#1970Club: Desperate Characters & I’m the King of the Castle
Simon and Karen’s classics reading weeks are always a great excuse to pick up some older books. I found on my shelves a chilly Brooklyn-set novella that has been praised to the skies by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, and then borrowed a short and unsettling novel about warring English schoolboys from the library.
Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
Other covers feature a cat, which is probably why this was on my radar. Don’t expect a cat lover’s book, though. The cat simply provides the opening incident. Sophie Bentwood is a forty-year-old underemployed translator; she doesn’t really need to work because her lawyer husband Otto keeps them in comfort. Feeding a feral cat, she is bitten savagely on the hand and over the next several days puts off seeking medical attention, wanting to stay in uncertainty rather than condemn herself to rounds of shots – and the cat to possible euthanasia. Both she and Otto live in this state of inertia. They were never able to have children but couldn’t take the step of adopting; Sophie had an affair but couldn’t leave Otto to commit elsewhere.
The cat bite seems to set off a chain of mishaps, culminating with the Bentwoods discovering that their house in the country has been vandalized. In the meantime, not a lot happens. The couple goes to a party and Sophie sneaks out for late-night drinks with her husband’s ex-partner, to whom she confides her affair. In Jonathan Franzen’s introduction, he compares to Bellow, Roth and Updike – but thinks Fox surpasses them all. The book explicitly references the Thoreau quote about people living lives of quiet desperation. I could sympathize with the midlife malaise depicted. As stagnant marriage stories go, this reminded me of what I’ve read by Richard Yates, just with a little less drinking. It would have made a good Literary Wives selection. In general, though, I can’t summon much enthusiasm. Given the cult classic status, I expected more. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill
I’m almost tempted to mark this as an R.I.P. read, because it’s very dark indeed. Like The Woman in Black, it takes place in an ominous English mansion and its environs. Other scenes take place in a creepy forest and at castle ruins, adding to the Gothic atmosphere. Edmund Hooper and his father move into Warings after his grandparents’ death. Soon his father makes an unwelcome announcement: he’s hired a housekeeper, Helena Kingshaw, who will be moving in with her son, Charles, who is the same age as Edmund. Hooper writes Kingshaw (as the boys are called throughout the book, probably to replicate how they were known at their boarding schools) a note: “I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO COME HERE.”
That initial hostility erupts into psychological, and sometimes physical, abuse. Kingshaw quickly learns not to trust Hooper. “He thought, I mustn’t let Hooper know what I truly think, never, not about anything.” He tries running away to the woods but Hooper follows him; he makes friends with a local farm boy but it’s little comfort when he’ll soon be starting at Hooper’s school and it looks as if their lonely widowed parents might marry. The boys learn each other’s weaknesses and exploit them. At climactic moments, they have the opportunity to be gracious but retreat from every potential truce.
Heavy on dialogue and description, the book moves quickly with its claustrophobic scenes of nightmares come to life. Referring to the boys by surname makes them seem much older than 10 going on 11. Their antagonism is no child’s play – as the title ironically suggests – or harmless bullying. Is it evil? The reader feels for Kingshaw, the more passive one, yet what he does in revenge is nearly as bad. I was reminded somewhat of Harriet Said… by Beryl Bainbridge. It’s a deeply uncomfortable story, not least for how nature (pecking crows, cases of dead moths) is portrayed as equally menacing. (Public library)
Another 15 books from 1970 that I’ve read:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach (in the running for worst book I’ve ever read)
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
If Only They Could Talk by James Herriot
Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith
Crow by Ted Hughes
Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson
Being There by Jerzy Kosiński
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Sing Down the Moon by Scott O’Dell
Love Story by Erich Segal
The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
(Lots of children’s books there! Clearly they were considered modern classics during my 1980s childhood.)
I’ve previously participated in the 1920 Club, 1956 Club, 1936 Club, 1976 Club, 1954 Club, 1929 Club, 1940 Club and 1937 Club.
R.I.P., Part II: Duy Đoàn, T. Kingfisher & Rachael Smith
A second installment for the Readers Imbibing Peril challenge (first was a creepy short story collection). Zombies link my first two selections, an experimental poetry collection and a historical novella that updates a classic, followed by a YA graphic novel about a medieval witch who appears in contemporary life to help a teen deal with her problems. I don’t really do proper horror; I’d characterize all three of these as more mischievous than scary.
Zombie Vomit Mad Libs by Duy Đoàn
The Vietnamese American poet’s second collection strikes a balance between morbid – a pair of sonnets chants the names and years of poets who died by suicide – and playful. Multiple poems titled “Zombie” or “Zombies” are composed of just 1–3 cryptic lines. Other repeated features are blow-by-blow descriptions of horror movie scenes and the fill-in-the-blank Mad Libs format. There is an obsession with Leslie Cheung, a gay Hong Kong actor who also died by suicide, in 2003. Đoàn experiments linguistically as well as thematically, by adding tones (as used in Vietnamese) to English words. This was a startling collection I admired for its range and pluck, though I found little to personally latch on to. I was probably expecting something more like 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le. But if you think poetry can’t get better than zombies + linguistics + suicides, boy have I got the collection for you! (Đoàn’s first book, We Play a Game, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a Lambda Literary Award for bisexual poetry.)
To be published in the USA by Alice James Books on November 12. With thanks to the publisher for the advanced e-copy for review.
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (2022)
{MILD SPOILERS AHEAD}
This first book in the “Sworn Soldier” duology is a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Set in the 1890s, it’s narrated by Alex Easton, a former Gallacian soldier who learns that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying and goes to visit her at her and her brother Roderick’s home in Ruritania. Easton also meets the Ushers’ friend, the American doctor Denton, and Eugenia Potter, an amateur mycologist (and aunt of a certain Beatrix). Easton and Potter work out that what is making Madeline ill is the same thing that’s turning the local rabbits into zombies…
At first it seemed the author was awkwardly inserting a nonbinary character into history, but it’s more complicated than that. The sworn soldier tradition in countries such as Albania was a way for women, especially orphans or those who didn’t have brothers to advocate for them, to have autonomy in martial, patriarchal cultures. Kingfisher makes up European nations and their languages, as well as special sets of pronouns to refer to soldiers (ka/kan), children (va/van), etc. She doesn’t belabour the world-building, just sketches in the bits needed.
