{"id":37286,"date":"2025-09-01T21:33:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T21:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/37286\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T21:33:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T21:33:13","slug":"book-review-allison-kings-the-phoenix-pencil-company-will-serve-up-some-magic-with-a-side-of-sobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/37286\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Allison King&#8217;s The Phoenix Pencil Company will serve up some magic with a side of sobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Published on: Sept 01, 2025 03:12 pm IST <\/p>\n<p>    Author Allison King&#8217;s debut novel, The Phoenix Pencil Company is sure to leave you with a case of the sniffles and some newfound nostalgia. Read to know more.     <\/p>\n<p>Sometimes you can\u2019t quite put your finger on what it is that\u2019s making a stack of inked pages tug on the wells inside you, but you stick with it nonetheless. Luckily with Allison King\u2019s The Phoenix Pencil Company, you\u2019ll be glad you stuck around. And that\u2019s probably because the plot of the book is in a way, storytelling.<\/p>\n<p>     <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/The_Phoenix_Pencil_Company_1756718608062_1756718608262.jpg\" alt=\"Cover of the book, The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King(Photo: Instagram\/4thestatebooks)\" title=\"Cover of the book, The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King(Photo: Instagram\/4thestatebooks)\"\/>   Cover of the book, The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King(Photo: Instagram\/4thestatebooks)    <\/p>\n<p>Be it Monica\u2019s incredibly relatable contemporary struggles or her grandmother, the Alzheimer\u2019s-stricken Meng\u2019s war-ravaged past, at the heart of it, it\u2019s two women eking out their business of living, one more conflicted, the other more dramatic. And what ties it all together? Pencils, and the magic that lives in them \u2014 and to Allison\u2019s credit, a core plot point you will barely find yourself questioning because you\u2019ll just want to believe it.<\/p>\n<p>Now keeping a pair of small-font accustomed eyes for some 400 odd pages is never an easy feat and more often than not happens to be the exact beat on which debuting novelists falter. Not to call Allison\u2019s storytelling flawless, but the blimps feel \u2018real\u2019 in a human sense and the slight hesitation and oddly comforting sense of lull at times feel incredibly raw, qualities that seem to be missing in the increasingly finessed reads hitting the stands these days.<\/p>\n<p>Long story short \u2014 looking for a good emotional release as the rain beats down on your windows this weekend? There couldn\u2019t be a warmer pat than The Phoenix Pencil Company. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Title: <\/strong>The Phoenix Pencil Company<\/p>\n<p><strong>Author: <\/strong>Allison King<\/p>\n<p><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> HarperCollins<\/p>\n<p><strong>Price:<\/strong> \u20b9 \u20b9499 <\/p>\n<p>         <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1756674209_79_story_trending@2x.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"\/>                <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on: Sept 01, 2025 03:12 pm IST Author Allison King&#8217;s debut novel, The Phoenix Pencil Company is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[28880,6137,359,18,117,3823,3822,19,17,28881],"class_list":{"0":"post-37286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-allison-king","9":"tag-book-review","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ht-city","14":"tag-htcity","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-the-phoenix-pencil-company"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}