Alix Ohlin

This is the story of the relationship between two sisters, Lark (the narrator and elder) and Robin. Their fathers are not in their lives and their mother is very neglectful. The sisters form a strong bond despite very different personalities. They go through life, sometimes close together, sometimes almost estranged, but always able to maintain the tie that binds them.

I liked this exploration of sibling, mother-daughter, mentor-student relationships very much. Well written, with strong characters and voices that rang true. I liked the way it made me think about "editing" our lives...our memories...our realities, consciously or otherwise, by ourselves or those who know us. Very well done.… (mehr)

We Want What We Want is an interesting collection of short stories. Alix Ohlin is a wonderful author, and I jumped at the chance to read the latest. The stories in this volume are all darkly hilarious, expecially if you have a bit of a twisted sense of humor and a love of irony, such as myself. All centered around the recurring theme of unfufilled desire leadng to pain and ruined lives, with each story featuring one character who wants one thing such as love but failing miserably, meanwhile we hear about a semi-close character whom has actually acheived the original desire, inspiring more pain and jealousy and hatred than what was there before.

This theme is an every day thing for the majority of society, we can't get everything we want so theres always some desire or dream that remains unfulfilled; Meanwhile we are bombarded with social media profiles full of people living our dream. While thats not a great feeling, this collection proves that if you step far enough back there is something funny about how things turned out.

I had very high hopes for this collection and while all the stories were decent, none of them really jumped out or imprinted in my thoughts, making We Want What We Want a decent read, but nothing to write home about either.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for providing a digital copy of this book in exhcange for my honest opinion.… (mehr)

Dual Citizens follows the anything-but-straightforward life adventures of sisters Lark and Robin Brossard, from childhood to maturity. Older sister Lark narrates. The two are born and raised (after a fashion) in Montreal by their mother, Marianne, a beautiful but moody and perpetually aggrieved young woman whose greatest gift to her daughters seems to be an emotionally withholding, hands-off style of parenting that often veers distressingly close to neglect. With their mother providing room and board but little else (and even these are delivered grudgingly), the girls rely on each other for every other kind of support. Early in the book Lark establishes that she is the practical sister—a lover of order and routine—while Robin possesses an artistic temperament and a soul that is wild, free-spirited and creative but also darkly self-obsessed and impulsive. By a fluke the girls discover Robin’s affinity for the piano, and behind their mother’s back Lark arranges music lessons with a generous neighbour. This is typical of how Robin’s and Lark’s lives move forward: major developments resulting from accidental encounters, spontaneous decisions resulting in sudden and drastic shifts in trajectory. Lark leaves home for a small college in the US, Robin pursues a career on the concert stage. Fascinated by the methodical process of constructing stories out of images, Lark takes up film studies and becomes the protégé of a respected filmmaker named Lawrence Wheelock, later becoming his assistant, and finally his lover. Robin abandons music and falls off the grid, eventually resurfacing in rural Quebec where she’s operating a wolf sanctuary. The story of Lark and Robin covers decades and moves through moments of crisis familiar to all of us: failure, estrangement, illness, death. When the sisters come together again after years apart, both deeply altered by what they’ve witnessed and experienced, they rediscover their love and rekindle the unquestioning trust that from childhood has always bound them together. At its best, Alix Ohlin’s moving and intimate narrative convincingly renders life as we know it: a mostly unplanned construct more deeply influenced by chance than we’d care to admit, and made up of events, conversations, desires and choices that compel us to action and mould us into the person we become. If the book sometimes seems structurally random and even chaotic, that’s probably because it is: because life is chaotic, the world we live in unpredictable. The beauty of Dual Citizens is that it captures life’s chaos without pretense, and without apology. A finalist for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize.… (mehr)