This was a quick and reasonably engaging read, though I wasn’t always amused by Kingfisher’s gleefully anachronistic tone (“Mozart? Beethoven? Why are you asking me? It was music, it went dun-dun-dun-DUN, what more do you want me to say?”). I wondered if the plot might have been inspired by a detail in Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, but it seems more likely it’s a half-conscious addition to a body of malevolent-mushroom stories (Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, various by Jeff VanderMeer, The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley). I was drawn in by Easton’s voice and backstory enough to borrow the sequel, about which more anon. (T. Kingfisher is the pen name of Ursula Vernon.) (Public library)
Isabella & Blodwen by Rachael Smith (2023)
I’d reviewed Smith’s adult graphic memoirs Quarantine Comix (mental health during Covid) and Glass Half Empty (alcoholism and bereavement) for Foreword and Shelf Awareness, respectively. When I spotted this in the Young Adult section and saw it was about a witch, I mentally earmarked it for R.I.P. Isabella Maria Penwick-Wickam is a precocious 16-year-old student at Oxford. With her fixation on medieval history and folklore, she has the academic side of the university experience under control. But her social life is hopeless. She’s alienated flatmates and classmates alike with her rigid habits and judgemental comments. On a field trip to the Pitt Rivers Museum, where students are given a rare opportunity to handle artefacts, she accidentally drops a silver bottle into her handbag. Before she can return it, its occupant, a genie-like blowsy blue-and-purple witch named Blodwen, is released into the world. She wreaks much merry havoc, encouraging Issy to have some fun and make friends.
It’s a sweet enough story, but a few issues detracted from my enjoyment. Issy is often depicted more like a ten-year-old. I don’t love the blocky and exaggerated features Smith gives her characters, or the Technicolor hues. And I found myself rolling my eyes at how the book unnaturally inserts a sexual harassment theme – which Blodwen responds to in modern English, having spoken in archaic fashion up to that point, and with full understanding of the issue of consent. I can imagine younger teens enjoying this, though. (Public library)
The mini playlist I had going through my mind as I wrote this:
- “Running with Zombies” by The Bookshop Band (inspired by The Making of Zombie Wars by Aleksandar Hemon)
- “Flesh and Blood Dance” by Duke Special
- “Dead Alive” by The Shins
And to counterbalance the evil fungi of the Kingfisher novella, here’s Anne-Marie Sanderson employing the line “A mycelium network is listening to you” in a totally non-threatening way. It’s one of the multiple expressions of reassurance in her lovely song “All Your Atoms,” my current earworm from her terrific new album Old Light.
Short Stories in September Roundup: Alexie, Donoghue, Groff Anthology, Houston, McCracken, Moore, Svoboda, Walker
I gave myself an extra week to finish up the story collections I was in the middle of, so I’ve managed to read 13 during this challenge to self (including my first and second posts). Again I’m borrowing Marcie’s five-sentence review format to keep things simple.
The Lone-Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (1993)
There are 22 stories in this fairly short book, so most top out at no more than 10 pages: little slices of life on and around the reservation at Spokane, Washington. Some central characters recur, such as Victor, Thomas Builds-the-Fire and James Many Horses, but there are so many tales that I couldn’t keep track of them across the book even though I read it quickly. My favourite was “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” in which Victor and Thomas fly out to collect the ashes of Victor’s father. Some of the longer titles give a sense of the tone: “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock” and “Jesus Christ’s Half-Brother Is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation.” I couldn’t help but think of it as a so-so rehearsal for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian because a similar cast of drunks, jokers, relatives and basketball players populates the stories and a comparable voice prevails. (University library) 
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue (2002)
The title story is about Mary Toft – I thought of making her hoax the subject of a Three on a Theme post because I actually have two novels about her downloaded from NetGalley and Edelweiss (Mary and the Rabbit Dream by Noémi Kiss-Deáki and Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer), but the facts as conveyed here don’t seem like nearly enough to fuel a whole book, so I doubt I’ll read those. Donoghue has a good eye for historical curios and incidents and an academic’s gift for research, yet not many of these 17 stories, most of which are in the third person, rise above the novelty. Many protagonists are British or Irish women who were a footnote in the historical record: an animal rights activist, a lord’s daughter, a cult leader, a blind poet, a medieval rioter, a suspected witch. There are mild homoerotic touches, too. I enjoyed “Come, Gentle Night,” about John Ruskin’s honeymoon, and “Cured,” which reveals a terrifying surgical means of controlling women’s moods but, as I found with Astray and Learned by Heart, Donoghue sometimes lets documented details overwhelm other elements of a narrative. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com)
The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff (2023)
Hard to convey the variety of this 20-story anthology in a concise way because they run the gamut from realist (Nigerian homosexuality in “Happy Is a Doing Word” by Arinze Ifeakandu; Irish gangsters in “The Blackhills” by Eamon McGuinness) to absurd (Ling Ma’s “Office Hours” has academics passing through closet doors into a dream space; the title of Catherine Lacey’s “Man Mountain” is literal; “Ira and the Whale” is Rachel B. Glaser’s gay version of the Jonah legend). Also difficult to encapsulate my reaction, because for every story I would happily have seen expanded into a novel (the gloomy character study “The Locksmith” by Grey Wolfe LaJoie, the teenage friends’ coming-of-age in “After Hours at the Acacia Park Pool” by the marvellous Kirstin Valdez Quade), there was another I thought might never end (“Dream Man” by Cristina Rivera-Garza and “Temporary Housing” by Kathleen Alcott). Three are in translation. I admired Lisa Taddeo’s tale of grief and revenge, “Wisconsin,” and Naomi Shuyama-Gómez’s creepy Colombian-set “The Commander’s Teeth.” But my two favourites were probably “Me, Rory, and Aurora” by Jonas Eika (Danish), which combines an uneasy threesome, the plight of the unhoused and a downright chilling Ishiguro-esque ending; and “Xífù,” K-Ming Chang’s funny, morbid take on daughter/mother-in-law relations in China. (PDF review copy) 
