Search results for ""author katie whittemore""

Pulling no punches in its 150 pages, Pharmakon is the story of an explosion, of the moment depression blew up the life the author thought she knew and settled in her body. But Pharmakon isn’t a sad book; it is testimony, written with humour and intimacy by one of Spain’s most singular voices, one that deftly combines wit, eccentricity, and warmth. Far from shrinking from taboos, Sánchez grabs hold of her depression and dredges it for the whys and hows, excavating her memory, behaviour, and craters of the mind: here there is infancy and the family home, youth at school in Mallorca and in the fields of Castile; psychiatrists who save and pills that bring her back to life; there are dreams, nightmares, and desires. And books, lots of books—some that serve to escape and others to understand what was happening in her head—because for Sánchez, literature is comfort, quest, and salvation. Pharmakon is an insight, from one of Spain’s most singular voices, into the experience of depression and recovery.

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A Spanish-gothic version of a Patricia Highsmith novel Jon and Katharina spend the winter in Jon’s childhood home on the Cantabrian coast, lonely and bored, ambivalent about their precarious freelance jobs and disconnected in their relationship. Yet the couple’s routine will soon be disturbed when one rainy night, they witness strange lights in the sky over the village. The next morning, ufologists begin to arrive in the village, anxious to make extraterrestrial contact. The morning brings other unexpected guests: Jon's distant cousin, Markel, and his companion, the silent, alluring Virginia. The visit becomes increasingly uncomfortable as—like the ufologists camped out in view of the house—the strangers stay on and show little sign of planning to leave. Days stretch into weeks, even as the cousins can't remember ever having met, Virginia’s behavior becomes subtly threatening, and Jon begins doubt that Markel is who he says he . . . A deliciously tense and darkly humorous novella that explores the border that separates love from routine and offers a twist on theme of “the other” and how to live with the unknown, The Strangers introduces English readers to singular talent.

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