The palm-sized, egg-shaped toys, with black and white pixelated screens and a handy keychain, were a self-contained universe—one that included happy moments and melancholy ones alike.“I remember, very clearly, standing in the kitchen when my sister found out that her Tamagotchi died, and just how traumatic that was for her,” Bunda says. Players quickly learned to modify their games, extending their virtual pets’ lives by removing the toy’s batteries or using pencil graphite to trigger a debugging signal.
“Judy and Steve met on the most gorgeous day of the summer.”
I have recited this sentence, or a longer variation of it, to my wife, Judy Wilson, thousands of times. Additional sentences always follow, and together, they form the longest-running love letter of our four decades together.
While Keegan dedicates Small Things Like These to "the women and children who suffered time in Ireland's Magdalen laundries" — horrific asylums run by Roman Catholic institutions for most of the 20th century, ostensibly to reform "fallen young women" — her compact, crystallized narrative does not train its gaze on these victims or the nuns who imprisoned them within high walls "topped with broken glass," but instead on Bill Furlong and his harrowing quest for meaning.
This is truly a scrumptious treat of a book, like a fancy tea all laid out with silver spoons and floral-painted cups and one of those tiered stands for the little cakes and crustless sandwiches. The 19th century historical fantasy wherein magic is a layer over the already complicated strata of society is a fairly common genre, from Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey series to the more recent The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk, among many others. And I'm pretty much guaranteed to enjoy them all. Give me a slow burn romance and a retreat to a country house and I'm a happy reader. That said, it can be hard to make the genre feel fresh, and that is where A Marvellous Light pleasantly surprised me.