Waltzing the Cat by Pam Houston (1998)
The novel-in-stories is about Lucy, a photographer in her early thirties with a penchant for falling for the wrong men – alcoholics or misogynists or ones who aren’t available. When she’s not working she’s thrill-seeking: rafting in Colorado, travelling in the Amazon, sailing in the Caribbean, or gliding. “Everything good I’ve gotten in life I’ve gotten by plunging in,” she boasts, to which a friend replies, “Sure, and everything bad you’ve gotten in your life you’ve gotten by plunging in.” Ultimately she ‘settles down’ on the Colorado ranch she inherits from her grandmother with a dog, making this – based on what I learned from the autobiographical essays in Deep Creek – even more autofiction for Houston than her debut, Cowboys Are My Weakness, was. Although the final magic realist touch of having her child-self come to her with a box of photographs of traumatic memories is overdone, the themes of accepting vulnerability, seeking to freeze time and creating a home for yourself resonated, and the title story, about the death of Lucy’s mother, is a brilliant and heart-wrenching standalone. (Secondhand – British Red Cross, Berwick) 
The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken (2021)
McCracken is terrific in short forms: The Hero of This Book, a novella, was one of my top books of 2022, and I also loved her previous story collection, Thunderstruck. Five of these dozen stories are taken from different points in the lives of Jack and Sadie, English and American academics (who I inevitably read as McCracken and her husband, Edward Carey) who come from large-family zaniness versus claustrophobic mother–daughter melancholy. I kept thinking that McCracken’s are just the sorts of scenarios Lucy and Olive would have told stories about in Tell Me Everything: accidents, misfortunes; random connections. Travel is a major element in many of the stories, including to Denmark (in the title story) and Amsterdam. I couldn’t decide whether I preferred the Jack-and-Sadie material or the rest, but I had a favourite from each: “The Irish Wedding” cracked me up as much as it did Sadie with the accidental use of crass American slang, while “Proof,” about a man communing with his father despite his early dementia, is set on a boat trip I’ve made (in 2004!) to see puffins on the Treshnish islands of Scotland. (Secondhand – Dogs Trust charity shop, Marlborough)
Like Life by Lorrie Moore (1990)
Compared to Birds of America, this feels a little dated and the plots are overall less memorable. Still, the eight stories of Moore’s second collection are chewy with insight into relationships and the mindsets of youngish and middle-aged women, and there’s an effortless wry wit to her turns of phrase. Her exasperated would-be feminist characters remind me of Helen Simpson’s, while the cheese-selling protagonist of “Joy” made me think of an early Carol Shields story; and who knew a “cute meet” (aka a meet-cute) was a thing back then? New York City contrasts with the Midwest, most notably in “You’re Ugly, Too” and “The Jewish Hunter.” The title story, which comes last, crafts a weirdly muted dystopia built around shortages and marital misery; I preferred the (comparative lightness) of “Vissi d’Arte,” about a lonely playwright, and “Places to Look for Your Mind,” in which an empty-nest entrepreneur hosts an aimless young Englishman her daughter met on her study abroad year. (Secondhand – Bark charity shop, Berwick)
The Long Swim by Terese Svoboda (2023)
These 44 stories, mostly of flash fiction length, combine the grit of Denis Johnson with the bite of Flannery O’Connor. Siblings squabble over a late parent’s effects or wishes, marriages go wrong, the movie business isn’t as glittering as it’s cracked up to be, and drugs and alcohol complicate everything. The settings range through North America and the Caribbean, with a couple of forays to Europe. There are no speech marks and, whether the narrative is in first person or third, all the voices are genuine and distinctive yet flow together admirably. Svoboda has a poet-like talent for compact, zingy lines; two favourites were “my laziness is born of generalized-looking-to-get-specific grief, like an atom trying to make salt” (“Niagara”) and “Ditziness, a kind of Morse code of shriek-and-stop, erupts around the girls” (“Orphan Shop”). 
Winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction. Published by University of Massachusetts Press. With thanks to the author for the free PDF copy for review.
In Love and Trouble by Alice Walker (1973)
I’d only ever read The Color Purple, so when I spotted this in a bookshop on our Northumberland holiday it felt like a good excuse to try something else by Walker. I had actually encountered one of the stronger stories before: “Everyday Use” is in the Close Company Virago anthology. In these Southern scenes (“a hate-filled state complete with magnolias, tornadoes and broken-tongued field hands”), Black women oppressed by fathers and partners gain what few advantages they can through deception or folk medicine. I liked “Entertaining God,” which opens with a boy abducting a gorilla from a zoo, and “To Hell with Dying,” about a friendship with an elderly neighbour in cotton country. Setting, style, characters; nothing drew me to any of the others or made me think I’ll read Walker again in the future. (Secondhand – Berrydin Books, Berwick) 
Which of these would you read?
Currently reading: I’m not good at picking up short stories in the rest of the year, but I’ve discovered that I really enjoy reviewing them for Shelf Awareness – the length and format of their reviews really suits essay and story collections. So I’m now partway through Save Me, Stranger by Erika Krouse (2025) for an early Shelf Awareness review. Another book I started in Northumberland, Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags by Shena Mackay, I didn’t finish in time for this challenge but will either continue or set aside and pick back up next year. Both are fantastic!
September Releases, Part II: Antrobus, Attenberg, Strout and More
As promised yesterday, I give excerpts of the six (U.S.) September releases I reviewed for Shelf Awareness. But first, my thoughts on a compassionate sequel about a beloved ensemble cast.
