Your loss. Really, it's totally and utterly your loss that you missed it. This was hands down (or out in a pterodactyl shape) the funniest review yet, and don't get me started on the food. Juliet hadn't finished laying out the taco fest and we were in there like love-starved teens at a quinceñera. And to slide it down, Aglianico del Vulture, a wine cultivated at the base of a volcano near Basilicata. Jesus would have wept. But what of the works? Well, we had some really insightful things to say there.
Basically it all boils down to we don't like her face. She's a bit lopsided, she couldn't possibly write. How old are you anyway? Like 12? After we got some necessary bilious bitching out of the way (what me, have a problem with her being a published author? Please...), we still felt that the pages of The Tiger's Wife didn't add up to a story. I'm relying on other people's judgement here because, shame on me, I never even made it to the end, after four weeks of trying. It's the face, I'm telling you. It's the face. The general viewpoint was that, although individual episodes were beautifully written, the book didn't stand up as an entire piece of work. Tea Obreht's early short story efforts came through strongly, felt Michelle. Huge shame that Milly, the recommender, was so glaringly absent from the defence team, but we got her view in bullet points and loved her phrase, 'what the soil remembers', but weren't convinced that Obreht may be the Balkan's answer to Khaled Hosseini of the Kite Runner fame.
Much more interesting of course was our intellectual deviation, which lead from shared viewpoints, to public viewpoints on twitter, to facebook strands, to... gulling. No that's not when you sit in a one-man row boat. No, it's not when gulp a guinness down in one either. Come on gulling. You know. Gulling! Bruce gives an explanation followed by a demonstration, then says, what about pterodactyl? Anyone know what pterodactyl is? Demonstration follows. We all fall off our chairs and I tear a collar bone sinew from laughing so hard. But we are not the Kensal Review for nothing. Deftly, swiftly we bring the conversation right back to the usual levels of sophistication by going through Chuck-offs masterpieces: Three Sisters, The Seagull and of course, The Cherry Orchard.
Which brings us to The End of The Line (don't you just love starting a sentence with a relative pronoun?). Great movie. But can we talk about Ted Danson as the narrator? And what about the Tim Burton-esque music at the intro? Slightly over egging the catfish, we felt. Nevertheless some shocking and memorable images stuck with us, such as the super trawler cracking off coral and annihilating other spectacular sea-life on the ocean floor. And yes, we will now ask, "Is this tuna sustainably sourced?" Actually, we won't even be eating tuna, because we'll either be sucking on anchovies, or choking on mackerel bones. But that's ok, even that works in a fish taco. Bruce, know what that is? Huh, do ya?
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