what i read in May.

8 books...SERIOUSLY?! I can hardly recognize myself.

Jun 06, 2025

Fair Rosamund by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1861 (detail).

Whoa, May started quietly. A month like any other. Juggling many books at once. I never expected to be able to finish them all in time. But, at the end of the month, I checked StoryGraph and I had my confirmation: 8 books read.

Maybe for many of you it won't be a lot, for others it will be an unlikely number to reach. The fact is that, for me, it's the first time. In 31 years of life, I have never read so many books in a month.

And if I have to "analyze" the how, the why, I can only give two reasons:

I started reading many more ebooks, and I noticed that I read much faster and much more during the day, compared to paperbacks.
I was overcome by such a longing feeling, a yearning, waiting for something personal to come to fruition, that I needed a distraction, something to occupy my mind with and make the time pass quickly.

As it happens, I have to say it worked. Quite well, actually.

Who knows if it will ever happen again?! But I'm very satisfied, regardless.

You have a lot of reviews to read this time…

So, let's dive in!

May reads

The Closed Doors by Pauline Albanese, 2015

I chose you because you’re an orchard of ripe fruits, and I want to lay my sufferings in the shadows of your arms, of your belly. I chose you because your tears remind me of September rain. Because of the sun I see in your pupils. You cannot run now, can you? You have found your home. Do you feel the darkness in the hollow of your plexus? Don’t you understand? Your darkness was your secret, and she whispers to mine.

I discovered this book thanks to my obsession in recent months with the myth of Hades and Persephone, but above all because the quote below was all over Tumblr, and it haunted me for months!

The quote definitely drew me in, and discovering Persephone's response in the book made it all worthwhile.

It's a short book, written in the form of a play, flowing, easy to read in one sitting, and enjoyable.

I gave it 4 stars and no more because I was enjoying it so much that when I got to the end, I couldn't believe it, and I was upset, like "is that all?!" I wanted it to last longer.

But I think the author wanted to tell only the moment of Persephone's capture, her thoughts and emotions, the initial encounter with Hades, their heartfelt exchanges, and his efforts to convince her to stay. Those moments between them were truly moving.

But I can't share more, otherwise I'll spoil everything.

Now I would like to read the series A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair. However, since it is a Romantasy, a genre that I usually don't read, I’m skeptical if it's worth embarking on this journey. Also, there are 7 books!

*omg!*

But I read the excerpt that Amazon shows, and I must say that I was enjoying it, so now I'm conflicted...

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments if you've read any of these books!

The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras, 1964

That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion.

I'm having trouble reviewing this book.

I loved The Lover by the same author, but this book is different in writing style, execution, and pacing.

First of all, I found it confusing. At times, I had trouble following what was happening, and I had to reread certain passages several times. But at the same time, it kept me glued to the pages, I wanted to know how events would unfold. Furthermore, certain passages are truly thought-provoking and emotional.

Thoughts born and reborn, daily, always the same thoughts that come crowding in, come to life and breathe, in an accessible, boundless universe, out of which one thought, and only one, eventually manages at long last to make itself heard, become visible, slightly more visible than the others, pressuring Lol, somewhat more insistently than the others, to retain it.

I read it in a few days; it's a torturous read, like entering a labyrinth and having little time to get out safe and sound.

I know that this review probably doesn't make sense, but I honestly don't know how to describe this book to you.

The ending surprised me and left me a bit dry-mouthed. I expected something completely different. I thought I understood the ending, then I had doubts and looked for other reviews to understand if I had understood correctly or not...and…it wasn't how I imagined it. So, I was a little disappointed because my version was definitely more mindblowing!

*giggles*

But in all seriousness, I think this confusion and suffocation I felt was intended by the author to better convey the complexity of Lol Stein, and how her "madness" overwhelmed her and those around her.

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, 2022

Compliments made you supplicant, equal, and master all at once. Supplicant because you are below, admiring; equal because you have the same taste; and master because you are bestowing your approval.

I have conflicting feelings about this.

Let's start with what I liked.