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
“People always tell you who they are if you just listen”
Alternative title ideas: “Oh Bob!” or “Talk Therapy in Small-Town Maine.” I’ve had a mixed experience with the Amgash novels, of which I’ve now read four. Last year’s Lucy by the Sea was my favourite, a surprisingly successful Covid novel with much to say about isolation, political divisions and how life translates into art. Oh William!, though shortlisted for the Booker, seemed a low point. It’s presented as Lucy’s published memoir about her first husband, but irked me with its precious, scatter-brained writing. For me, Tell Me Everything was closer to the latter. It continues Strout’s newer habit of bringing her various characters together in the same narrative. That was a joy of the previous book, but here it’s overdone and, along with the knowing first-person plural narration (“As we mentioned earlier, housing prices in Crosby, Maine, had been going through the roof since the pandemic”; “Oh Jim Burgess! What are we to do with you?”), feels affected and hokey.
Strout makes it clear from the first line that this novel will mostly be devoted to Bob Burgess, who is not particularly interesting but perhaps a good choice of protagonist for that reason. A 65-year-old semi-retired lawyer, he’s a man of integrity who wins confidences because of his unassuming mien and willingness to listen and help where he can. One doesn’t read Strout for intrigue, but there is actually a mild murder mystery here. Bob ends up defending Matt Beach, a middle-aged man suspected of disposing of his mother’s body in a quarry. The Beaches are odd and damaged, with trauma threading through their history.
Sad stories are indeed the substance of the novel; Lucy trades in them. Literally: on her visits to Olive Kitteridge’s nursing home room, they swap bleak stories of the “unrecorded lives” they have observed or heard about. Lucy and Bob, who are clearly in love with each other, keep up a similar exchange of gloomy tales on their regular walks. Lucy asks Bob and Olive the point of these anecdotes, pondering the very meaning of life. Bob dismisses the question as immature; “as we have said, Bob was not a reflective fellow.” And because the book is filtered through Bob, we, too, feel this is just a piling up of depressing stories. Why should I care about Bob’s ex-wife’s alcoholism, his sister-in-law’s death from cancer, his nephew’s accident? Or any of the other unfortunate occurrences that make up a life. Bob and Lucy are appealingly ordinary characters, yet Strout suggests that they function as secular “sin-eaters,” accepting confessions. Forasmuch as they focus on others, they do each come to terms with childhood trauma and the reality of their marriages. Strout majors on emotional intelligence, but can be clichéd and soundbite-y. Such was my experience of this likable but diffuse novel.
With thanks to Viking (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.
Reviewed for Shelf Awareness:
Poetry:
Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus – The British-Jamaican poet’s intimate third collection contrasts the before and after of becoming a father—a transition that prompts him to reflect on his Deaf and biracial identity as well as the loss of his own father.
With thanks to Picador for the free copy for review.
Want, the Lake by Jenny Factor – Factor’s long, intricate second poetry collection envisions womanhood as a tug of war between desire and constraint. “Elegy for a Younger Self” poems string together vivid reminiscences.
Terminal Maladies by Okwudili Nebeolisa – The Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate’s debut collection is a tender chronicle of the years leading to his mother’s death from cancer. Food and nature imagery chart the decline in Nkoli’s health and its effect on her family.
Fiction:
A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg – Her tenth book evinces her mastery of dysfunctional family stories. From the Chicago-area Cohens, the circle widens and retracts as partners and friends enter and exit. Through estrangement and reunion, as characters grapple with sexuality and addictions, the decision is between hiding and figuring out who they are.
Nonfiction:
We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood by Jennifer Case – Case’s second book explores the evolution, politics, and culture of contemporary parenthood in 15 intrepid essays. Science and statistics weave through in illuminating ways. This forthright, lyrical study of maternity is an excellent companion read to Lucy Jones’s Matrescence.
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan – Ten years after his Booker Prize win for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan revisits his father’s time as a POW—the starting point but ultimately just one thread in this astonishing and uncategorizable work that combines family memoir, biography, and history to examine how love and memory endure. (Published in the USA on 17 September.)
With thanks to Emma Finnigan PR and Vintage (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.
Any other September releases you’d recommend?
September Releases, Part I: Berzinska, Falomo, Fubini
September is always a big month for new releases. I reviewed a load for Shelf Awareness this month (excerpts and links in tomorrow’s post, along with one more full review) and I’m awaiting library holds of some other big-name titles.
As often seems to be the case, my main roundup features one book each from fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Today I have short reviews of a set of sweetly fantastical Latvian short stories for middle grade readers, a Nigerian American’s autobiography in verse, and a short book about how prioritizing flavour might be the key to fixing a broken globalized food system.
The Skeleton in the Cupboard by Lilija Berzinska (2018; 2024)
[Translated from the Latvian by Žanete Vēvere Pasqualini and Sara Smith]
Something a bit different that still fit my September short stories focus: these nine linked fairytales feature sentient animals and fantastical creatures learning relatable life lessons. In the title story, Squishbod airs his closet once a year, which requires taking out the skeleton – a symbol of shameful secrets one holds close. Newfound friendship shades into obsession in “The Sea Wolf and the Hare” before the hare’s epiphany that love requires freedom. Characters wrestle with greed, fear and feelings of inadequacy or incompleteness. In “The End of the World,” which can be interpreted as a subtle climate fable, a thick fog induces panic. A puffin entertains thoughts of piracy. Spendthrift is compelled to have the latest in home décor while Mousekin frets over his lack of ambition. This is perfect for Moomins fans, who will embrace the blend of domesticity and adventure, melancholy and reassurance. I was also reminded of another European children’s novel-in-stories I’ve reviewed, Scary Fairy in Wicked Wood by Jana Bauer (translated from the Slovenian). The book is illustrated with whimsical drawings by the author, and a translators’ note explains how they assigned the creatures punning names. This is meant for children aged eight and up, but I loved it, too.
With thanks to The Emma Press for the free copy for review.
In September-released short stories, I also recently reviewed A New Day by Sue Mell.
