Tell Me How This Ends: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick

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The children [Luiselli] works with are fighting to stay in United States, hoping to escape poverty and violence in their homelands. Their stories are artfully and sparingly captured in this slim book, in which Luiselli recounts the 40 questions she asks each child facing deportation.” —MPR

The magic in this book, especially the way Iris delves deeper into the divination powers of tarot, is so beautifully whimsical! The two races, Senti and Caemi, have different relationships to magic, and I loved getting to experience the wonder of each of them through the eyes of someone who has always been kept away from meeting her potential with it! Iris was such a perfect character through which to explore this world. And of course, when she finally meets her mentor/big gay crush Kalaya, the whole world opens up with new magical possibilities! Der Schreibstil ist flüssig, bildhaft und auch "unaufgeregt". Die Kapitel wechseln zwischen den beiden Hauptfiguren. Zwei Menschen, die eigentlich unterschiedlicher nicht sein könnten, begegnen sich und jede "muss" eine Aufgabe erfüllen. Valeria Luiselli’s extended essay on her volunteer work translating for child immigrants confronts with compassion and honesty the problem of the North American refugee crisis. It’s a rare thing: a book everyone should read.” -Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books She turns out to have had a vibrant younger sister who vanished on 21 December 1974, aged 18. A pile of Kath’s clothes left beside the Grand Union Canal led police to conclude she’d drowned herself. Afterwards, Annie fell into the grip of an abusive husband, whose subsequent death she’s cagey about.

Tell Me How This Ends

Content warnings: Family-based trauma, fantasy violence and racism, kidnappings, imprisonment, anxiety Luiselli points out how cruelly Mexico treats Central American migrants, too. And she deftly shows how the U.S. and Central America aren't distinct entities but part of the same complicated social eco-system. Although I have long since outgrown YA as a genre, I would have absolutely adored this novel when I was a teenager; it is fun, has a wonderful sense of adventure, and is really a beautiful study of how the main character—Iris—grows. We go along her journey and learn about her world, captivated by the personalities she meets along the way! Marin, Myst, and Kalaya were all wonderful (although the amount of times my eyes mixed up Marin and Myst is a higher count than I can admit). You’re invited to Iris self discovery journey about the world and herself, you can see how she evolve throughout everything, how she deal with everything. She was a joy to follow and to read about. She’s just so adorable.I want to wrap her in a burrito blanket. Tell Me How It Ends is a book of staggering emotional power and an incitement to deep shame.” —Harper’s

So let’s start by talking about Iris and Marin, shall we? I loved them, their development both as individuals and as friends, and I would gladly sell my soul for them. I have officially adopted them into my big bookish family, alongside Myst, Kalaya, Spirit and Yori. Oh, and the pirate crew as well, I hope we get to see more of them in future novellas and books! Tell Me How It Ends itself is also a sharp, useful narrative, a ‘telling better.’ It can be pressed into hands, recommended, and it will open wallets and drive people into the streets to protest.” —Remezcla Given that Israel doesn’t want to occupy Gaza—and that its current government would reject its transfer to Palestinians—the question is, does Netanyahu truly want a total victory? In the most plausible (and most familiar) scenario that I heard described, the Netanyahu government prematurely ends its invasion, under pressure from the Biden administration, to restore stability in the region and in the global economy. I found the characters, the writing, and the plot (despite its darker undertones) quite charming. It was a little like being along the ride on a road trip, privy to the ways that exceptional circumstances caused Iris and Marin (and, later, others) to bond. No matter what you come to the book looking for--an adventure, the representation, the themes--what you will stay for is, without a doubt, the characters. They were each unique, and even the ones introduced much later into the narrative had unique characterization.

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Luiselli’s prose is always lush and astute, but this long essay, which borrows its framework from questions on the cold, bureaucratic work sheets with which she became so familiar (for example, ‘Did anything happen on your trip to the U.S. that scared or hurt you?’), is teeming with urgency. . . . In this slim volume about the spectacular failure of the American Dream, she tells the stories of the unnamed children she’s encountered and their fears and desires, as well as her own family’s immigration story.” —Vulture The tone of [ Tell Me How It Ends] is one of profound and committed anger, flawlessly documented, and Luiselli makes a clear and layered case for citizen activism, weaving facts with true emotion as she shapes the narrative.” —Miami Rail I don't know anything about tarot so especially in the beginning chapters they were a tad hard to follow because of that. KIDDING, but seriously, i loved her so much. she was so relatable and i loved to see how she developed as a person who was so afraid of her mother she never left home to someone who decided, in the end, that her happiness does matter and that she is allowed to pursue things and people that she loves. i also loved seeing her grow her magic abilities as the book went on and the scene of her on the ship was >>> Henrietta is intrigued by Annie’s story and it triggers some painful memories of when she was growing up in Papua New Guinea.