It's very well written, it flows, from the beginning I thought "ah, I'll love it!". It's set in an academic environment, almost a dark academia vibe, but this time we follow the adults, the teachers, instead of the students. The narrator often reflects on interesting themes, such as desire, longing, writing, age-gap relationships, power imbalance, literature, and so much more.

Should we only portray the world we wanted to see? Should we consider certain stories “damaging,” and restrict them from a general audience, not trusting them to take in the story without internalizing the messaging? Hadn’t we all agreed that morality in art was bad? But art did cause damage, and I was affected by films I had seen when I was young, and I was ashamed when I watched an old film and saw racist depictions I hadn’t seen before, and I was glad to be ashamed. But did we all have to see ourselves in the presentations of types? Did I have to feel like every wife and mother was presenting an overarching narrative of Wife and Mother that reinforced or rejected my own experience?

Our main character and narrator is “a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students.”

I enjoyed seeing all her complex and contrasting thoughts about her marriage and the tacit understanding between her and her husband about extra-marital flings play out before my eyes and make me think about these things myself.

It’s not always cute. This topic is so general and heavily personal at the same time. Every one of us, sooner or later, does experience that kind of stuff. And you could find yourself on the “victim” side or the “perpetrator/unfaithful” one, or maybe you could experience being on both sides at different times of your life, I don’t know. Life is unpredictable. Someone “up there” definitely finds some amusement in our dramas.

Anyway, her infatuation with a former colleague, Vladimir, is front and center for the most part, and the thoughts―I would say the mental films―that she has about him make everything a bit spicier.

But then, all this build-up towards a climax that must happen between them (and I have to say that yes, it happens), in the end, it falls a bit flat.

I can't tell you why without spoiling you.

Electra spends the entirety of Sophocles's play in a doorway, I say to my students, when we read his Theban trilogy in my Adaptations course. She is unable to return home and unable to venture into the world. Pay attention to doorways, to paths, to in-between spaces, I tell them, these are the places of transformation.

Upon further reflection, the quote above about Elektra is really revealing.

Let's just say that I enjoyed the first 3/4 of the book more than the final part. The ending was very underwhelming.

I loved being in our main character’s thoughts and reliving the feelings of falling in love (or being infatuated) with someone, all the yearnings and fantasies, but in the end, I loved the mental movies about “the thing”…more than “the thing” itself.

And maybe that's the whole point: the fact that expectations never quite meet reality.

The Beautiful Summer by Cesare Pavese, 1949

Everything was so wonderful, especially at night when on our way back, dead tired, we still longed for a something to happen, for a fire to break out, for a baby to be born in the house or at least for a sudden coming of dawn that would bring all the people out into the streets, and we might walk on and on as far as the meadows and beyond the hills.

This is essentially a coming-of-age story of lost innocence and first love.

From the very beginning, Pavese vividly portrays the transition from adolescence to a more mature phase, capturing the frantic excitement of youth eager to experience life, love, and self-discovery.

At the start of the story, Gina, the main character and narrator, is full of life and enthusiasm. She lives her days waiting for a future that she imagines to be rosy and happy, which the author summarizes with the idea of the "beautiful summer".

Then, she meets Amelia, an older girl who works as a model for a painting club and introduces Ginia to the city's bohemian scene.

Here, she swiftly falls for Guido, one of the painters, and becomes his lover.

She throws herself into this relationship, convinced that she has found love and the long-awaited “beautiful summer”, but she soon realizes that this is not exactly the case.

I won't tell you more, otherwise I'll spoil everything!

She found distraction in the thought that the summer she had hoped for would now never come, because she was alone and would never speak to anyone again.

I love Pavese’s writing style, very synthetic and simple, full of dialogues, often short but impactful.

The major themes of this novella are the loss of innocence, the contrast between looking and being looked at, desiring and being desired, and also overcoming the "wall" of friendship, transforming the relationship between the two women into a nuanced and continuous wanting each other, stronger and more sincere than that with men.

Pavese is one of my favorite Italian authors, I will never stop recommending his works. You should also check out his poetry, which is exquisite.

Among Women Only by Cesare Pavese, 1949

I thought that it was probably in that distant evening that I really learned for the first time that if I wanted to do anything, to get something out of life, I should tie myself to no one, depend upon no one, as I had been tied to that tiresome father.