Autobiomythography Of by Ayokunle Falomo
The title is adapted from Audre Lorde’s term for Zami, “biomythography” (Kim Coleman Foote also borrowed it for Coleman Hill). This collection reminded me most of Jason Allen-Paisant’s multi-award-winning Self-Portrait as Othello. Both books pair an investigation of identity with musings on history and art, and six of Falomo’s poem titles begin with “Self-Portrait.” Another nine open with “Lugard & I,” referencing the early-1900s white high commissioner/governor/governor-general who effectively created Nigeria. Falomo contrasts his childhood understanding of his country with the more complicated postcolonial vision that has emerged in later decades.
Drawing on the Bible and mythology, the poet spins meditations on genealogy and describes himself as if from the outside, via others’ perceptions (“If Found,”) and erasure of official forms. “To You in Your Dark Lake Moving Darkly Now” is addressed to his child in utero, and a major theme is figuring out how to be a father differently from one’s own father (on which, see also Raymond Antrobus’s Signs, Music; I’ll link to my review tomorrow). The form varies a lot, from fragmented stanzas to paragraphs. I was impressed. A favourite passage (and a sample poem below):
The past will remain
what it is—a pastiche
of regrets and joys—
but lest I be accused of being
tethered to it, here is the snail-
sized horse I’ve named
Forgive. No, Forget.
Remind me.
I have forgotten who I was.
I have forgiven who I was supposed to be.
(from “Autobiography Of”)
With thanks to Alice James Books for the advanced e-copy for review.
In Search of the Perfect Peach: Why flavour holds the answer to fixing our food system by Franco Fubini
Fubini is the CEO of Natoora, which supplies produce to world-class restaurants. He is passionate about restoring seasonal patterns of eating; just because we can purchase strawberries year-round doesn’t mean we should. Supermarkets (which control 85% or more of food stock in the USA and UK) are to blame, Fubini explains, because after the Second World War they “tricked families with feelings of value and convenience, yet what they really wanted was for them to consume more of this unhealthy, flavour-engineered food [i.e. ultra-processed foods], which is cheap to produce and easy to transport because of its industrial nature.” He gives a few examples of fruits that have been selected for flavour rather than shelf life, such as the winter tomato varieties he popularized via River Café, green citrus, and the divine Greta white peach that set him off on this journey in 2011. This is a concise and readable introduction to modern food issues.
While it didn’t contain a lot that was new to me and I found the prose only serviceable, I’d still recommend it to anyone wanting a quick and thought-provoking read about where food comes from. Fubini’s is a wise voice we would do well to heed; I saw him quoted in the Guardian the other day on how to choose ripe fruit.
With thanks to Chelsea Green Publishing for the proof copy for review.
Short Stories in September, II: Willie Davis, Gerald Durrell, Sue Mell and Lore Segal
Four more collections down. Two of them blend fictional and autobiographical modes. Two are set primarily in New York City, with another hanging out in Kentucky and the fourth touring Europe. Three of the authors were new to me and one is an old favourite. I’m borrowing Marcie’s five-sentence review format to keep things simple.
I Can Outdance Jesus by Willie Davis (2024)
I don’t often take a look at unsolicited review copies, but I couldn’t resist the title of this and I’m glad I gave it a try. Davis’s 10 stories, several of flash length, take place in small-town Kentucky and feature a lovable cast of pranksters, drunks, and spinners of tall tales. The title phrase comes from one of the controversial songs the devil-may-care narrator of “Battle Hymn” writes. My two favourites were “Kid in a Well,” about one-upmanship and storytelling in a local bar, and “The Peddlers,” which has two rogues masquerading as Mormon missionaries. I got vague Denis Johnson vibes from this sassy, gritty but funny collection; Davis is a talent!
Published by Cowboy Jamboree Press. With thanks to publicist Lori Hettler for the free e-copy for review.
The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium by Gerald Durrell (1979)
If you’ve read his autobiographical trilogy or seen The Durrells, you’ll be familiar with the quirky, chaotic family atmosphere that reigns in the first two pieces: “The Picnic,” about a luckless excursion in Dorset, and “The Maiden Voyage,” set on a similarly disastrous sailing in Greece (“Basically, the rule in Greece is to expect everything to go wrong and to try to enjoy it whether it does or not”). No doubt there’s some comic exaggeration at work here, especially in “The Public School Education,” about running into a malapropism-prone ex-girlfriend in Venice, and “The Havoc of Havelock,” in which Durrell, like an agony uncle, lends volumes of the sexologist’s work to curious hotel staff in Bournemouth. The final two France-set stories, however, feel like pure fiction even though they involve the factual framing device of hearing a story from a restaurateur or reading a historical manuscript that friends inherited from a French doctor. “The Michelin Man” is a cheeky foodie one with a surprisingly gruesome ending; “The Entrance” is a full-on dose of horror worthy of R.I.P. I wouldn’t say this is essential reading for Durrell fans, but it was a pleasant way of passing the time. (Secondhand – Lions Bookshop, Alnwick, 2021)
A New Day by Sue Mell (2024)
Three suites of linked stories focus on young women whose choices in the 1980s have ramifications decades later. Chance meetings, addictions, ill-considered affairs, and random events all take their toll. Emma house-sits and waitresses while hoping in vain for her acting career to take off; “all she felt was a low-grade mourning for what she’d lost and hadn’t attained.” My favourite pair was about Nina, who is a photographer’s assistant in “Single Lens Reflex” and 13 years later, in “Photo Finish,” bumps into the photographer again in Central Park. With wistful character studies and nostalgic snapshots of changing cities, this is a stylish and accomplished collection.
Published by She Writes Press on September 3. With thanks to publicist Caitlin Hamilton Summie for the free e-copy for review.
Ladies’ Lunch and Other Stories by Lore Segal (2023)
The first section contains nine linked stories about a group of five elderly female friends. Bessie jokes that “wakes and funerals are the cocktail parties of the old,” and Ruth indeed mistakes a shivah for a party and meets a potential beau who never quite successfully invites her on a date. One of their members leaves the City for a nursing home; “Sans Teeth, Sans Taste” is a good example of the morbid sense of humour. A few unrelated stories draw on Segal’s experience being evacuated from Vienna to London by Kindertransport; “Pneumonia Chronicles” is one of several autobiographical essays that bring events right up to the Covid era – closing with the bonus story “Ladies’ Zoom.” The ladies’ stories are quite amusing, but the book as a whole feels like an assortment of minor scraps; it was published when Segal, a New Yorker contributor, was 95. (Secondhand – National Trust bookshop, 2023)
Postscript: Segal died on 7 October 2024, aged 96.
