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Oonagh Devitt Tremblay

@oonaghdt

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Reviewing books (@the.tls, @friezeofficial, @financialtimes, @lit_review) and writing a novel whenever I encounter sunlight on the side of a house

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“She thinks so hard about Paris, it’s as if her head is full of memories, memories of the future.”
- Marie Darrieussecq (@marie_darrieussecq) translated by Penny Hueston

It was a huge pleasure to review How to Make a Woman by
Marie Darrieussecq and published by @fitzcarraldoeditions for the @financialtimes

This book is full of girlhood yearning, yet in between the two main characters ardently launching themselves towards their unknowable futures there are careful depictions of what it means to be unsafe in a girl’s body, and in one’s girlhood. This is such an accomplished novel written by one of France’s most important contemporary writers and this elegant English translation is a real achievement. I loved feeling like I was also one of the teenagers swaying in a room of teenagers at a Barbara concert, I LOVED Solange’s descriptions of London, which are so very French and so very perfect (“London is killing her. A drink costs as much as a restaurant meal. The distances are inhuman and the tube is a web spun by a spider in acid.”), I loved how this book manages to portray the very specific way in which we remain in conversation with our childhood best friend, and also, the child that persists within each of us.

The review is available to read online and in today’s paper. taken in London, United Kingdom by @oonaghdt

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3 months ago

This Must Be the Place: on Gaining Ground, Landscape and the Divided Woman in the Canadian Canon by Oonagh Devitt Tremblay

@oonaghdt writes about Joan Barfoot, Margaret Atwood and women in the Canadian wilderness.

Read the full essay at the link in our bio.

Image: The West Wind, Tom Thomson, Oil on canvas, 1917. Sourced from Wikiart. by @oonaghdt

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3 months ago

I wrote about Vigdis Hjorth‘s Repetition and how the body keeps the score for @the.tls taken in London, United Kingdom by @oonaghdt

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6 months ago

What a lovely evening discussing the tender, moving and funny “Before I Forget” with author @elleenfiledesperles and translator @wordsofdina. Thank you @peirenepress @ifru_london and @verandabookshop for facilitating this event, it was a pleasure to chair! taken in Veranda Books by @oonaghdt

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11 days ago

October 🙂‍↕️ taken in Writing by @oonaghdt

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17 days ago

A delight to see my review of ‘Before I Forget’ by @elleenfiledesperles translated by @wordsofdina published by @fallow__media today. I’ll be in conversation with Anne and Dina at @verandabookshop in October - the event is sold out but my article is free to read and I’ve shared snippets here - hope you enjoy ✏️

@peirenepress @editionsverdier taken in Carrières-sous-Poissy by @oonaghdt

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23 days ago

“Begin here. It is raining.”

I bought a secondhand copy of this book and the person who read it before me used a pink highlighter. They must have only read the first third because the pink disappears abruptly, and it is a small sadness to see it disappear; I liked discovering what they were compelled to highlight (they seem to me to have been lonely). “A cat sitting on a table to look out” and each day a conscious creation, a donkey who needs to be hugged, how a review must get inside a book with sympathetic understanding. Reading and underlining in changing September light, holding the first chestnut of the season in my palm — “clarify, clarify” taken in London, United Kingdom by @oonaghdt

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a month ago

“AT THE EDGE OF THE PATH: AUGUST ALONE.”
- Marguerite Duras

Back to London, to reading and writing, to my cat who likes to do these activities alongside me, to light in August and time suspended. I recently started reading The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard and loved this sentence: “His sympathies were with the manageable distances of the past rather than the extravagant reach of the future” and loved also how I felt in direct opposition to it, sympathies stretching extravagantly forward, and enjoying the scope of this reach. I’m really looking forward to autumn, to the reviews I will write and the events I will chair, to the book I hope to make space for and the ones I will read and underline. taken in London, United Kingdom by @oonaghdt

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2 months ago

Eclipsing 🌙 taken in Paris, France by @oonaghdt

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2 months ago

writing and reading every day taken in London, United Kingdom by @oonaghdt

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3 months ago

My little in brief of ‘A Girl Left the Room’ by Ulrikka S Gernes (translated from Danish by Caroline Waight) and published by @pushkin_press is in the latest edition of @lit_review. A moth, a box of letters, the persistence of the past — this is a very beautiful and deft exploration of trauma and the claw marks it makes on one’s life 🪰 taken in London, United Kingdom by @oonaghdt

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3 months ago

Summer in the city: “I was deferring the moment” (Fleur Jaeggy, Proleterka) taken in Barbican Estate by @oonaghdt

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3 months ago