Clelia is a strong, determined woman who took charge of her life, realised her dreams, and escaped from a poor and limited reality.

Born in Turin, she returns after 17 years for work: she is a milliner for an atelier in Rome and has been commissioned to create and inaugurate a new store in the city. This position that she has earned by working hard and without taking her eyes off her goal allows her to return as a winner to the places she had abandoned years before, in search of an opportunity.

Going to an office is selling yourself too. There are plenty of ways of selling yourself. I don’t know which way’s the most useless.

In the hotel where she is staying, a girl attempts suicide. No one knows the reasons for this gesture, many think it is for love.

She is shocked and later manages to meet the girl, Rosetta, and becomes her friend.

In the meantime, she finds herself attending many parties to which she is dragged by various acquaintances, including Mr. Morelli, a mature man, as well as Clelia's guide in that bourgeois Turin. He knows and sees with a detached eye. He suggests, but does not reveal.

Clelia enters the world that she had always seen from afar, longing for its lights and its well-being, and it is finally within her reach, but it immediately reveals its true nature. Under the surface glittering with sequins and full of chattering noise hides an empty and fragile world, inhabited by people without substance and who have lost their way.

Really, the only beautiful moments I had in Turin were the evenings when I managed to get into a movie alone or the mornings when I lingered over my coffee behind a café window in Via Roma where no one knew me, and I daydreamed about opening some sort of shop. My real vice…was the pleasure I took in being alone.

Against this backdrop, and through conversations between the various characters, the story leads us to reflect on its powerful themes, such as loneliness and incommunicability, disillusionment and cynicism, fear of the past and the search for redemption, the female world and society, love and relationships and more generally the meaning of life itself.

Rosetta’s friends are self-absorbed and arrogant, engaging in flings and cocaine use while remaining trapped in the monotony of their lives. Momina, one of the girls, tells Clelia that she is often seized "by an utter and complete disgust with living, with everything and everyone, with time itself which goes so fast and yet never seems to pass.”

Between the two novellas, this is definitely my favorite because Clelia is an adult woman, and the exchange of lines between the characters is so powerful. I appreciated her almost maternal relationship with Rosetta, and Morelli's "maxims" on Turin society, on love, on life...He is just iconic.

It is also set in Turin, my city. And I must say that the city truly stands out as a main character itself. Seeing how it was and how it is, the relationship with one's roots.

Seeing oneself in the city where one resides is akin to gazing into a mirror that reveals one's true essence.

You just can’t love someone else more than yourself. If you can’t save yourself, nobody can.

I loved it!

A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch, 1970

Human beings crave for novelty and welcome even wars. Who opens the morning papers without the wild hope of huge headlines announcing another great disaster? Provided of course that it affects other people and not oneself. Rupert liked order. But there is no man who likes order who does not give houseroom to a man who dreams of disorder. The sudden wrecking of the accustomed scenery, so long as one can be fairly sure of a ringside seat, stimulates the bloodstream.

Beautiful. I loved it.

This book has been at my side, on my nightstand, lying on the sofa, or in my bag for months, since January, if I remember correctly, when I started it, and I was enjoying it. But then, I found other books that distracted me and caught my attention, and since I'm a mood reader, I followed that instinct and gave priority to those.

Then in May, I said to myself, "It's time to get back with Murdoch!" and right after I started reading it again, I couldn't stop until I finished it.

Oh my...I don't know where to start. I loved everything, everything!

I really like how it is written. It feels like watching a movie. The dialogues are so real, the descriptions are so vivid, I felt like I could see the characters acting out the scene, delivering these iconic lines, right before my eyes. I don't know how to explain it. It is cinematic, in a way.

I've thought many times that I would like to see these scenes on the screen, or why not, even in a theater, to see them come to life and hear these dialogues delivered by great actors and not just read them in my mind.

But, for me, the icing on the cake is definitely Julius.

He is such an iconic character.

He reminded me so much of Petyr Baelish, aka Littlefinger, from Game of Thrones. He doesn't do things on the level of what Petyr does in GoT (this is not as dark and morbid), but his way of thinking and acting is just like Littlefinger's.

If this doesn’t instantly depict Littlefinger in your mind, I don’t know what does.