I’ll have a couple more reviews roundups between now and early October.
Currently reading: The Lone-Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie, The Skeleton in the Cupboard by Lilija Berzinska; The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue; The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff; Waltzing the Cat by Pam Houston; Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags by Shena Mackay; How to Disappear by Tara Masih; The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken; Like Life by Lorrie Moore; The Long Swim by Teresa Svoboda; In Love and Trouble by Alice Walker
Summer Reading, Part II: Beanland, Watters; O’Farrell, Oseman Rereads
Apparently the UK summer officially extends to the 22nd – though you’d never believe it from the autumnal cold snap we’re having just now – so that’s my excuse for not posting about the rest of my summery reading until today. I have a tender ancestry-inspired story of a Jewish family’s response to grief, a bizarre YA fantasy comic, and two rereads, one a family story from one of my favourite contemporary authors and the other the middle instalment in a super-cute graphic novel series.
Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland (2020)
After reviewing Beanland’s second novel, The House Is on Fire, I wanted to catch up on her debut. Both are historical and give a broad but detailed view of a particular milieu and tragic event through the use of multiple POVs. It’s the summer of 1934 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Florence, a plucky college student who intends to swim the English Channel, drowns on one of her practice swims. This happens in the first chapter (and is announced in the blurb), so the rest is aftermath. The Adlers make the unusual decision to keep Florence’s death from her sister, Fannie, who is on hospital bedrest during her third pregnancy because she lost a premature baby last year. Fannie’s seven-year-old daughter, Gussie, is sworn to silence about her aunt – with Stuart, the lifeguard who loved Florence, and Anna, a German refugee the Adlers have sponsored, turning it into a game for her by creating the top-secret “Florence Adler Swims Forever Society” with its own language.
The particulars can be chalked up to family history: this really happened; the Gussie character was Beanland’s grandmother, and the author believes her great-great-aunt Florence died of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It’s intriguing to get glimpses of Jewish ritual, U.S. anti-Semitism and early concern over Nazism, but I was less engaged with other subplots such as Fannie’s husband Isaac’s land speculation in Florida. There’s a satisfying queer soupcon, and Beanland capably inhabits all of the perspectives and the bereaved mindset. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com)
Lumberjanes: Campfire Songs by Shannon Watters et al. (2020)
This comics series created by a Boom! Studios editor ran from 2014 to 2020 and stretched to 75 issues that have been collected in 20+ volumes. Watters wanted to create a girl-centric comic and roped in various writers who together decided on the summer scout camp setting. I didn’t really know what I was getting into with this set of six stand-alone stories, each illustrated by a different artist. The characters are recognizably the same across the stories, but the variation in style meant I didn’t know what they’re “supposed” to look like. All are female or nonbinary, including queer and trans characters. I guess I expected queer coming-of-age stuff, but this is more about friendship and fantastical adventures. Other worlds are just a few steps away. They watch the Northern Lights with a pair of yeti, attend a dinner party cooked by a ghost chef, and play with green kittens and giant animate pumpkins. My favourite individual story was “A Midsummer Night’s Scheme,” in which Puck the fairy interferes with preparations for a masquerade ball. I won’t bother reading other installments. (Public library)
And the rereads:
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell (2013)
I read this when it first came out (original review here) and saw O’Farrell speak on it, in conversation with Julie Cohen, at a West Berkshire Libraries event – several years before I lived in the county. I expected it to be a little more atmospheric about the infamous UK drought of summer 1976. All I’d remembered otherwise was that one character is hiding illiteracy and another has an affair while leading a residential field trip. The novel opens, Harold Fry-like, with Robert Riordan disappearing from his suburban home. Gretta phones each of her adult children to express concern, but she’s so focussed on details like how she’ll get into the shed without Robert’s key that she fails to convey the gravity of the situation. Eventually the three descend on her from London, Gloucestershire and New York and travel to Ireland together to find him, but much of the novel is a patient filling-in of backstory: why Monica and Aoife are estranged, what went wrong in Michael Francis’s marriage, and so on.
I had forgotten the two major reveals, but this time they didn’t seem as important as the overall sense of decisions with unforeseen consequences. O’Farrell was using extreme weather as a metaphor for risk and cause-and-effect (“a heatwave will act upon people. It lays them bare, it wears down their guard. They start behaving not unusually but unguardedly”), and it mostly works. But this wasn’t a top-tier O’Farrell on a reread. (Little Free Library)
My original rating (2013):
My rating now:
Average:
Heartstopper: Volume 3 by Alice Oseman (2020)
Heartstopper was my summer crush back in 2021, and I couldn’t resist rereading the series in the hardback reissue. That I started with the middle volume (original review here) is an accident of when my library holds arrived for me, but it turned out to be an apt read for the Olympics summer because it mostly takes place during a one-week school trip to Paris, full of tourism, ice cream, hijinks and romance. Nick and Charlie are dating but still not out to everyone in their circle. This is particularly true for Nick, who is a jock and passes as straight but is actually bisexual. Charlie experienced a lot of bullying at his boys’ school before his coming-out, so he’s nervous for Nick, and the psychological effects persist in his disordered eating. Oseman deals sensitively with mental health issues here, and has fun adding more queer stories into the background: Darcy and Tara, Tao and Elle (trans), and even the two male trip chaperones. It’s adorable how everything flirtation-related is so dramatic and the characters are always blushing and second-guessing. Lucky teens who get to read this at the right time. (Public library)
Any final “heat” or “summer” books for you this year?
