I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better.

In Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop, Alba Donati remarks on this phenomenon: “Jung called these coincidences ‘synchronicities’, postulating that the universe possessed its own form of intelligence, which generated harmonies. A universe that detects and brings together the elements it feels are seeking each other in the endless swirl of life. Chance be damned.”

This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. The following are in roughly chronological order.

 

• A memoir that opens with a little girl being injured in a bicycle accident: Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin and Pharmakon by Almudena Sánchez.

 

• Telling stories through embroidery in Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera and The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks.

• A small boy nicknamed “Willmouse” (real name: William) in Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout and The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden.

 

• An account of a routine sonogram that ends with the technician leaving the doctor to deliver bad news in Reproduction by Louisa Hall and The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan.

 

• Black dreadlocks/braid/ponytail being cut off in When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright, and Rebecca, Not Becky by Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene.

• Wondering how to arm a Black daughter against racist microaggressions in Rebecca, Not Becky by Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene and Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe.

 

• Countering the commodification or romanticization of Black suffering in The Book of Delights by Ross Gay and Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe.

• An account of how the foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001 affected the UK, especially northwest England, in Making the Beds for the Dead by Gillian Clarke and The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks.

 

• I encountered the quote from Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain about pain being inexpressible in Reproduction by Louisa Hall and The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke on the same day. It’s also referenced in Mary Jean Chan’s Bright Fear.

• A mention of eating frogs’ legs in The Book of Delights by Ross Gay and La Vie by John Lewis-Stempel.

 

• I read about the effects of heavy metal pollution on the body in The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke and Windswept by Annie Worsley in the same evening.

 

• Composer Erik Satie is mentioned in Making the Beds for the Dead by Gillian Clarke and August Blue by Deborah Levy.

• Stendhal syndrome and Florence are mentioned in The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright and Pharmakon by Almudena Sánchez.

 

• Swallows nesting in an old Continental building in Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati and La Vie by John Lewis-Stempel.

 

• France being all about the rules and a “Putain de merde” exclamation to bad news in Dirt by Bill Buford and La Vie by John Lewis-Stempel.

• A character named Nomi in Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan and one called Noemi in Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati.

 

• Epigenetics (trauma literally determining the genetic traits that are passed on) is discussed in The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke and Pharmakon by Almudena Sánchez.

 

• Women of a certain age in Tuscany in The Three Graces by Amanda Craig and Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati.

• Audre Lorde is quoted in Tremor by Teju Cole, Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince, The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke, Alone by Daniel Schreiber, and Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe.

 

• A Galway Kinnell poem is mentioned/quoted in The Dead Peasant’s Handbook by Brian Turner and Otherwise by Julie Marie Wade.

 

• The Bamiyan Buddhas are mentioned in Tremor by Teju Cole and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook by Brian Turner.

• Both The Three Graces by Amanda Craig and The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor open with a man shooting someone from his bedroom window.

 

• Linked short story collections about two children’s relationship with their Jamaican father, and mention of a devastating hurricane, in If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery and The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer. (Dual review coming up tomorrow!)

 

• Characters named Ben and Mara in The Whispers by Ashley Audrain and one story in Kate Doyle’s I Meant It Once.

• Occasional uncut pages in my copies of I Meant It Once by Kate Doyle and The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan.

 

• A Florida setting and mention of the Publix supermarket chain in If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery and Arms and Legs by Chloe Lane.

 

• A down-at-heel English seaside town near Scarborough features in The Seaside by Madeleine Bunting and Penance by Eliza Clark.

• A fictional northern town with “Crow” in the name: Crow-on-Sea in Penance by Eliza Clark and Crows Bank in Weyward by Emilia Hart.

 

• Claw-machine toys are mentioned in Penance by Eliza Clark and Directions to Myself by Heidi Julavits.

 

• Reading books by two Nobel Prize winners at the same time: Abdulrazak Gurnah (By the Sea) and Alice Munro (Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage).

• Reading my second 2023 release featuring North Carolina ghost lights (after All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer, which I actually read last year): The Caretaker by Ron Rash.

 

• Reading my second 2023 release featuring a cat named Virginia Woolf (after Tell the Rest by Lucy Jane Bledsoe, which I actually read last year): one of the short stories in I Meant It Once by Kate Doyle.

 

• A character named Shay in Everyone but Myself by Julie Chavez, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer and The Caretaker by Ron Rash.

What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?