Caitlin Leishman

A psychological thriller that shows ‘just leave’ is hardly that simple. This book digs in under the skin and lodges itself in the gut – tying knots and clawing at the lungs, zapping the breath out of you.

A woman changes her name, dons a uniform of exquisitely tailored suits and, with genuine talent, sheds her old skin in order to become a world-class conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic – to become Lydia Tár.

I borrowed a bundle of books from a former colleague, the kind of sunny person who leaves David Sedaris’ ‘Naked’ on your desk. Her taste in other books was also very much to my liking. Yet, I returned them all…except one—a collection of works by Joan Didion. On the spine are the words ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live.’

In his short story The Nose, Nikolai Gogol wrote that, ‘The world is full of the most outrageous nonsense.’ And it opens with nothing less than that.

Etta James’ voice leaves me breathless. But not in the usual way.

Capernaum is a film about an 11 year-old boy (Zain) who, while serving a five year prison sentence, sues his parents for giving birth to him. 

Upon finishing Patrick Radden Keefe’s ‘Say Nothing’, a work of investigative journalism that pieces together the broken fragments of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, I was bursting with a sense of injustice and confusion about whether I was immorally sympathising with terrorists.  

In Orwell’s fictional state of Oceania, paranoia breeds fear, and the human reaction to fear is to seek protection. This combination led the citizens of Oceania into the Party’s arms.