Making Plans for a Return to Northumberland & A Book “Overhaul”
It’s just over three years since our terrific trip to Northumberland. We enjoyed ourselves so much that, when casting around for somewhere within the country to spend a week in September before the university term starts for my husband, we decided to go back later this week. This time we’re renting a holiday cottage in Berwick and travelling by train and bus instead of car – a decision that has already been complicated by rail replacement buses, but we’re making it work. The plan is to explore Berwick and Bamburgh; revisit Alnwick, the Farne Islands, and Lindisfarne (Holy Island); and venture into Scotland for a day trip. We’ll also stay with friends in York on the way up and back and attend York’s annual beer festival with them.
An Overhaul of Last Trip’s Book Purchases
Simon of Stuck in a Book runs a regular blog feature he calls “The Overhaul,” where he revisits a book haul from some time ago and takes stock of what he’s read, what he still owns, etc. (here’s the most recent one). With his permission, I occasionally borrow the title and format to look back at what I’ve bought. Previous overhaul posts have covered Hay-on-Wye, birthdays, and the much-missed Bookbarn International. It’s a good way of holding myself accountable for what I’ve purchased and reminding myself to read more from my shelves.
So, earlier this summer, I took a look back at the whopping 33 new and secondhand books I acquired in Northumberland (and en route) in July 2021; they are all pictured in my trip write-up post.
Had already read: 2
- How Far Can You Go by David Lodge
- Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor – It’s on my shelf for rereading.
Have read since then: 22 – I cannot tell you how proud I am of this number! A full 2/3!
- Until the Real Thing Comes Along by Elizabeth Berg (see below)
- The Girl Aquarium by Jen Campbell
- The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble
- Home Life by Alice Thomas Ellis
- Talking to the Dead by Elaine Feinstein
- Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn
- The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
- The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
- Spring by Karl Ove Knausgaard
- No Time to Spare by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Facebook of the Dead by Valerie Laws
- An Advent Calendar by Shena Mackay
- Christmas Holiday by W. Somerset Maugham
- Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
- Thinking Again by Jan Morris
- Emerald by Ruth Padel
- Dear George by Helen Simpson
- Intimations by Zadie Smith
- Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor
- North with the Spring by Edwin Way Teale
- Female Friends by Fay Weldon
- Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Plus…
Partially read: 4
- A Keeper of Sheep by William Carpenter
- Nature Cure by Richard Mabey
- Vida by Marge Piercy
- The Truants by Kate Weinberg
Skimmed: 1 (A Childhood in Scotland by Christian Miller)
Gave away unread: 1 (Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback)
Total still unread: 7
Total no longer owned: 11 (resold, gifted or donated to the Little Free Library) – Getting rid of at least 1/3 of what I read seems like a pretty solid ratio.
I surveyed the pile of books still unread or only partly read and picked up a few to read beforehand or on the way back to Northumberland. I managed to finish one:
Until the Real Thing Comes Along by Elizabeth Berg (1999)
I think of Berg as Anne Tyler lite, likely to appeal to readers of Sue Miller, Catherine Newman, and Maggie O’Farrell. I’d read five of her novels and they are all at least moderately enjoyable, with Talk Before Sleep the best and Open House and The Pull of the Moon in a second tier. But this was pretty annoying and cliched. The plot is straight out of that Rupert Everett–Madonna movie The Next Best Thing. Patty is madly in love with her friend Ethan but, darn it, he’s gay. She’s also 36 and desperate for a baby. She can’t see another way to get one, so Ethan agrees to impregnate her. Works first time! Everything goes perfectly with the pregnancy, and he says he’ll try to act straight so they can move to Minneapolis to raise the baby. Reality does set in, but only very late on. My main problem was Patty: always complaining, putting no effort into her real estate career, and oblivious to when her parents are struggling. Ethan’s experience losing friends to AIDS is shoehorned in through one histrionic paragraph. This got better as it went on, but certainly wasn’t what I’d call fresh and convincing.
and am partway through another:
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patrick [Patty Yumi at the time of publication] Cottrell – An unusual voice-driven novel about a Korean adoptee mourning her brother’s death by suicide. I’m not sure I’ll stay the course.
I’m packing for the train:
The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium by Gerald Durrell
A House Unlocked by Penelope Lively
Vida by Marge Piercy
…along with plenty of other books in progress!
Short Stories in September (and R.I.P.): The Secret Life of Insects by Bernardo Esquinca
For the ninth year in a row, I’m making a special effort to read short stories in September; otherwise, short fiction volumes tend to languish on my shelves (and e-readers) unread. In the past few years, I’ve managed to read 11 or 12 collections during the month of September.
I don’t consider myself a great short story fan, so I was surprised to see I’ve already read 20 collections this year. Several were via a spring rereading of Carol Shields’s complete stories with Marcie (Buried in Print). Some other highlights: Cocktail by Lisa Alward, longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize; Barcelona by Mary Costello; The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro; and a speculative trio: There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr. (reviewed for BookBrowse), The Man in the Banana Trees by Marguerite Sheffer (University of Iowa Press, 5 November; reviewed for Shelf Awareness), and How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli (WTAW Press, 3 December; forthcoming for Foreword Reviews).
First of my dedicated reviews for the month is a set of Mexican horror stories that happens to tie into R.I.P. (I always think that’s only in October, but it technically starts on 1 September):
The Secret Life of Insects by Bernardo Esquinca (2023)
[Translated from the Spanish by James D. Jenkins]
Esquinca channels classic horror authors such as H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe in these 14 creepy stories drawn from across his career. The settings include caves, forests and abandoned apartments; and octopi, cursed dolls and dreams are among the subjects. These characters are obsessed – or possessed. As in classic ghost stories, the protagonists tend to be researchers or writers whose absolute faith in logic is shaken by encounters with the supernatural. For instance, the narrator of the title story is a forensic entomologist who makes contact with his murdered wife; the undead feature in a couple of other stories, too.