So much so that I have written several times in the margins of certain passages, "just like Littlefinger" or "Littlefinger teaches!", or even "he speaks just like P. B."

He is so unhinged. I love him.

And I won't even show you the amount of "LOL", "WTF", "INSANE!", "OMG" that I wrote in the margins throughout the novel.

Anyway, the characters are enjoyable, there are discussions on so many interesting topics, their points of view are fascinating, they made me think and question things that I had taken for granted for a lifetime...in short, I would say a life-changing read!

Human beings are roughly constructed entities full of indeterminacies and vaguenesses and empty spaces. Driven along by their own private needs they latch blindly on to each other, then pull away, then clutch again. Their little sadisms and their little masochisms are surface phenomena. Anyone will do to play the roles. They never really see each other at all. There is no relationship, dear Morgan, which cannot quite easily be broken and there is none the breaking of which is a matter of any genuine seriousness. Human beings are essentially finders of substitutes.

I don't even know why I didn't give it 5 stars right away, but I stopped at 4.5...

Ah, yes...because I would have liked a couple more scenes between Julius and Morgan, that's why. But now, thinking back to the book to write this review...I had to update the stars!

Okay, I've decided. I have too much to say, so I'll dedicate a separate article to it.

Stay tuned!

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, 2014

They know that tragedy is not glamorous. They know it doesn't play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person. Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.

Oh, this book!

The perfect summer read. A psychological thriller, a love story, a family drama...what more could you want?

At the beginning of the story, we meet the Sinclair family. The perfect family. Rich, beautiful, almost gods.

Through the thoughts of the main character, Cadence, one of the Sinclair daughters, we slowly start to see this castle collapse; the golden cage is indeed a shield but also a prison, luxurious and glamorous, yes, but still a cage.

The accumulation of beautiful objects is a life goal. Whoever dies with the most stuff wins.
Wins what? is what I’d like to know.

I can't reveal more to you, otherwise I'll ruin your reading experience and all the twists and turns.

This novel touches on many fascinating themes, such as money and privilege, keeping up appearances, racism, tradition vs newness, dealing with grief, the ambivalence of memory, forgetting vs remembering, truth vs lies, romantic love vs. family ties.

“You’re saying Granddad thinks you’re Heathcliff”
“I promise you, he does,” says Gat. “A brute beneath a pleasant surface, betraying his kindness in letting me come to his sheltered island every year—I’ve betrayed him by seducing his Catherine, his Cadence. And my penance is to become the monster he always saw in me.”
*also this reference to Wuthering Heights, come on!

The writing style is fragmented. Short sentences. Stunning one-liners and little passages in a verse style, like you can find in a novel in verse.

I think that it is the perfect style to capture the mood of the protagonist, who finds herself questioning everything she knows and believed to be real, her memory that throws tantrums, and having to put the pieces together after a traumatic event. Also, she is a teenager, and I found this was a very realistic way to capture how her mind would work and would express herself.

I am not talking about fate. I don’t believe in destiny or soul mates or the supernatural. I just mean we understood each other. All the way.

I enjoyed it A LOT!

Also, for those who don't know, the TV series comes out on June 18th!

I can't wait to see it. The trailer already looks promising.

10 Days in a Mad House by Nellie Bly, 1887

As I passed a low pavilion, where a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined, I read a motto on the wall, “While I live I hope”. The absurdity of it struck me forcibly. I would have liked to put above the gates that open to the asylum, “He who enters here leaveth hope behind”.

I found this little book while browsing online, and it's a little gem.

It talks about how the author went undercover in a madhouse to tell what really happens inside these structures, to the women locked up there, and above all, whether they are really "crazy" or not.

I found it fascinating that at the time (1887), they had the idea of sending the author, who is a journalist, undercover, as I already stated, to do this written report.

Many of the things narrated we already know by now, given that films have been made and studies have been published on this subject, but being able to live it through the first hand experience of the author, who has been inside it, and therefore experiencing it as if we were there too, was another level altogether.

After this, I began to have a smaller regard for the ability of doctors than I ever had before, and a greater one for myself. I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent.

It is short and easy to follow. You can also read it online for free.

I recommend it.