The Compound

by Richard W. Brown July 3, 2025

The Compound: A Novel

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 4 seconds

Addictive and prescient, The Compound by Aisling Rawle, is an explosive debut from a prominent new voice in fiction. This gripping novel, set in a remote desert compound, will linger in your mind long after the game ends. It’s a story of survival, competition, and the human spirit, making it a must-read for any fiction enthusiast. Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on The Compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show.

For Lily to emerge victorious, she must outlast her housemates and stay in The Compound the longest. Her journey is filled with challenges, from competing for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick to securing communal necessities for their new home, including food, appliances, and even a front door.

Aisling Rawle was born in 1998 and raised in County Leitrim in the West of Ireland. She now lives in Dublin. The Compound is her first book.

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My random thoughts on love, grief, life and all things considered.

My Big Climb to Conquer Cancer on April 25, 2026
Please join me in making a difference! No matter the amount, your contribution can have a meaningful impact. As I do every year, I will match every donation made. Thank you! […]
50th Wedding Anniversary
All we ever needed was love—true love! It's the most powerful force in the world—a force that can heal, uplift, and give us our only hope for salvation. […]
The Infamous Walker Limps Home
My Apple Fitness app shows that I’ve averaged four miles daily over an unpredictable month, which might be my new normal. As long as I can walk every day, my streak will continue. Today marked 1,555 days and counting. […]
Living and Grieving
I am believed and seen. I believe in others and recognize their true selves. Though I may reside in my home, I live, grieve, and thrive within my community. […]
The Triad of Love
I focus on being good, rather than feeling good, and living a life my wife would be proud of, rather than letting sorrow overshadow my remaining days. […]

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Breathe

Read: September 2021

Breathe

by Joyce Carol Oates

Reading Breathe by Joyce Carol Oates was a book I knew I needed to read once Jan was diagnosed. Although the book might trigger negative memories, I finally read Breathe. It was what I needed to read at this point in my journey.

Ms. Oates wrote the book in 2019 after her husband, Charlie Gross, died. The novel is a story of love, loss, and loneliness, topics that I write about on this blog. I needed to read the book both for my mental health and for the readers of Sharing Jan’s Love.

The protagonist, Michaela, loses her husband while they are on a sabbatical in New Mexico. Her husband, Gerard, writes a book and teaches a class on memories. Jan and I never considered relocating before her illness, but this book convinced me that it would have aggravated my grief journey.

One of the parallels I observed while reading the novel is the similarity between Gerard’s reluctance to let family, friends, and co-workers know of his illness. Jan shared that reluctance in the early days, but I convinced her that the only chance of beating cancer was with the help of family and friends.

This dialogue could easily be one that Jan and I had.

Of course you want to summon his family—his (adult) children—but quickly, he says no.

Still waiting.

But – When?

Just not yet.

He is not an alarmist. (You are the alarmist.)

The novel is written in two parts – The Vigil and the Post-Mortem.

The opening paragraphs set the tone.

A Hand is gripping yours. Warm, dry hand gripping your slippery, humid hand.

Whoever it is urging you – Breathe!

Leaning over you begging you – Breathe!

As one mourning the death of the love of his life, I found several phrases in the book helpful in understanding what I have gone through and will continue to confront.

Among them is grief-vise, which I have written about in this stream.

In the grip of the grief vise, all that you will do, all that you even imagine doing, will require many times more effort.. Hardly daring to breathe for the grief-vise will tighten around your chest, squeezing the very air out of your lungs.

In the early stages of grief, the vise was strangling me. Breathing was impossible, and weeping was constant at times.

Michaela struggles with her grief. Seeing her husband every time she sees a man alone, even if they are older or younger than he was. I know I have felt Jan’s presence and still expect her to walk into our apartment.

Her struggles with a grief counselor and overly helpful friends are an experience I have not had but are familiar to those suffering from losing a loved one.

The last chapters are ones in which time becomes confusing and chaotic. At times, I was uncertain about which were real or imagined. The end, like all good novels, was ambiguous.

These are some of the other phrases I have found useful and will include in posts.

If there is no one to love, do we merit existence?
Never come to the end of kissing.
The first principle of life is; Breathe.
Shy in the language of intimacy.
As if a life lived with strangers could compensate for the emptiness in your heart.
No purpose in your life. No compass.

What you love most, that you will lose. The price of your love is your loss.

I recommend this book to all readers, even those struggling with grief.

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Mother Mary Comes to Me

Read: December 2025

Mother Mary Comes to Me

by Arundhati Roy

“Mother Mary Comes to Me,” Arundhati Roy‘s first memoir, is an intimate and inspiring account of how she became the person and writer she is today. It explores how her life was shaped by various circumstances, particularly her complex relationship with her extraordinary mother, whom she describes as “my shelter and my storm.” The book has been named one of the New York Times Book Review’s Top Ten Books of 2025 and is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.

Devastated by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022, Roy experienced a mix of confusion and shame over the depth of her emotions. She began writing to understand her feelings for the mother she had distanced herself from at eighteen, not out of a lack of love, but to preserve her ability to love her. Her writing marks the beginning of an astonishing, often disturbing, and surprisingly humorous memoir that chronicles the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to her accomplishments as a prize-winning novelist and essayist, and continues to the present day.

With the scope, richness, and emotional depth characteristic of her novels, “The God of Small Things” and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness“, as well as the passion, political insight, and warmth found in her essays, “Mother Mary Comes to Me” serves as an ode to freedom and a tribute to complicated love and fierce grace—a memoir unlike any other.

Arundhati Roy is the author of “The God of Small Things,” which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” a novel translated into more than 40 languages and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017. Roy has also published several nonfiction works, including “The End of Imagination,” “The Doctor and the Saint,” “My Seditious Heart,” and “Azadi.” In 2023, she received the prestigious European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement, and in 2024, she received the PEN Pinter Prize for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.” She resides in Delhi.

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