Mysterious manuscripts and therapy appointments also recur – there’s a scholarly Freudianism at play here. In the novella-length “Demoness,” friends at a twentieth high school reunion recount traumatic experiences from adolescence (not your average campfire fare). “Our traumas define us much more than our happy moments, [Ignacio, a Jesuit priest] thought. They’re the real revelations about ourselves.” Masturbation features heavily in this and in “Pan’s Noontide,” which has both of Arturo’s wives disappear in connection with an ecoterrorism cult. I occasionally found the content a bit macho and gross-out, and wished the women could be more than just sexualized supporting figures in male fantasies.
My favourite story was “Señor Ligotti” (no doubt in homage to American horror writer Thomas Ligotti), in which a struggling novelist unwittingly signs away more than he intended when the title character offers him an apartment and then a publishing deal. The Gothic black-and-white illustrations by Luis Perez Ochando are surreal or grotesque, and recall Bosch, Dalí and Hogarth. There is an introduction by Mariana Enriquez, whose stories I found more memorable in general, and I was also reminded slightly of Agustina Bazterrica. I’m by no means a regular horror reader yet found this book consistently engaging, though I concluded it had more style than soul.
With thanks to New Ruins (Dead Ink) for the free copy for review.
Currently reading: I Can Outdance Jesus by Willie Davis, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue, The Forester’s Daughter by Claire Keegan, The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken, A New Day by Sue Mell, Ladies’ Lunch by Lore Segal
Resuming soon: The Secrets of a Fire King by Kim Edwards, The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners (ed. Lauren Groff)
Up next: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy, Sinking Bell by Bojan Louis, Light Box by K.J. Orr, The Forgetters by Greg Sarris, The Long Swim by Terese Svoboda
Are you a short story fan? Read any good ones recently?
Literary Wives Club: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
This is one of those classics I’ve been hearing about for decades and somehow never read – until now. Right from the start, I could spot its influence on African American writers such as Toni Morrison. Hurston deftly reproduces the all-Black milieu of Eatonville, Florida, bringing characters to life through folksy speech and tying into a venerable tradition through her lyrical prose. As the novel opens, Janie Crawford, forty years old but still a looker, sets tongues wagging when she returns to town “from burying the dead.” Her friend Pheoby asks what happened and the narrative that unfolds is Janie’s account of her three marriages.
{SPOILERS IN THE REMAINDER!}
- To protect Janie’s reputation and prospects, her grandmother, who grew up in the time of slavery, marries Janie off to an old farmer, Logan Killicks, at age 16. He works her hard and treats her no better than one of his animals.
- She then runs off with handsome, ambitious Joe Starks. [A comprehension question here: was Janie technically a bigamist? I don’t recall there being any explanation of her getting an annulment or divorce.] He opens a general store and becomes the town mayor. Janie is, again, a worker, but also a trophy wife. While the townspeople gather on the porch steps to shoot the breeze, he expects her to stay behind the counter. The few times we hear her converse at length, it’s clear she’s wise and well-spoken, but in the 20 years they are together Joe never allows her to come into her own. He also hits her. “The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face.” When Joe dies of kidney failure, she is freer than before: a widow with plenty of money in the bank.
- Nine months after Joe’s death, Janie is courted by Vergible Woods, known to all as “Tea Cake.” He is about a decade younger than her (Joe was a decade older, but nobody made a big deal out of that), but there is genuine affection and attraction between them. Tea Cake is a lovable scoundrel, not to be trusted around money or other women. They move down to the Everglades and she joins him as an agricultural labourer. The difference between this and being Killicks’ wife is that Janie takes on the work voluntarily, and they are equals there in the field and at home.
In my favourite chapter, a hurricane hits. The title comes from this scene and gives a name to Fate. Things get really melodramatic from this point, though: during their escape from the floodwaters, Tea Cake has to fend off a rabid dog to save Janie. He is bitten and contracts rabies which, untreated, leads to madness. When he comes at Janie with a pistol, she has to shoot him with a rifle. A jury rules it an accidental death and finds Janie not guilty.
I must admit that I quailed at pages full of dialogue – dialect is just hard to read in large chunks. Maybe an audiobook or film would be a better way to experience the story? But in between, Hurston’s exposition really impressed me. It has scriptural, aphoristic weight to it. Get a load of her opening and closing paragraphs:
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
Here was peace. [Janie] pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.
There are also beautiful descriptions of Janie’s state of mind and what she desires versus what she feels she has to settle for. “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.” She envisions happiness as sitting under a pear tree; bees buzzing in the blossom above and all the time in the world for contemplation. (It was so pleasing when I realized this is depicted on the Virago Modern Classics cover.)
I was delighted that the question of having babies simply never arises. No one around Janie brings up motherhood, though it must have been expected of her in that time and community. Her first marriage was short and, we can assume, unconsummated; her second gradually became sexless; her third was joyously carnal. However, given that both she and her mother were born of rape, she may have had traumatic associations with pregnancy and taken pains to prevent it. Hurston doesn’t make this explicit, yet grants Janie freedom to take less common paths.
What with the symbolism, the contrasts, the high stakes and the theatrical tragedy, I felt this would be a good book to assign to high school students instead of or in parallel with something by John Steinbeck. I didn’t fall in love with it in the way Zadie Smith relates in her introduction, but I did admire it and was glad to finally experience this classic of African American literature. (Secondhand purchase – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
The main question we ask about the books we read for Literary Wives is:
What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?
- A marriage without love is miserable. Marriage is not a cure for loneliness.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Janie had had no chance to know things, so she had to ask. Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?
(These are rhetorical questions, but the answer is NO.)
- Every marriage is different. But it works best when there is equality of labour, status and finances. Marriage can change people.
Pheoby says to Janie when she confesses that she’s thinking about marrying Tea Cake, “you’se takin’ uh awful chance.” Janie replies, “No mo’ than Ah took befo’ and no mo’ than anybody else takes when dey gits married. It always changes folks, and sometimes it brings out dirt and meanness dat even de person didn’t know they had in ’em theyselves.”
Later Janie says, “love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”
This was a perfect book to illustrate the sorts of themes we usually discuss!
See Kate’s, Kay’s and Naomi’s reviews, too!
Coming up next, in December: Euphoria by Elin Cullhed (about Sylvia Plath)
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 