoin the story every few years to see how our protagonists are progressing.

It mostly works and pushes us to consider how much the path of our life is influenced by factors outside of our control.

I have a real difficulty with books about violence. All of the characters are unsympathetic - trapped by tyrant but also trapped by their own inaction. I also struggled with how pedestrian and limited it was. In a world where you can read anything, why would you choose to spy on your horrible neighbours? Like a tawdry soap-opera it offered nothing more than misery and heartbreak. Fine if you need that sort of substitute empathy, but it left me feeling grubby and unsatisfied.

To be fair, the characters in the book address this:

‘Why read them if they make you feel bad?’

‘Because I’m hoping one of them might feel like me,’

It isn't a bad book - although it does veer into cliché a little too often - and the structure is interesting enough. But I found its subject matter too distressing to be enjoyable,

Book Club Discussion

This isn't the sort of book I'd normally pick up - but it was chosen by the book club I attend. The majority of readers rated it higher than I did. Here are some of the things we discussed.

The central message sees to be that, no matter how hard you try, the tragedy which infects your life can never be escaped. I found that depressing and disempowering. The domestic dreariness was stifling and just left me irritated with the passivity of the characters.

The evil father is an arsehole - but a one-dimensional arsehole. I get that there's a risk to humanising an antagonist, but other than a brief mention of his back-story there's nothing about him. I didn't want a justification for his actions, but he felt like a cartoon villain.

Even when one character gains a moment of happiness, it is offset by another's misery. No matter which path is chosen, someone always ends up broken.

Are we "destined" to meet the same people, no matter what path we take?

Book Review: Small Comfort by Ia Genberg ★★☆☆☆

Terence Eden — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:34:59 +0000

I was left somewhat unconvinced by this book. I liked the concept - a series of interrelated stories all told in different styles.

Much like the film "Lola RenntRun Lola Run" there's a briefcase full of cash, a cast of morally ambiguous characters, and a meandering philosophical discussion about the nature of economic salvation.

It slams together the naïve and the cynical into a bunch of uneasy conversations.

I loved the slow-burn of the first story - the way it gradually revealed more and more about the characters. But throughout I was left wondering "where is this going?" The answer, disappointingly, was nowhere.

That's the heart of my problem with the book - it was compelling and frustrating in equal measure. The author herself states it best:

The reader needs something to hold on to. A glimmer of hope

It was stylish, there's no doubt about that. The texture of each story was gorgeous. The plotting was inventive and the morality interesting. I also enjoyed the bluntness of the social politics of economics. I just felt the whole was much less than the sum of its parts.

I read this as part of a new book club I'm attending. Thankfully, everyone else seemed to agree that it was a bit of a let down.