Can't think of a more aptly-named book! I'm not sure if this was a stylistic choice, but the way that the middle bulk of the book, once the Dust Bowl starts, continues to batter you with despair and just the worst things you could possibly imagine, begin to kind of mirror what these people were going through. Egan is as unrelenting in telling this story as the dust was itself. I definitely learned a lot, and it was a really interesting read to see how everything came to be. Rather than finding much human triumph in this story, it really just paints a picture of people reaping what they sow, and some managing to either hold on long enough to stay there and not really see things improved markedly, or get outta dodge, often into a situation you could only call better because there were no literal tons of dirt pouring through their walls.

Reviewed on Sunday, November 26th, 2023, 12:14pm.

Reading this, I found myself quite aware of how out-of-practice I am when it comes to quality reading and comprehending. Banville often left me in his dust with the need to backtrack and make sense of what he was saying, and it made me wish I had put this off a little bit as I steadily exercise the ol' brain back up to game shape. My reading has slowed down over the years, especially from the years of reading for study, and I felt kind of exposed here. Having said that, the book is wonderfully written, constantly poetic, frequently funny, even more frequently sad, and most of all impressive in capturing the way our memories bounce from topic to topic, how things can solidify in our memories, how "Memory dislikes motion, preferring to hold things still" like a preserved "tableau". Those well-articulated descriptions of the narrator's memory resonated with me.

Reviewed on Thursday, November 30th, 2023, 9:50am.

A very strange story and atmosphere, but as I've found with other Ishiguro novels, the way he simply and meticulously lays everything out is incredibly engaging.

Reviewed on Thursday, September 29th, 2022, 12:00am.

This is a very beautiful and moving story that feels really relatable. Reading it and seeing how she recounts some of the ways she and her husband chronicled their child growing up was inspiring to me as Leo was in the near horizon. I ended up taking some ideas and expanding on them, making an email address for Leo to check in with him periodically and let him know how he's growing and what he's saying/doing so he can see it when he gets older. This book had some beautiful, simple passages around this topic.

Reviewed on Monday, February 7th, 2022, 12:00am.